The last day of a trade fair tends to end the same way. A box of business cards, a few pages of notes in different handwriting, a long list of WhatsApp chats and a tired team keen to get back to normal work. Two weeks later nobody remembers who wanted what, and the calls slowly stop.
You paid for the stand, the shipping, the hotel and several days of your team’s time. If the follow-up is weak, much of that money buys nothing. The good news is that solid follow-up needs no expensive software. A simple routine and one person in charge will do.
It starts on the stand
Good follow-up depends on what you write down during the fair. A business card on its own is just a name and a number. What you need later is what the visitor asked for and what you promised to send.
We ask our clients to write three things on the back of every card, there and then:
- the product or service they asked about
- what you promised, for example “price list by Saturday” or “colour samples”
- a letter for priority: A for a serious buyer, B for interested, C for someone just looking
When the stand is busy, a small paper form or a simple form on a tablet is more reliable than anyone’s memory. Plan for it in the stand design too. A small counter with a drawer for cards makes the whole thing much tidier.
Sort it the same evening
Every evening after the halls close, spend half an hour on that day’s cards. Put name, company, city, number, product and priority into a simple spreadsheet. Excel or Google Sheets is fine. If you leave it until after the fair, you end up with a box of cards and notes even you can’t read.
Send each A contact a short WhatsApp message that same night. Use their name, mention what you talked about and say when the promised item will arrive. You don’t need to send the catalogue straight away. Knowing you remembered them is enough for now.
Make the first message personal
The usual mistake is one generic email with a PDF catalogue sent to everyone. A buyer who has walked a fair for three days gets plenty of those. The message that gets read is the one that refers to their own conversation, something like this:
Hello Mr Haddad, we spoke on our stand about sandwich panels for your warehouse in Erbil. The price list for the two thicknesses you asked about is attached. If you send the building plan, we can give you a quantity estimate by Thursday.
That message does three jobs. It reminds them who you are, it delivers what you promised and it sets the next step. For foreign buyers, write in their language where you can. A short message in correct English, Turkish or Arabic does better than a long machine translation.
A three-step follow-up plan
- Within 48 hours of the fair closing: a personal message to every A and B contact, with whatever you promised.
- One week later: a short second message to those who haven’t replied, this time with something new. A photo of a similar project, a sample, or one specific question about their needs.
- Three to four weeks later: a phone call to your A contacts. Industrial buyers usually decide after internal meetings, and a call at this point reminds them you are on the list.
Add the C contacts to your newsletter or company channel and keep your sales team’s time for the others. Some of them may turn into customers next year, but they are not the priority now.
One owner, one sheet
When follow-up is everyone’s job, it ends up being nobody’s. Before the fair, make one person responsible for the lead sheet. They don’t have to make every call. Their job is to make sure every row has an owner and the “next step” column is never empty.
The columns we suggest are name, company, city or country, product, priority, what was promised, date of last contact, next step and owner. If you already use a CRM, set up the same fields there. If not, a spreadsheet is a perfectly good start.
A month after the fair, go through the sheet with the team. How many A contacts reached a meeting or a quotation, and which product drew the most questions? Keep those answers for the next fair. Stand size and the products you put on show should come from exactly this kind of review.
Your website is part of follow-up
Many people who took your card will look at your website before they reply. If the site is out of date, doesn’t show the product they saw on the stand or only exists in one language, some of the trust you built at the fair leaks away.
A simple page for that fair, showing the products you exhibited and a quote request form, makes follow-up easier. Put its link in your first message. Alongside stands we also build websites and landing pages, and you can read more on our services page.
Next step
If you have a fair coming up, set up the sheet this week and agree the columns and priority letters with your team. Our 12-week trade fair preparation plan covers the rest of the run-up, and the fair calendar lists upcoming dates.