The call you need to make at 4:40 on a Thursday
An RFI landed this afternoon. The response is due Tuesday. The company’s consultant asked two questions you can answer and one you can’t — and the one you can’t is the one that decides whether you make the next round.
These are not study questions. They’re judgment calls with a deadline measured in hours, and the two options most EDOs have are both bad: make the call alone, with your board’s optimism as your only outside input — or scope an engagement, which takes three weeks to contract and arrives after the decision it was meant to inform. There’s a third option. Pick up the phone.
The consulting model isn’t built for a live deal
Project work is the right instrument for a defined question with a defined deliverable. A target industry study, a capacity assessment, a site diagnostic — those deserve scope, phases, and a document at the end.
Live prospects are not that. The question changes weekly, the deadline is set by somebody else, and the value of the answer collapses if it arrives late. Scoping a project around a moving deal means paying for a process designed to slow you down.
Which is why most EDOs handle live projects with whatever help is already in the building. That works until the deal is bigger than anything you’ve run, or the company’s consultant is testing you, or the competitive set includes a state with tools you’ve never had to counter.
The absence of an outside read is expensive in a way nobody documents, because you never find out what the other communities offered.
The gap isn’t analysis. It’s access — to somebody who has sat in the corporate chair, has no stake in whether you chase this one, and can be reached before the meeting instead of after it.
The questions retainer clients actually bring
"Is this prospect real?"
An inquiry arrives with enough detail to be interesting and not enough to be evaluable. We read it the way a consultant on the other side would — timeline signals, requirement specificity, who's actually asking — and tell you whether this is a live search, a stalking horse for a decision already made, or a student project. You have limited hours. This is about where they go.
"What's our competitive position, honestly?"
You know your assets. You don't always know how they read against the four other communities on the list, or which of your weaknesses will actually be dispositive versus merely noted. An outside read on where you stand — before you build the pitch around the wrong strength.
"What should we put on the table, and when?"
Incentive posture, sequencing, and negotiating leverage. What comparable projects in comparable markets have actually received, as opposed to statutory maximums. What to hold, what to lead with, and which concession buys you nothing because the company was never deciding on it.
"Read this before it goes out."
RFI responses, site profiles, proposal packages, and pitch decks reviewed against how the receiving audience will actually process them. Usually the fix is subtraction.
"Help me get leadership to the right answer."
Sometimes the analysis is clear and the internal path isn't. Board packets, council briefings, and the framing that gets a skeptical mayor or a divided commission to a decision — including when the right decision is to walk away from something politically attractive.
"Is this study any good?"
A second read on work product from another vendor, a state agency, or a utility partner. Where the methodology holds, where it doesn't, and which findings you can safely put your name on.
"My new BD person needs a sounding board."
Coaching and reps for staff who are learning to run projects. Cheaper than turnover, and the knowledge stays in the building.
Structured to be actually usable
One person, and it's the principal
Every conversation is with Devin. There is no engagement team, no handoff to an analyst after the sales call, and no situation where you explain your market again to someone new. That's the entire product.
Reachable, not scheduled
Call, text, or email. Response inside one business day, and faster when you tell us the deadline. You don't wait for the standing meeting to ask a question that matters on Thursday.
A standing monthly call anyway
Because the questions you don't think to ask are often the ones worth an hour. Pipeline review, what's moving, what's stalled, what's coming.
No meter running
We don't bill by the tenth of an hour, which means you don't do mental math before calling. A retainer that makes you hesitate is a retainer that isn't working.
Month to month
Cancel with notice. We'd rather earn it every month than hold you to a year you've stopped getting value from.
A limited number of seats
Principal-level access doesn't scale, so we hold a small number of retainer relationships at a time. When they're full, they're full — and we'll tell you that rather than take the engagement and thin it out.
Nobody in your ear is neutral
Your board wants the deal. Your mayor wants the announcement. Your regional partners want the project in their county. Your hourly consultant benefits when the pursuit expands. The company’s site consultant is paid to make you compete against yourself.
We’re on a flat monthly fee with no position in the outcome, which makes “don’t chase this” a costless thing for us to say — and it’s the advice retainer clients most often tell us was worth the year.
Fifteen years on both sides of the table. $8B+ in advised investments. A decade of being the person who eliminated communities from lists without ever telling them why. When we read your competitive position, we’re reading it the way the people deciding will.
We work for companies too. Here’s how we handle that.
Hyphen advises corporate clients on location decisions and economic development organizations on competitiveness. That dual perspective is the reason the advice is any good, and it’s also a fair thing to be careful about. So we’re direct about it.
No simultaneous representation on the same search
We will not advise a corporate client on an active site search that includes your market while holding your retainer, without disclosing it and getting your consent first.
Disclosure before engagement, not after
If a conflict emerges mid-retainer, you hear it from us immediately, and you decide how to proceed.
Your information doesn't travel
Site details, incentive posture, pipeline, internal politics. None of it appears in another engagement, ever.
You can ask
At any point, ask whether we're working anything that touches your market. You'll get a straight answer.
Good fit
- EDOs with live deal flow and a small staff — where the executive director is also the project manager and there's nobody senior to check a read against.
- Organizations facing a project materially larger than anything they've closed.
- Regional partnerships where an objective third party makes an internal disagreement solvable.
- New EDO leadership inheriting a pipeline and a set of commitments they didn't make.
- Boards that want their director to have senior support without funding a second senior hire.
- Organizations coming off a project engagement with us who want continuity while they implement it.
Typically 3 to 25 staff. Based in Indiana, working nationally.
If you don’t currently have active prospects, don’t buy this. A retainer with nothing moving is insurance you’ll never claim — put the money into a project that changes your position instead, and come back when the pipeline is live.
And if what you actually need is capacity — someone to do the work rather than pressure-test it — that’s a staffing problem, and a retainer is an expensive way not to solve it.
We are direct about fit during the discovery conversation. If a retainer isn’t the right instrument, we’ll tell you what is.
Often paired with
Retainers usually start in one of two places: after a project engagement, as continuity while you implement it — or before one, when the ongoing conversation surfaces the question worth scoping.
More on deals, decisions, and competitive position
Public-Private Alignment in Site Selection
Why the deals that go sideways usually have an alignment problem at the table — and how the communities that close consistently handle it differently.
You Already Know Who Won This RFP
Why the deal was decided before the response was submitted — and what communities that keep winning have in common.
Start with a conversation
No pitch deck required. Tell us what’s in your pipeline right now and where you’re making calls without a second opinion. We’ll tell you honestly whether a retainer fits, whether a single project would serve you better, or whether you’re fine and should save the money.
20 minutes, no cost.
Schedule a Fit CallOr email [email protected]