Sneak peek: most companies will show their best side to purchasing managers at the exhibition.
So how can you see through the phenomenon to the essence of these companies and find the best long-term partner for you? The next time you attend a trade show or open day, you can refer to Honors’ advice and change your previous visiting habits (visit every one without fail) and focus on a targeted assessment of all exhibitors. By following this approach, you may be able to develop a deeper understanding of the exhibitors and determine whether you can work with them. Take a look at how my colleague Dasha and I did it. Let’s go
Based our past experience of attending EV charging station exhibition and the information we collected from the website, we learned that this Shenzhen 2024 Zhenwei New Energy Exhibition gathered BEV, charging facilities, batteries, super capacitors, optical storage and charging industry chain will be showed in the exhibition by which we can get more find more new features, new design products, as well as make appointments with customers.
Firstly we produce a comprehensive exhibition schedule, I am responsible for extending developing business partners, finding out about familiar or unfamiliar products, contacting those booked as well as the heads of the companies we work with. If you are representing a company then you will also need to set out your terms of reference and budget for purchasing products. My colleague Dasha is attending The EVSU 2024 in Uzbekistan in June, so her focus is on the exhibition set-up, poster design, the way the salespersons are greeted and the feedback from customers who have attended the exhibition. As the exhibition hall was not very big, we planned to spend one morning visit + potential customer appointment, and then meet with co-operative customers in the afternoon. A visit to the exhibition would take about 15-20 minutes, and we would stay longer when we met exhibitors with design products or more enthusiastic exhibitors. At the same time also in mind for the meeting exhibitors score.
Before moving to the show, some of the exhibitors sent us invitations to attend the booth, and some of them will tell us what new products will be available at the show, which will also be a key focus for us to stay. It will also add a good impression.
The pavilion we attended this time is free of charge, so we only need to scan the code to register to participate in the exhibition can be very convenient, if it is necessary to charge, you can ask the exhibitors to prepare free passes for you in advance.
When we arrived at the pavilion, many exhibitors who contacted us in advance had booths that were hard to find, which was a bit of a headache for Dasha and I. If we just went ahead and looked for booths, it would have ruined our plans wasting a lot of time, so we had to choose to communicate with each other after we came across one, but we were visually fatigued before we found the booths. (So we also think deeply about how to make customers more efficient and easy to find our booth)
In the process of visiting, Dasha said that simple and clear posters will be more pleasing to the eye, compared with lengthy company profiles, product introductions, the picture form is more able to let visitors understand at a glance, many customers in different languages even if the language barrier can understand the exhibitor’s main products and new products. Secondly, the enthusiastic and professional salesmen at the booth will make us stay longer at the booth. The salesmen will usually ask the customers the following questions:
1.What products are you interested in? 2. What kind of customers belong to, are they exporting or domestic? 3. What markets do they mainly do? 4. What are the sales channels? According to our answer to recommend suitable products, add contact information, exchange business cards, send leaflets to customers, for different types of customers can prepare different leaflets, in addition to adequate paper version should also prepare PDF. This is the basic exhibitors will do.
We are the second day to visit the exhibition, so many exhibitors business cards, brochures have been sent out, and some even did not prepare the PDF version, so we will also reject some directly add contact information of the businessman, which for us is just one more contact in the address book and does not have any meaning! Of course, there are a lot of exhibitions we encountered on the sales of some of the behaviours will become a minus, so that we will not be in the stall to stay or leave a bad impression.
- Sit in the booth playing mobile games, chatting or talking on the phone. This will make the customer feel that you do not want to be disturbed
- don’t understand the product, the customer has taken the initiative to say what they need, but sales has no way to answer. (I’m not sure, I don’t understand, I’m a newbie…) These answers will only make the customer feel that you are not professional enough and questioned in the subsequent cooperation will be due to the sales of unprofessional and problems)
- Don’t eat in the booth
- Don’t just meet with a crazy sales pitch and send out product brochures, it makes the customer feel that you don’t want to chat with him in depth!
As there were so many exhibitors, we remembered the ones that impressed us, such as letting the general audience see at a glance their business characteristics, what kind of products they produce and sell, what kind of business they are engaged in, and what benefits they can offer to their customers. In our expression of interest in the product, a salesman recorded by taking pictures, if there is no time in the exhibition, the exhibition can also be promptly quoted after the end of the exhibition. Some of them were very enthusiastic and sent us the location of the factory directly, inviting us to visit in-depth.
Soon after the visit, the customers we contacted also arrived at the site, we made an appointment at the coffee stand at the entrance, and in the process of talking with the customers, we learnt that the customers came to visit the exhibition mainly because they wanted to find new products, and it was the first time for the customers to come here to express their novelty, and after a short introduction of our factories as well as our products, the customers said that they came here with a task, and they needed to contact with more suppliers, which is an opportunity for the exhibitors with sufficient preparation. I think this is an opportunity for those exhibitors who are well-prepared.
In the afternoon, we had an appointment with a customer who has been cooperating with us for a long time, and it was also the first time we met in this exhibition last year. In the feedback from the customer, this exhibition was much smaller in comparison, and the novelty of the products was not enough, and compared with last year, except for the addition of some robotic charging piles, the others were not attractive, and it was a reflection on our participation in exhibitions after that.
At the end of a busy day, Dasha and I feel more confident to go to The EVSU 2024 in Uzbekistan and The smarter E South America 2024 in Brazil.
