The fair is over. The work that pays for it starts on Monday.
The cost of a fair is concentrated in three days. The return is generated almost entirely in the week after, when nobody is in event mode any more and everyone is back in production.
Follow-up doesn't fall through for laziness, it falls through for lack of context. At the stand the conversation has precise content; what comes home is a business card, which keeps none of that content. With just a name you can only write a generic message, and a generic message gets put off.
The problem is solved during the fair, not after: thirty seconds of notes for every contact that matters, taken on the spot, with three fixed pieces of information.
Back home the contacts are split into three groups, never a single list. The single list looks insurmountable, and that is why it never gets started.
This piece is part of the guide to export operations for the small food producer and covers the channel that brings the small producer the most foreign contacts of all.
The scale of the problem
A top-tier Italian food fair puts numbers into circulation that explain on their own why the memory of a single stand is fragile. Cibus states on its website, for the 2024 edition, over 75,000 visitors, 3,000 brands and 3,000 buyers.
The buyer who spoke to you met dozens of producers in three days. They went back to the office with a pile of material in which your leaflet is physically indistinguishable from the others. They didn't forget you out of lack of interest: their memory did what any memory does after three days like that.
Your message doesn't compete with other messages. It competes with the tiredness of whoever reads it.
Why the follow-up never really starts
The convenient explanation is that there is too much to do back home. It is true only on the surface. The real cause lies one step earlier, and it is mechanical.
At the stand the conversation has content: which product they tasted, for which market, what doubt they had, what you promised to send. That content lives in your head for twenty minutes and then evaporates, because the next person arrives straight away.
What survives is the business card, which contains a name and a company and nothing else. Back home, in front of that card, the only message you can write is «it was a pleasure meeting you at the fair, please find our catalogue attached». Whoever writes it already knows it won't work, and so puts it off until tomorrow for three weeks.
The thirty seconds that save the contact
The solution is at the stand, not at the desk. After every conversation worth having, before the next person arrives, you take down three pieces of information. On the back of the card or in a note on your phone, either will do.
- The market and the channel. Where they sell and through whom. Two words are enough: Germany, specialist retail.
- The specific thing. The product discussed, the doubt raised, the question asked. It is the detail that will make the message recognisable.
- What you promised. A price, a sample, a sheet, a date. If you promised nothing, write that down: that is information too.
Add a single symbol for priority, for example an asterisk on whoever asked for something concrete. Back home that asterisk will do the work of half a day of reconstruction.
The three groups, back home
The single list is why follow-up doesn't start. Eighty undifferentiated lines in front of a Monday morning produce postponement. Three groups with three different treatments produce an afternoon of work.
| Group | Who goes in it | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Those who askedwithin 48 hours | They asked for a price, a sample, a document, availability. There is an open promise. |
Operational reply with the promised item already attached. No catalogue, no presentation: what was needed, and the next step with a date. |
| Those who were interestedwithin the week | A real conversation, no precise request. They stopped, tasted, asked questions. |
Short message with the detail from the conversation, a single attachment chosen for them, and a concrete proposal: a call, a sample, a price list for their market. |
| Contacts in passingarchive | Cards exchanged out of courtesy, the curious, suppliers, colleagues. |
They are filed with the note, without an email. Treating them like the first two groups is what makes the work seem impossible and blocks it altogether. |
The implicit rule is that the first group must be served before the second exists. Whoever asked for something has already raised their hand, and a buyer who asked for a price and doesn't receive it within a few days has learned something about you that no later email erases.
The template: those who asked you for something
Subject: [product] - the [price list / sample / spec sheet] we discussed at [fair] Dear [name], it was good to meet you at [fair] on [day]. You asked about [specific request], so here it is, attached, rather than promised for later: - [document 1: what it is, in one line] - [document 2, if any] From our conversation I understood you sell [product type] in [market] through [channel]. The price list attached is the one for that market and quoted [EXW / FOB], so the figures should be directly comparable for you. One open point from our talk: [the doubt they raised]. [One or two lines answering it concretely.] Next step, if useful: I can send [samples / a sample box] to your office this week, or set up a 20 minute call on [day] or [day]. Which do you prefer? Kind regards, [name] - [role] [company] - [website] - [phone]
Two details carry almost all the weight. The attachment is already there, instead of being announced: a second message needed to deliver something doubles the chances of being ignored. And the reference to the doubt raised at the fair shows, without saying so, that someone was really listening.
