Retail Recruitment Starts Long Before a Retailer Visits Your Community
Economic development professionals often ask a simple question:
“What does it take to get a retailer interested in our community?”
According to Roberto Guerrero, Director of Real Estate at Tractor Supply, the answer goes far beyond demographics, traffic counts, or available land.
It starts with preparation.
Guerrero, who oversees Tractor Supply’s growth across the western United States, has spent years evaluating communities for new store locations. With Tractor Supply on track to open its 2,500th store this year and continuing toward a goal of 3,300 locations, the company evaluates hundreds of opportunities annually.
In his view, communities that are organized, informed, and prepared stand out.
And that’s where Retail Strategies plays an important role.
The Fastest Path to Market Is an Educated Community
For expanding retailers, time matters.
Every month a project is delayed means a retailer is not generating revenue, creating jobs, or serving customers.
Guerrero explains that one of the biggest advantages Retail Strategies provides is helping communities understand how retailers make decisions and what is required to move a project forward.
“When Retail Strategies takes us into a community, they educate that municipality on how we do things and what’s the quickest way for us to get to market.”
For economic development leaders, this insight is important.
Retail recruitment is not simply about identifying a desired retailer and making a phone call. Successful recruitment requires understanding site selection criteria, development timelines, permitting processes, infrastructure requirements, and retailer expectations. Communities that understand these factors are often better positioned to move opportunities through the pipeline.
Retail Strategies regularly works with communities to educate local stakeholders, align leadership, and prepare sites for retailer conversations—an approach that mirrors the retail recruitment best practices outlined in its community recruitment framework.
Data Matters, But the Right Data Matters More
One of the most revealing parts of Guerrero’s testimonial highlights a common mistake communities make when evaluating retail opportunities.
Many local leaders focus exclusively on population.
Retailers often look much deeper.
For Tractor Supply, demographics alone do not tell the whole story.
“Our end user is a horse, a pig, a cow, a sheep, and a chicken.”
While population growth remains important, Tractor Supply also evaluates agricultural activity and livestock concentrations. A community with 15,000 residents and a strong agricultural economy may be a better fit than a city ten times larger without those characteristics.
This reinforces a critical lesson for economic developers:
Retail recruitment is about matching the right retailer with the right market.
Successful recruitment requires understanding not only who lives in a community, but how they live, work, spend, and interact with the local economy. Retail Strategies uses trade area analysis, consumer spending patterns, psychographics, mobility data, and retailer-specific criteria to identify those matches.
Communities Must Learn to Speak the Retailer’s Language
Another theme throughout Guerrero’s comments is the importance of communication.
Retailers evaluate communities through a different lens than municipal leaders.
They are focused on:
- Site readiness
- Market demand
- Real estate availability
- Development timelines
- Infrastructure
- Risk reduction
- Speed to opening
Communities that understand these priorities are often more effective in attracting investment.
Retail Strategies helps bridge that gap by teaching communities how retailers evaluate opportunities and what information they need to make decisions. This “translator” role helps create more productive conversations between municipalities, developers, brokers, and retailers.
Why Retail Relationships Matter
Guerrero’s testimonial also underscores another reality of modern retail recruitment:
Relationships matter.
Retailers receive countless site submissions, community pitches, and development opportunities every year. Breaking through the noise can be difficult for local governments working alone.
Retail Strategies serves as an extension of community staff by building relationships with retailers, brokers, developers, and franchise groups well before any specific opportunity emerges. Those connections help communities get a seat at the table when expansion discussions begin.
As Guerrero puts it, communities that want to attract retailers should consider partnering with organizations that understand the process and can help position them for success.
The Takeaway for Economic Development Leaders
Roberto Guerrero’s perspective offers a valuable reminder for communities pursuing retail growth.
Retail recruitment is not about chasing the latest brand announcement or hoping a retailer discovers your market.
It is about being prepared.
The communities that attract new retail investment are often the ones that:
- Understand their market data.
- Know their available sites.
- Educate stakeholders on the retail development process.
- Build relationships with industry decision-makers.
- Present opportunities in a way retailers can quickly evaluate.
In other words, they make it easy for retailers to say “yes.”
For growing retailers like Tractor Supply, that preparation can mean the difference between a community being considered—or being overlooked.
Retail Recruitment Is Economic Development
New retail development brings more than storefronts.
It creates jobs, generates sales tax revenue, improves quality of life, and strengthens a community’s long-term economic health.
As Guerrero’s testimonial demonstrates, communities that invest in preparation, education, and relationship-building are often the communities that see results.
When retailers, municipalities, developers, and community partners work together, everyone benefits—and projects move from conversations to grand openings much faster.
Next Steps
Want to understand how retailers evaluate your community?
Schedule a Retail Leakage Analysis and discover which businesses are the best fit for your market, where opportunities exist, and what steps you can take today to become more retail-ready.
