EP52

This podcast episode discusses the importance of trade shows and maximizing the opportunities that come after attending them. The host emphasizes the value of in-person connections and recommends sending follow-up emails to buyers after the show. She advises sending at least four follow-up emails, spaced out over a few weeks, and suggests personalizing the emails by referencing conversations had at the trade show. Additionally, she suggests setting a reminder to reach out to buyers again before the next round of trade shows to stay on their radar. Welcome back to the Buyer Side Chat. I am so happy that you're here. Today we're going to talk about trade shows and the opportunity just around the post-trade show time period. So very specifically kind of on the other side of a trade show. We're obviously in trade show season right now. The New York shows are coming up. I'm actually going to New York in a couple of days for New York Now and Shop Object. So I'm recording this right before I go and I was just thinking that this would be a fun episode to talk about because you know a lot of brands that listen to this podcast I know we're showing or you've been showing you know in Atlanta or you're going to be at New York or you're in San Francisco later this spring or you're going to Magic. There's all kinds of shows happening during this season and so I want to talk about like right now how you can think about your communication with buyers to really maximize the opportunity. So on the buying side I am just super excited to be going. It gets me really inspired and I just like love the trade show experience because I can connect with the people behind the brands. I can connect with you and just having that in-person touch and you know filling up those senses is so awesome as a buyer which a lot of times I think in this day and age where everything can be done so easily through fare the trade show just still feels like it has a really special place at least for me because I grew up in the fashion industry going to trade shows on the buying side. So I really love them so much and honestly I feel super fortunate. I live in the Philly area so I can get on the Amtrak train and be in New York in two hours and it's low commitment. I can go back the same day. I can stay the night if I want to. It's not a big financial investment for me to go and I'm very fortunate with that. I know a lot of buyers that you know live in farther away states would kill to be able to go that easily so I'm very fortunate about that and so I want to just talk about how you can really take advantage of that time period. Now obviously the trade show season happens really it's twice a year and it you know kind of expands over a month or two truly that's like the real the real time windows at the beginning of the year and then late summer like July into August. Those are the two big time periods and so just naturally buying cycles happen in conjunction with that and so buyers are buying. Money is being spent whether buyers are going to the trade shows or not they are spending because obviously the trade shows are placed during those time periods for a reason. During this time of year this February time period January February that is when buyers are buying their spring lines and sourcing their summer collection whether they're buying it now or they're waiting depends on you know the different types of boutique owners how they like to buy all of that but they're really scouting their their collection. So the money is being spent once you get into the July August time period that is obviously the fall and the holiday shows and so those two times a year are super important so it's no surprise you know just to touch on fare it's no surprise that they aligned their winter and summer markets with those time periods because they know that that is when buyers are buying. So it's a really critical time for you as a brand to be you know prioritizing your sales efforts leading up to the trade shows and then post the trade shows. Now I also am going to talk about on the buyer side for those of you that are actual buyers with brick-and-mortar stores and you're buying product I'm going to talk about post trade show really how to maximize your budget and make sure that you're really making smart investments with the all the brands the amazing product that you just found. So this is like a three part episode okay so as a brand let's talk about if you are at the trade show how you can maximize your opportunity afterwards to make sure that you're really taking advantage of all the buyers that you were just in front of. It's a massive investment it's a huge time investment I mean you spend months leading up to it preparing your booth and your product and the expense of just being there and showing there and staying and the meals and the flights and the trains and the shipping and all the things it is a massive investment. So as tired as you are that week after the show or the two weeks after the show and you're trying to get orders out the door you're doing a lot of things you want to also be super dedicated on your outreach. This could mean you have someone helping you with this but it is something to definitely take advantage of. So you're gonna maybe not like the number of emails I'm about to tell you to send but here I am okay so I want you to send a shit ton of follow-up emails. I will say nine times out of ten brands send me one email after a show and then I never hear from them again and I get it you're super busy but on the flip side think about how many emails the buyers are getting how many brands they just saw when they're at the trade shows because more than likely they're going you know if they're going to New York they're going to shop object