Achieve Good Results from Sourcing Exhibitions (2)

A continuation part on 'Achieve Good Results from Sourcing Exhibitions'

• Exhibitor analysis

Based on market research, you may already be able to get a list of remarkable suppliers. Then you cross-reference with the exhibitor list to see which remarkable suppliers will attend the show and which will not. It is likely that there will be some exhibitors which are not covered in your market research. You need to do some web research on each of them to see if they are remarkable as well. For all the exhibitors you are interested in, you may conduct some research and get some basic understanding on what product they supply, where and how many they export, what position they occupy in the industry and whether they can supply you.

By browsing the exhibitors' websites and from conducting the research, you may find more information and get a better understanding of how you can cooperate with these suppliers. You may need to prepare a list of questions for each supplier regarding their company situation and their products, especially the questions not answered by their websites and any confusion you need to have clarified.

• Appointment making

Once you have drawn up a list of the exhibitors you are interested in from exhibitor analysis, you should start to contact the exhibitors as soon as possible and make appointments with them. You may find from your previous experience that the senior people, or the managers, or the decision makers, or the company staff who can speak English will not always stay in their booth. Some of them leave for home early to save costs or to visit clients in the city or even travel around and relax. So do not expect that you can discuss whatever you want to know with the proper persons at any time. Ideally, therefore, you need to find out the proper contact person, their mobile number, and the proper time and place to meet before you leave for China.

Follow up well afterwards

According to our experience, most of the exhibitors and visitors will not actively follow up after the exhibition, maybe because they are busy with catching up with other work postponed due to the trip. Even though you prepare very well before the exhibition and have a wonderful discussion with the right suppliers, the trip will be wasted if you do not follow up adequately. Although the Chinese are learning to be more professional and international in their approach, you can expect to receive 2-3 follow-up letters from the 10 companies you have spoken to. (Perhaps 10 years ago you could have expected all 10 companies to be waiting for you to call them first). In order to establish a healthy relationship with a promising Chinese supplier, you must be prepared to become the side who will take the first step and who can educate them and push them to be more professional. Here we will talk about some details to pay attention to when you follow up with the exhibitors:

• Follow up letter

A thank-you letter or a follow-up letter should be sent soonest after you have met with the supplier. The letter must include your full contact details in case the suppliers lose your business card. The letter could be either a simple thank-you letter or a letter reminding of the next steps, which is especially needed when you think you have reached a certain agreement with the supplier on what to do next. This is because the exhibitors normally cannot organize the information well and will forget what they promise to do afterwards and for whom they should do it. So to send a follow-up letter is a necessary step to double check whether the supplier remembers who you are and whether they really understand your needs for the next step.

• Information review and integration

In the meantime you should review the meeting minutes, brochures and previous research when your memory is still fresh. When you review all the information, you will want to keep the following two aspects in mind:

1. To check if the information you get from the exhibition is somehow inconsistent with the information you collected before. If so, which is the correct information and what is the reason for the inconsistence? Are there still some questions or confusion to be answered or clarified?
2. To review if the information you get from different exhibitors is consistent. They may have different ideas on what is China's most advanced technology or who is China's largest supplier or who is a trading company instead of a real plant. By reviewing all these stories, you may be able to judge who is lying and be cautious with the liar in the future.

If you have any questions, you should ask the suppliers as soon as possible when the contact people still remember you, otherwise you may not be able to get answers for some questions. If you have done adequate preparation and follow-up after the exhibition, you will have taken the first step of setting up a successful relationship with the suppliers. Then as long as you maintain this relationship properly, Chinese suppliers will always be willing to reply to you promptly and offer you good price.