The template: those who were simply interested
Subject: [product] for [their market] - following up from [fair] Dear [name], we met at [fair], at the [hall/stand] stand: you tried [product] and mentioned [detail they said about their market or their customers]. That detail is why I am writing rather than sending our usual catalogue. For [their market] the relevant item in our range is [product], because [one concrete reason: format, shelf life, certification, price point]. I attach only the English sheet for that one product. If it looks worth a look, I can send a sample so your team can taste it, at no cost. Just reply with the shipping address and I will arrange it this week. If the timing is wrong, tell me when to come back and I will. Kind regards, [name] - [role] [company] - [website] - [phone]
The last line is the same one that works with stalled reorders: making it easy to say no increases replies, because it spares the reader the embarrassment of having to disappoint someone. The same mechanism returns in the distributor who stops reordering.
A statistic circulates everywhere according to which 80% of trade fair contacts never receive a follow-up, attributed to a research institute of the exhibition sector. We looked for it at the source and didn't find it in any document from that institute: it is cited almost only by companies selling contact-collection software. That is why it doesn't appear on this page.
The Cibus numbers reported above come from the fair's official website and refer to the 2024 edition. They serve to give the scale of the memory problem, not to support a thesis on conversion rates.
The English templates are built as templates and don't reproduce correspondence from real clients.
When the contacts become fifty
With ten useful contacts all this is an afternoon well spent. The mechanism breaks further on, and it breaks at a precise point: the second week.
In the first you reply to those who asked, and it gets done. In the second you should pick up the lukewarm group, but production has restarted, orders from existing customers take precedence, and that group becomes a folder nobody reopens. A fair's most interesting contacts almost always die there, not at the stand.
That is the point where collection and reminders should be taken out of one person's memory and put in a place that holds the request, the context and the deadline together, with the constraint written in Ethics: the system prepares the draft and flags who is uncovered, but no message goes out to a buyer without a person having read and approved it.
Before devoting time to a contact it pays to know what it is worth, and that filter is collected in the signals that distinguish a serious buyer from a time-waster. If instead the enquiry arrives by email with no fair involved, the moment is different and is covered in how to reply to a foreign importer's email.
Questions and answers
How soon should trade fair contacts be followed up?
Within two or three working days of the close, and the reason isn't commercial haste but the reader's memory. A buyer meets dozens of producers in three days and comes back with a pile of almost indistinguishable material.
The message must arrive while the memory of the stand can still be recovered, and it must contain a detail from the conversation. Whoever writes after three weeks doesn't arrive late: they arrive to a person who has already decided whom to talk to.
What do I write in the follow-up email?
Three things: a concrete reference to the conversation, the promised item already attached, and a next step with a date.
The concrete reference (the product tasted, the doubt raised, the market they talked about) is what distinguishes the message from a mailing. And the promised item should be attached straight away: a second message needed to deliver it doubles the chances of being ignored.
How should I organise the contacts back home?
In three groups, never a single list. Those who asked for something specific get an operational reply within 48 hours. Those who showed interest without asking for anything get, within the week, a message with the detail from the conversation and a concrete proposal. Contacts in passing are filed with a note, without an email.
Treating the three groups the same way is why follow-up usually doesn't start: the single list looks insurmountable.
Why do trade fair contacts almost always get no follow-up?
Not through laziness. Because the context is lost during the fair, not after. At the stand the conversation has precise content, but what gets home is a business card, which keeps none of that content.
With a name and a company you can only write a generic message, and whoever writes it knows it won't work, so they put it off. The solution lies in the thirty seconds of notes taken at the stand.
Is there any point in doing a fair if the contacts then get no follow-up?
No, and it is the most uncomfortable part of the calculation. The cost is concentrated in three days, but the return is generated almost entirely in the following week, when everyone is back in production.
Attending without a written plan for the days after produces visibility and handed-out materials, not orders. Before booking next year's stand, it pays to decide who, in the week after, will have protected time to write.
Notes on sources
- Cibus, the fair's official website. The source of the 2024 edition numbers: over 75,000 visitors, 3,000 brands, 3,000 buyers. They serve to give the scale of the memory problem, not to support a thesis on conversions.
- This page doesn't report the widespread statistic according to which 80% of trade fair contacts never receive a follow-up. It is attributed to a research institute of the exhibition sector, but searching that institute's website it doesn't appear to have been published: it circulates almost only through companies selling contact-collection software. When the source doesn't hold up, the number isn't published.
- The two English templates are built as templates and don't reproduce correspondence from real clients.
A fair's best contacts don't die at the stand.
They die in the second week, in a folder nobody reopens. With Itria we start from the outside to build custom digital systems for exporters. For you that translates into more requests, fewer losses and less manual work. Write us a line about what weighs on you. We take the first step: what a buyer sees when they look you up, and what we found there. Even if we don't end up working together.