in New York now more than likely they're also shopping New York to see what brands are actually in the stores to see if maybe they you know could find something cool in a boutique in you know the West Village. If they're going to Atlanta, Atlanta is massive so they're just inundated with information with brands with cool products with you know figuring out their buys so they might find you and be like this is the most amazing brand I've ever seen this product is awesome the pricing is perfect the maker the brand owner is the coolest human I've ever met and then three days later they're they kind of forget but that's not a personal thing they're just humans so I want you to send at least four follow-up emails so definitely send one within the first week of the show wrapping you know obviously you have a lot going on but definitely try and get by by one week out get that follow-up email so you're in the inbox that first email needs to be a very clear follow-up email ideally you will have taken notes or you remember some tidbit of a conversation that you had with them that would be perfect world but obviously you're not going to probably remember everyone but I do encourage you during the show to try and take notes of some little thing that you talked about so that you can include that because let me tell you it makes it really hard to not respond to an email whenever it is personalized to you and when I say personalized I don't just mean hi Kristen it was so great to meet you at shop object Boku is so cute I'd love to be in your store here are the products here are the links you know to buy from me that email is in their inbox times 50 from all the brands that they met your email needs to be hey Kristen oh my god it was so fun getting to know you I can't even think of a good example right now I probably should have thought of this before I started saying it on here but like some in some fact about a conversation we had because more than likely a buyer that's interested in your product you're gonna strike up a conversation with them right so I can't think of a good example but you know something personal and I know that you liked these couple of products so I pulled together some of our bestsellers here are some pictures just to remind you here are the ways to buy you know done it's it's factual but it's also personal and even better if you can ask them a question in the email if that makes sense obviously so you could say something that ties into the conversation that you had but ends with a question so that it makes them kind of feel bad not responding to you because they know that you personalize it to them and you took the time so you can personalize the beginning of the email and then copy paste the same email for everybody else so that you're not writing a million emails but it is hyper personalized in that first two sentences so that the preview when they see it in their inbox makes it feel like a personalized email not a copy paste okay so get that first email out in the first week then I want you to follow up the next week and then you could wait maybe two weeks and send another follow-up and then wait two more weeks and send another follow-up so four emails within the first I've lost track of the time like five weeks or so six weeks something like that get four emails out with little space in between towards the end so you're kind of tapering it off so you're hitting them hard in the beginning and then spacing it out then put a reminder on your calendar put this in your wholesale email tracking sheet wherever you organize that outreach I want you to put a reminder in there to email them in approximately four months that will get that email out to them before the next trade show round so that you're touching with them and you're saying hey the new trade shows are coming up are you going to be there I'd love to see you again or hey I have a new collection out I'm not going to be at the trade show but I'd love to send this over and get this in front of you here are the things I think you'd like based on what you liked at the winter shows something hyper personalized and following up with them at that later touch point but before the next round of trade shows or when it makes sense for your new collection the reason that that is a critical email is because I say this all the time to my private coaching clients and if I'm ever speaking to a group I always try and reiterate this you could be the perfect fit for your perfect ideal dream shop that you want to be in the buyer could be literally obsessed with you but you have no idea because they haven't responded to your email they didn't place an order whatever the case may be but on their end they don't have the money for it yet their budget isn't open your product doesn't fit in their current collection they have something similar to it so they don't want to overbuy but they love you as the replacement item and you kind of rising up from the ashes five months later to be like hey remember me they're gonna be like yes I do remember that person they were amazing I'm going to buy from them now this is such a missed opportunity I cannot tell you the number of times that I find really cool brands that I'm really obsessed with and I just don't have the money for it at that time or it doesn't fit for my collection and I'm like okay I'm not gonna forget these people I'm not gonna forget this brand and then sometimes I forget sometimes I don't I actually just placed an order with a brand that I met at shop object I think it might have been the August show I'm pretty sure it was the August show and actually it might have been New York now I don't really remember but I met them at a show in August and she is so lovely she's a lovely human she sent me an email after