Agencies hit the phones

Cold calls and cold weather could prove to be a winning formula for adding new businesses to Sarasota.

The combination comes courtesy of the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County. The EDC launched Project Snow to Sand earlier this month with the goal of recruiting companies in snow-filled cities to consider moving or opening a new office in Sarasota.

For the cold weather part, the EDC, in conjunction with the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau, plans to send a series of postcards and packages to 8,000 business in the four regions with the most annual visitors to Sarasota — New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago. A fifth region, Baltimore, is being targeted because the Baltimore Orioles now play spring training games in Sarasota.

The cold calling part involves recruiting local executives, Realtors and bankers to hit the phones. After the postcard phase, the EDC hopes to reach out to potential businesses one-on-one through phone calls placed by local people who know the city and the county the best. “This is a unique opportunity to participate in business recruitment,” says Emily Sperling, the community relations manager at the EDC.

Project Snow to Sand is similar, but independent, of a project recently launched by the Fort Myers Regional Partnership, the equivalent of an EDC in Lee County. That campaign, called “Together, We Mean Business,” features local executives and business leaders in a series of radio, print, TV and billboard ads that pitch the area to out-of-towners.

While both projects sound nice, and could be successful, Coffee Talk has another idea for any economic agency that hopes to recruit new businesses to the Gulf Coast: Support initiatives that cut taxes, lower onerous fees, reduce burdensome regulations and anything else that would improve the overall business climate.