HOW TO IDENTIFY AND SELECT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AT GULFOOD 2023

I have attended many trade fairs and seen a lot of money being left on the table.

Leaving money on the table is the same as not realizing business opportunities that arise right before your eyes. Then you walk away and the opportunity never comes again.

I wrote this article with the aim of helping you to maximize the identification of b2b business opportunities in international trade. We started this learning journey by understanding what GULFOOD is.

GULFOOD 2023

Gulfood is the main B2B food and beverage fair in the Middle East, covering beverages, dairy products, oils, free-from products, meat and chicken, grains and cereals, including niche foods and those classified as 'specialty'. The visitor profile is international, with 60% from the Middle East, 20% from Asia, 9% from Africa, 8% from Europe, 2% from the Americas and 1% from Australasia.

In 2023 the fair will take place from February 20 to 24 at the World Trade Center Dubai Dubai (United Arab Emirates)

ATTENTION:

If you are a novice trader or an executive of a large company, you cannot ignore the steps below.

1 - PREPARATION

2 - APPROACH

3 – SELECTION AND ACTIVATION

4 - PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Improvising on a large wind like GULFOOD is the way to complete wind without business results. Fairs are not for amateurs. If your company is not prepared to identify and conduct business, at the end of the event you will have a pile of business cards and catalogs and nothing else.

GUIDELINES:

We will divide the guidelines below by type of participant and we will consider the following profiles: Exhibitors and Visitors.

STEP 1 – PREPARATION

If you are an exhibitor, before deciding to participate in the fair, you need to define your company's objective, because if you arrive at the event with a stand without this definition, you will not be able to measure the result after the event.

Objectives can be:

? Generate Leads for a specific product line

? Identify national or international business partners

? Select buyers to participate in a business roundtable inside or outside the fair during the week of the event

? Identify new suppliers

If you are a visitor, you should follow the same path. Clearly define the profile of the companies that interest you, as the fair has a great ability to disperse your attention and if you are not focused on the companies that really matter, you will waste time, the soles of your shoes and not be able to perform during the event.

Having defined the objectives at the fair and the profile of the target audience, it is time to define the approach.

STEP 2 - APPROACH

THE APPROACH is one of the crucial moments of the commercial cycle. It represents the moment when the customer and the company have their first contact, and together they begin to build a relationship that can culminate in closing a deal.

The approach can be taken before, during and after the event. It depends on the objectives set and the strategy adopted. Let's take some examples below:

Exhibitor – Armed with the purpose of the stand and the profile of your target audience, access the Gulfood website, go to exhibitors and select the companies that interest you. Before the fair, arrange for an invitation to be sent to visit your stand and activate it by phone, reinforcing the invitation.

EXHIBITORS: https://www.gulfood.com/2023-exhibitor-list

Before the event, you can make an agenda and small 10-minute meetings with companies that already know you, but have never done business together. You can also ask commercial partners to invite other companies to visit your stand, etc.

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Make personalized printed invitations to deliver to your target audience during the fair, inform in the invitation that your company has a special agenda for meetings during the days of the event and that can be scheduled at the given phone number. In the invitation you can also inform that you have a special kit for the guest and that he can pick it up with the presentation of the invitation.

Get a Press Kit. This material is usually produced for the local press and is intended to generate spontaneous media, but it can be perfectly adapted to promote a particular line of products or services of your company.

The press-kit usually contains: Company presentation material, product samples, successful cases, attractive and useful gifts. Contact numbers, etc.

Obs.: Avoid a lot of printed material, use electronic and modern means of communication.

Visitor – Make a visit schedule, you don't want to visit all the stands and address your target audience in a single day. Focus on going to the stands and events where your audience is.

Go to the stand, introduce yourself, look for the decision maker profile and say you want to hold a 2-minute meeting. Yes 2 minute. This is the time you will have to arouse the INTEREST of the company addressed in you. If you succeed, at the end of this time you can directly ask your contact if he wants to add more minutes to this conversation and see details of your offer.