the show and I didn't respond I try to respond but I don't always so I try to I try to be the good buyer but I just sometimes can't get to all of my emails and I'm not great at my inbox admittedly but she emailed me I didn't hear from her again which is fine I get it I I did though save her on fair so that she was in my favorites and I went back to that and I just placed an order for a custom project that I'm working on and so it happens right you will stay at the top of their mind if you just continue to be consistent with outreach and this goes truly for trade shows or not just general wholesale outreach be the squeaky wheel the more that you get yourself in front of them the better off you are now I'm gonna talk about like beyond emailing get in their DMS be friends with them on Instagram you don't need to do this for every buyer that you met but the ones that you're like their shop a hundred percent I need to be in this shop put that on the priority list and make sure that you are engaging with them on social media from like day one I get so excited whenever a brand connects with me on Instagram like the night of the show that I met them I'm like oh we are totally gonna be friends like that makes me really happy and this isn't an ego boost thing this is a building a connection thing this is a I remember that that brand was so cool and the founder was really cool and I want to be friends with them and I'm more likely to buy from the brands I am connected with because I'm like okay if I can put my dollars into the pockets of another female founder hell yeah I'm gonna do that especially if I like them so it's those connection points and this like I said this ties into all wholesale communication growth but this is just really specific to that trade show time period when you're timing those emails perfectly okay so that's my kind of post trade show if you're at the trade show outreach strategy okay if you are not at the trade shows that's okay too it doesn't mean that like you're not going to be able to grow your wholesale or reach the buyers that are there a tip for you to find some of the buyers that are there follow very closely the Instagram stories or the tags on Instagram of the shows so you could be on job at center like for New York now for example you could be on the job at center actual like location you could also just follow New York now you could see the hashtag New York now just kind of following along on social and you'll start to find the buyers that are walking those shows okay so you can take advantage of the buyers that are there that are really really primed to shop and you can start to say all right this is how I'm gonna do some research on new shops that you could pitch in the future you can certainly reach out to them right now it might be a little cold to just dive right in and be like hey I'm so-and-so and I sell bath bombs and you don't know who I am but here's my stuff like that might be not the right strategy you can try it but what I would recommend is use that as a research period and find buyers in those shows that could be good potential prospects for you in the future so you can put them on your list you can start connecting with them follow build up that relationship before you do the pitch so that's just like a little tidbit to see who's even walking those shows and for those of you that are boutique owners listening to this you can do the same thing if you can't go to the shows you can do the same thing by finding the brands that are showing at those trade shows by looking at their Instagram or you can even just go obviously into the website for New York now for shop object for Atlanta Mart for you know all those all those different and see what brands are showing to help you find new brands for your store without you actually being there there are platforms I mean obviously you've got like fair and bulletin you have those that you can shop on and shop object actually has a portal for you that you can go in so if you've never been to shop object before you can sign up and you have a portal there to shop the brands that are at the show so you can still have access to that and it's a really great opportunity to find new brands without actually investing in going to the trade show itself if you can't afford that or doesn't work for you time wise it's a big commitment so it's an opportunity to have access to that so for brands not going to the show so you can use that opportunity to find new shops to pitch right but also like I said the buyers are buying and also just like I said not all buyers can go to the trade shows even if they would love to go to the trade shows so I want you to think about how you can show your line without physically being there in person so with all the technology that we have access to can you get a little bit creative now this could be something that you just start to brainstorm for later mark not markets later trade shows this summer but think about can you do actual a physical mailer where you have a QR code and you're guiding buyers to check out your line and it could be something like hey we're not going to be at the show but we want to still meet you and have a connection point there you can kind of go old-school if you could do something fun like a an appointment where you could say hey we'd love to show you the line we'd love to get on zoom and share our line with you like book a 20-minute buying appointment and we'll do like a little show-and-tell kind of and get them on the phone with you old-school that used to be such a thing like back in the day I sound like super old right now but back in the day I mean brands were continuously and they probably still are I'm not still a buyer at urban but we had appointments with brands all the