Business Walk Step 2: Collaborate

When assembling your Business Walk team consider assigning different roles.

Lead Partners

Lead partners consist of teams of elected officials, city staff and/or other key partners.  

This team is responsible for:

• Determining "walker" participants
• Assembling multiple volunteer teams of no more than 2-3 people to walk from business to business
• Outlining the areas for walk coverage
• Preparing survey questions for volunteer walkers
• Identifying targeted businesses
• Developing pre & post event communications plan 
• Preparing a post walk report, including a short summary of the findings
• Coordinating follow up visits to businesses

Volunteer Walkers

Volunteer walkers act as a conduit for communications from business owners to local government and business organizations. You may want to consider including a few well involved business owners who have insight into the local small business community.

Volunteer walkers should attend a pre-walk 1/2 hour orientation on the day of the event to assist in understanding their role and what tasks they need to undertake.

Additionally, this team should also:

• Participate in the walk and converse with the businesses visited
• If designated as scribe to take notes, record responses on the survey sheets created by the lead partner
• Take additional notes during the walk to identify those businesses that might benefit from a post walk one on one follow up
• Compile completed survey sheets and provide back to lead partner following the walk

Municipalities that have hosted a Business Walk have suggested that it took one full time staff person approximately a month to plan and coordinate a walk. Each volunteer team can interview on average 10-15 businesses during a walk.

Read More:

• ​Step 3: Communicate