Hardly anyone will refuse a 2-minute meeting, but in this time you need to be ready to say how you can save the client time and money, or how you can contribute to his company becoming more productive and competitive in the market. The point here is to demonstrate in a few words what benefits you can bring to his company.

Avoid using business cards as if they were flyers. Nor did it hand out catalogs and giveaways at random. Focus on your target audience and optimize the resources available for prospecting at the event.

There are endless ways to approach your target audience pre-event, during the event and post-event. It is up to you to identify what is the best time for your company and what is the most efficient way.

I prefer to schedule as many meetings as possible during the event days. Meetings can be scheduled inside the fair, in hotels, restaurants, cafes, tourist spots in the city, etc.

I also really like the continuity of contact after the event, but only with selected companies, as we will see below.

STEP 3 – SELECTION AND ACTIVATION

This step is crucial for your performance at the fair. Lead selection involves quickly qualifying contacts made during the event. Without this, you will reach the end of the fair with a huge volume of business cards and catalogs and will not be able to draw up a post-event strategy.

I'll give you some quick QUALIFICATION examples you can do on business cards.

Exhibitor – you can have 4 boxes on the stand where cards can be deposited based on the following criteria:

1 – LEAD – potential customer for our products and services

2 – COMPETITOR – offers products and services similar to ours

3 - SUPPLIER

4 – COMMERCIAL PARTNER [ include opinion makers and digital influencers here]

There are other forms of qualification that can be done by including symbols on the cards, for example:

Triangle – Decider, schedule a post-fair meeting

Square – Send contact to the purchasing sector

Circle – Send commercial proposal

X - Discard

At the end of the day, you should separate the cards by purpose.

Guest – Set your selection criteria and flag them cards. As examples above.

In the first conversation, you will be able to identify, even if superficially, qualified leads and contacts that are unlikely to advance in the purchase funnel. However, always treat everyone well and be considerate.

ACTIVATION refers to attempts to take the qualified contact to the next level, such as: a guided tour of your company, a meeting to sample products and services at the hotel located next to the fair, a breakfast before the start of the fair for special guests only... Activation can be done on the same day or the next day, as you need to take advantage of the fact that your public is in the city and open to business opportunities.

The fair is the environment to make new contacts, present the products and start a dialogue, but in most cases it is in the post-event that sales are made. It is with persistence, with method, with regular contacts that the relationship evolves into a successful deal.

Here are some ways to capitalize and keep your company in the spotlight post-show.

1 – Send a thank you email to all visitors to the stand

2 – Publish highlights content on the company’s website and social media

3 – Offer a bonus to companies that close deals within 30 days of the end of the event

STEP 4 - PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

This assessment can be carried out at various stages of the post-event.

After the event and the demobilization of team material, the performance becomes tangible with numbers such as: number of visitors in stands, approaches carried out, number of leads [new companies with a consumption profile], participation of guests in events, meetings held, etc.

It is important to point out that few deals are concluded within the fair, they are initiated and need the post-event to be in fact transformed into a result.

Qualified Contacts - In approximately 7 days after the fair, your company needs to make contact, thank you for the attention received during the event. Reaffirm your interest, be it buying, selling or establishing business partnerships, and finally, direct this contact to the next stage of the business cycle, which can be scheduling an online meeting, sending a proposal, etc.

Follow up – Contacts with qualified companies must be checked and followed up for at least 30 days, as this period is crucial for closing deals.

Countless surveys show that over 67% of deals are closed within 12 months of the conclusion of the fair — making it clear that this marketing strategy works not only in the short term, but also brings medium and long-term results to the business.

Performance evaluation - Over 60 days after the event, your company needs to be able to issue a report that includes the performance in numbers obtained during the event and the performance of business carried out during the post-event, in this way it will be possible to assess whether is it advantageous to participate in the fair in the coming years and what strategies need to be reviewed to enhance business development.

We hope that the tips presented are useful for your company.

We wish your company to be successful and do many business in Gulfood 2023

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