The Prime Growth Framework for Opportunity Zones

1. Determine the person(s) in your Opportunity Zones Unit who will be responsible for engaging with small business owners.
 
2. Identify the small businesses in your zones most likely to be qualified Opportunity Zone businesses, the small businesses outside your zones most likely to expand into your zones, and the small businesses in surrounding states most likely to expand into your zones.
 
3. Highly targeted, proactive outreach at scale to engage with these owners, to both educate them about the incentive & determine which are qualified projects: who is seeking investment, and who is seeking a joint venture with a fund to expand into or launch a new firm in a zone.
 
4. Identify & prioritize the projects with potential for social impact – including those in highly distressed communities and with underserved owners.
 
5. Ensure that qualified projects are added to your online marketplace or dealbook and promoted to funds.

We have spent the last seven months tracking the small businesses most likely to be qualified Opportunity Zones projects, and have spoken to over 100 Opportunity Fund managers considering investing in operating businesses. Based on this, we have determined that:
 
1. There are substantially less operating small businesses that are likely to qualify than agencies and fund managers perceive. Local & state agencies will need to assume a proactive role to ensure there is a visible pipeline of qualified small business projects, particularly impact-focused projects.
 
2. Most small business owners are confused about Opportunity Zones, unsure if they qualify, and those who do qualify are unsure of next steps. We believe that depending on small business owners to self-select and promote themselves to Opportunity Funds, without any assistance, will result in few qualified small business projects being surfaced or successfully funded, particularly those in highly distressed communities and with underserved owners.
 
3. Many, if not most, of the Opportunity Fund managers we spoke with are planning to partner with local entrepreneurs to launch new businesses, or expand existing businesses, into zones. Based on this feedback, we believe that identifying current expansion stage small business owners outside your zones that funds can partner with should be an important part of your Opportunity Zones strategy.

The Prime Growth Framework for Opportunity Zones is a powerful combination of datasets & consulting, enabling your Opportunity Zones Unit to deploy highly targeted, proactive outreach to the small business owners most likely to be (or become) qualified opportunity zones projects.
 
The framework can either be implemented by your team, or entirely deployed and managed by SMB Intelligence.
 

Overview

1. Defining “small businesses likely to be projects”
2. Prime Growth Briefing
3. Messaging
4. Social impact
5. Deliverables
6. Pilot process

We define a small business as an independent or small chain. We define an independent as an employer firm with up to 500 employees, with a commercial location. We define a small chain as one with less than 20 establishments. Franchises, home-based businesses and establishments of national chains are not included in these definitions.
 
We define the small businesses that are most likely to be Opportunity Zones projects as:
 
1. Small businesses located in your Opportunity Zones that are likely to be a qualified Opportunity Zones business. We use the broadest definition of likely to qualify – meaning they are located in a zone, and are likely to have acquired their commercial location there after Dec. 31, 2017.
 
2. Current expansion stage small businesses located outside your Opportunity Zones. We define an expansion stage firm as one that is currently planning to add establishments.
 
3. Current expansion stage small businesses located in surrounding states.

The Prime Growth Briefing

Published every two weeks, The Prime Growth Briefing for Opportunity Zones is a powerful dataset that identifies small businesses likely to be Opportunity Zones projects, and groups them into three segments:
 
1. Small businesses located in your zones likely to be qualified Opportunity Zones businesses.
2. Current expansion stage small businesses in your state located outside your zones.
3. Current expansion stage small businesses located in surrounding states.
 

Data Sourcing

SMB Intelligence uses proprietary open-source intelligence (OSINT) methods applied through a combination of machine analysis and human analytics.
We continually monitor over 30,000 real estate, editorial, public government data, social media and other sources to track planned growth activity in the small business sector, and combine that with data from the US Census, IRS and Urban Institute.
 

Data Validation

Published every two weeks, the Prime Growth Briefing is the most current and accurate small business dataset available. We take extensive steps to ensure the veracity of the data we provide, and to present it to clients in a transparent manner. We use both internal and third-party validation tools, and all contact information is accompanied by validation status.

Messaging

To ensure your outreach is successful, we work closely with your Opportunity Zones Unit to develop highly relevant and personalized messaging for your agency for each segment, by positioning the value of your solutions to best support the growth priorities of each segment, and presenting that value in the context of each owner’s industry category and local area.
 

Why this matters

Owners perceive their businesses to be unique, and view themselves as industry category specialists in their region, not as “small business owners”. Messaging that acknowledges this receives much higher response rates.

The Prime Growth Briefing provides deep impact insight, including the ability to identify which small businesses are women and minority-owned, located in areas of concentrated poverty, and located in zones already likely to be gentrifying.

If email is one of your outreach channels, we provide an optional, pre-configured instance of a leading email engagement tool, with the segmentation, businesses and messaging all pre-loaded, all you do is press “send”.
 

Why this matters

This enables you to instantly deploy an email pilot, and also allows you to pilot the framework without the time / effort of integrating it into your tech stack and / or existing processes.

Datasets

The Prime Growth Briefing
The Briefing is published every two weeks and delivered in CSV format via email.
 

Consulting

Value alignment & messaging
We work closely with you to align your messaging to support the growth priorities of each segment, and then create custom messaging for your agency, for each outreach channel.
 
Benchmarks
We provide benchmarks to guide your results throughout the pilot, and work with you to refine your messaging to ensure you are hitting them.
 
Consulting is delivered via email & phone.
 

Optional email engagement platform

Pre-configured instance of a leading email engagement platform with the segmentation, businesses and messaging loaded, all you do is hit “send”.
 

Optional full program management

SMB Intelligence can manage the entire deployment and ongoing management of the Prime Growth Framework for Opportunity Zones.

The Prime Growth Framework for Opportunity Zones is a premium, subscription-based service. We provide a three month pilot period.
 
1. We work with your Opportunity Zones Unit to understand your Opportunity Zones support resources available to small business owners, and to determine which of the outreach channels your team will be using: email, phone, direct mail, site visits.
 
2. We develop messaging for your agency for each of the three segments, and for each outreach channel.
 
3. If you chose to use the pre-configured email engagement platform, we configure that for you.
 
4. We deliver the Prime Growth Briefing every two weeks.
 
5. We conduct a monthly review of your results, and suggest revisions where needed.