This Isn't a Story of "Hard Work" but One of "Systems"

The current investment promotion is inefficient, and the large-scale digital system solves the industrial pain points.

On average, a business investment promotion officer makes 40 phone calls a day. About 12 calls can get through, and 2 appointments for on - site visits can be made. As for the final deal closure, it may take 6 to 9 months. In this long process, more than 60% of the leads will simply disappear due to lack of timely follow - up. In the end, the median conversion rate of projects is 2%.

Last month, I shadowed an investment promotion team in an economic development zone in Suzhou, trying to uncover the real situation behind these cold numbers. It wasn't an interview; I just went to work with them. They arrived at the office at 8:30 a.m. and were still replying to corporate WeChat messages at 10 p.m.

Before I left, Brother Zhou, the person - in - charge who had been in the investment promotion field for eight years, said something to me that I still remember clearly: "What I'm most afraid of now is not that enterprises reject me. What I'm most afraid of is that an enterprise actually has an intention, but I miss the opportunity due to my negligence."

His off - the - cuff remark pointed straight at an industrial pain point that 36Kr has been paying long - term attention to but has never been effectively solved. The first thought that popped into my mind was: This matter should never be solved by having a "good memory".

1. "Manual Investment Promotion" in Excel and WeChat

Brother Zhou's workday starts like this: He opens an Excel spreadsheet that he spent half a year compiling, which is filled with thousands of rows of enterprise information. Whether he has made a phone call, sent materials, or received an on - site visit from an enterprise, all these are marked manually.

"Why not use a CRM system?" I asked.

"There is no CRM. After adding enterprise bosses on WeChat, the chat records serve as my CRM." He glanced at me and smiled.

This is the real situation of most investment promotion officers in Chinese economic development zones in 2026. As a media outlet that has been following the industrial digitalization track for a long time, 36Kr has found that the tool base for this group is still Excel, the communication channel is WeChat, and the driving force is the human brain. But what's even scarier is that every link in this process is causing business opportunities to slip away.

Leads are scattered in exhibition business cards, government website messages, introductions from acquaintances, and Qichacha searches, without a unified entrance. There are five people in the team, and the leads in their hands are not shared. It's very likely that an enterprise that has just rejected one colleague will receive another call from a different colleague. When an enterprise puts forward requirements like "3,000 square meters, 8 - meter ceiling height, with cranes, and close to the highway", Brother Zhou has to go through dozens of factory buildings in the park in his mind. If he remembers the parameters wrong and takes the enterprise on a fruitless visit, the enterprise will leave immediately.

The most fatal problem is the break in the follow - up rhythm. The boss of the precision machinery enterprise was supposed to be followed up on Wednesday, but Brother Zhou only remembered on Friday. When he called, the enterprise had already signed a contract elsewhere. Brother Zhou said this calmly, but his pen twirled rapidly in his hand.

Last year, he followed up about 200 leads and closed 4 deals. He is not lazy; he is the most hard - working investment promotion officer I've ever seen. The problem lies not with the person but with the tools at his disposal, which are not up to the task.

2. The Forced Evolution from "Salesperson" to "Partner"

More profound changes are taking place. In the past, the logic of investment promotion was: I have land, factory buildings, and tax incentives. Do you want to come? This logic no longer works in 2026.

According to data tracked by the 36Kr Think Tank, from 2025 to 2026, more than 70% of domestic strategic emerging industry projects received direct investment or endorsement from government industrial funds. What enterprises want is no longer just a cheap piece of land, but the support of industrial funds, technology implementation scenarios, and the completeness of the industrial chain. They are not here to "rent factory buildings"; they are here to find "partners".

However, most investment promotion officers still work with the mindset of "salespeople". When an enterprise asks, "How is your new materials industrial chain supporting?" The investment promotion officer may fumble around and pull out an old screenshot saved at an unknown time. This is not a matter of ability but a broken tool chain. Asking a person to play the roles of industrial analyst, capital operator, policy expert, and negotiation expert simultaneously and remember a vast amount of dynamic information is an impossible task. 36Kr has repeatedly mentioned this contradiction in previous industrial reports, but the real solution has only emerged recently.

