A stand in a European hall is expensive, and the visitors who matter have a full schedule before the doors open. Exhibitors who arrive with an empty calendar and wait for traffic meet students, competitors and service providers. Exhibitors who arrive with twelve confirmed appointments meet twelve buyers and treat everything else as a bonus.
Choosing the right show
- Ask who visits, not who exhibits. A hall full of suppliers from your own country is a signal to look elsewhere.
- Visit before you exhibit, at least once. A walk-through costs a plane ticket and saves a stand budget.
- Prefer the specialised show over the large general one when your product needs explaining. Fewer visitors, far better ones.
The six weeks before
- Write to the buyers you want to meet by name, proposing a specific time slot. A generic invitation is deleted; a proposed meeting on Wednesday at 11 is answered.
- Prepare documentation that a buyer can take away and circulate: specification, conformity, price logic, contact. Three pages beats a catalogue.
- Decide who will follow up and in what language before you leave, not on the flight home.
- Bring the product. A European buyer will pick it up, turn it over and form an opinion in four seconds that a brochure cannot produce.
What happens in the following week decides everything
Most of the value of a show is destroyed in the ten days after it. Contacts go cold fast, and a buyer who spoke to forty suppliers remembers the three who wrote back within forty-eight hours with exactly what was discussed. Write the follow-up on the stand, the same day, while you still remember which conversation was which.
A first show with a small stand and a full appointment book outperforms a large stand with an empty one, every time and at a fraction of the cost.