6A(2) Proposal for Professional Services

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Bu~,~on= '°e"~'y~"g c°SLOmers South Bend, IN: CommunitylD Proposal South Bend, IN -Bill Schalliol, Economic Development Planner Did you go through an RFQ process? No. I met Buxton reps at the ICSC Spring Convention and my Mayor met Buxton reps at a regional ICSC event and we both w ere impressed with the services they offered and entered info a contract with Buxton through a professional services arrangement. Did you have any viable candidates other than Buxton? No. What we were shopping for at the time we crossed paths with Buxt on zoos education about the retail recruitment and location process. Buxton, through their processes, helped us better understand who we were and what we could achieve. Did you face any opposition to hiring Buxton? If so, any advice on how to win them over? Several are very skeptical. They think we can do it in -house with the existing resources and that the demographic/psychographic information is readily available on the Internet. Our local newspaper quoted some of our business leaders as saying, "We get three of us in a room, get some beer and pizza, and we could put together the same report that this Texas group is doing. How are a bunch of cowboys going to know what we need up here in South Bend??" 1 can tell you from our specific experience, you can't do in-house what Buxton can do. The Internet only will get you so far. And the key piece of information that the Buxton people give you that other services can't is the psychographic modeling component. Did Buxton deliver on the deliverables promised under your contract? Yes. We got everything promised and more. The data was fantastic and has been used again and again. We asked for an electronic copy of all the data and have put together data CD's for all of oiir real estate professionals and others that can use the data. Were there any "hidden" fees or surprises outside the contract with Buxton? We actually got more than we paid for. Wl1en we first started the process, we thought we were buying a product (and we did), but we also bought a r elationship and so as we had questions we bounce questions off our reps. They have been great to work with. When you received your target information did the Buxton team give you any training or pointers on how to approach the target? That is the million dollar question. The answer is Tio and it is really no fault of Buxton's. As I have learned from the user connnunity, everyone goes through the process for different reasons and uses the data for different purposes. We didn't really thi~ik through how we would use the data, so we struggled with things once we got our deliverables. But because Buxton lTas learned from communities like ours, they have created a very helpful user network to put communities in touch with other 30