3. Analyzing "Dazhaoxiang": The Value Anchor of the Investment Promotion Operating System

With Brother Zhou's problems in mind, I began to think about a prototype: If there were a system that could upgrade him from an "information carrier" to a "value connector", allowing him to spend less than 70% of his time searching, memorizing, and verifying information and instead focus on what people should really do - meeting enterprises, exploring needs, and building trust, could his conversion rate curve be rewritten?

This is what Dazhaoxiang is doing. As an industrial technology case that has been under the spotlight of the 36Kr editorial department, this two - year - old product's underlying logic is not to provide a smarter "search box" but an operating system that evolves with the investment promotion role. Its form is not the traditional SaaS annual subscription but a layered and configurable membership service system.

- For front - line staff: The foundation to become a "super individual"

Its personal membership version focuses on two pain points: matching and meeting minutes. Voice - to - text technology automatically generates follow - up records, enabling seamless continuation of communication every time and saying goodbye to the nightmare of rummaging through chat records. Demand matching directly accesses a database of hundreds of thousands of factory buildings and outputs selected results within seconds. Brother Zhou's primitive mode of "going through in his mind and then visiting" can be a thing of the past.

- For managers: Penetrating the black box of team execution

The park membership version provides a collaborative dashboard. Carrier management, policy matching, intelligent lead distribution, and team collaboration are all completed on one interface. Managers can see the entire process from "initial contact" to "contract signing and project implementation" in real - time, clearly knowing who has followed up on what and where the bottlenecks are. A person in charge of a partner said bluntly: "Previously, the most headache was not knowing what the team was doing. Now it's different."

- Core module analysis: From experience - driven to data - driven

What truly brings about an upgrade in capabilities are several in - depth modules:

- In - depth enterprise reports: This is not just a list of business information but a three - dimensional insight into investment preferences, expansion history, policy sensitivity, and risk points. When an investment promotion officer visits an enterprise with a 30 - page report, the first impression changes from "salesperson" to "someone who understands me".

- Personalized empowerment: The system first conducts an ability assessment and then formulates personalized communication scripts and strategies for each person. It enables those good at building relationships to learn about policies and those with strong professional skills to learn how to break the ice, raising the overall lower limit of the team's capabilities to 80 points instead of relying on just one or two star employees.

- AI investment promotion plans: Based on the enterprise profile, carrier, and policy library, customized settlement plans are automatically generated, compressing days of work into dozens of minutes and truly achieving "one plan for each enterprise".

- Closed - loop management of overseas staff: It solves the pain points of overseas staff having "no resources and being difficult to manage". From screening local enterprise resources, planning visit routes, to automatically generating visit reports and review records, it enables the park to manage its overseas teams in real - time for the first time.

- Content and fission center: AI generates posters and videos that match the park's industrial positioning in batches. After investment promotion officers forward them with one click, the system automatically counts which content and which person brings in the most leads.

4. Investment perspective judgment: The underestimated "industrial connector"

From the perspective of 36Kr's long - term tracking of industrial investment, the long - term value of investment promotion is shifting from "resource endowment" to "connection efficiency". When the demands of industrial players upgrade from a single spatial carrier to a composite resource of capital, scenarios, and supply chains, whoever can complete this complex matching most efficiently and accurately will hold the key to regional competition in the next stage.

This is also the reason why 36Kr is observing Dazhaoxiang as an industrial technology sample - it is not an AI assistant that replaces humans but a growable and configurable capability system. It targets the long - standing efficiency gap in the hundreds of billions - level investment promotion service market and uses a standardized product to deconstruct an extremely non - standard process.

The 2% conversion rate of an investment promotion officer is a footnote to the efficiency of this system. What 36Kr is looking for is a sample that can increase the 2% to 5% or 10% with a new paradigm and can be replicated on a large scale. Whether this system can enable people like Brother Zhou to get returns commensurate with their efforts determines its upper limit of commercial value.

CTA

If you are an investment promotion officer trapped by Excel and WeChat chat records every day, search for "Dazhaoxiang" on WeChat to see how much time it can save you.

If you are a park manager and want to know where the follow - up black holes in your team are, you are also welcome to talk to us.

It shouldn't be this difficult for factories to find enterprises and for enterprises to find the right factories.

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