time and I was going to shows so brands were coming in and meeting with us at our office all the time so you can still kind of do that old-school approach to trying to get in front of people but through zoom I think that could be a fun thing to try and I would only do that for accounts that you feel like could be larger because that's obviously a time investment you know you could do that through email through Instagram it could be a fun marketing play I don't know just throwing this out there as an idea another thing is just thinking about how you can leverage video to put in your email so you could email your buyers and say hey I'm in a video for you and show your line there so you don't have to necessarily get them on the call but you're encouraging them to open the email and it's a fun twist on a pitch email so this could be for brand new accounts and it can also be for your existing customers so you could do a general video that is like I'm really talking about video a lot here I don't know why this idea came to me and I'm like let me just dive into this but you could do a general video for the people you don't know and then for the accounts that you already know like you could do personalized videos they have there's an app called Bungoro that you can create film like little short videos that are personalized to somebody so like what about something like that what I'm trying to get at is you don't have to be at the show to take advantage of the opportunity that happens during that trade show time period the brands that get really creative are the ones that are going to stand out and there's a lot of technology at our fingertips so think creatively about how you could get in front of different buyers during that time period whether it's through video that I like rambled on about for five minutes or just your email strategy so I'm not going to really focus too much on prior to the show like leading up to it but during the show time period I mean you can really connect with your brands that you already have a relationship with on Instagram really get in there and engage like the engage like crazy because they're going to be on social more because they're traveling if they're at the shows right or they're going to be on social more because they're watching what's going on at the shows so make sure you're using that time period to really connect and engage with them send out emails and also do a not a follow-up strategy but time your emails out so if your ideal buyer is going to shop object or your ideal buyer is going to magic or whatever show your ideal buyers are going to time your emails right after the shows or even actually during the shows you want to get in there when the iron is hot and when they are buying so that you can snag some of that opportunity so I hope that helps kind of with that conversation of if you're not there getting creative getting in front of them still showing up don't be afraid to like get in there and message them and be like hey I'm here too and I want you to buy for me because you don't have to be at the shows to take advantage of that time period now for buyers going to the show I kind of feel like I need to do a whole episode just on this on my tips for making the most profitable decisions at the trade shows and after the trade shows but really how to properly approach a trade show so I'm just going to give a couple of like quick top line tips for this and perhaps I will do a full separate episode because I feel like I could talk a lot about this so going into the trade show itself you want to make sure you've got your budget figured out and you are super crystal clear on how much money you have to spend and I want you to take it a step further and get really clear on the different buckets of your business that you need to fill so when I say buckets of your business I mean like best sellers that you have to replace or update how much money you want to spend on like fashion moments whether it's clothes or something that's just like a little special trend that you don't necessarily want to buy a lot of but you want to have there to be like rounding out your assortment so you want to get super clear on the different categories that you need to buy into so it could be also like actual specific I need to buy you know X amount of my percent of my budget needs to be allocated towards greeting cards X percent needs to be allocated towards candles X percent so on and so forth so once you kind of get clear on that then you have little mini budgets within your main budget to help you have that lens that you're filtering things through when you're making decisions on the spot whether you buy at the trade show or not it really helps you to make smart editing decisions kind of on the spot now sometimes you know buyers like to buy everything at the show and they're really good at being diligent and want to just bang it out other times buyers like to take it back and think about it and play with it that is me I'm the latter buyer because in my corporate life you couldn't buy on the spot and so I just was like it's ingrained in me to go and just soak it all in and then take it home and work through it other buyers are like nope I'm gonna buy everything here and I'm gonna go home and my collection is signed and sealed so whatever works for you lean into that if it makes you nervous to buy on the spot then don't buy obviously brands listen to this reply like cringing and not wanting me to say that but you have to make smart financial decisions and oftentimes when I'm working with private clients that have boutiques and brick-and-mortar or e-commerce boutiques the times that they make decisions on the spot it is sometimes a little bit rushed unless they have a full appointment and they're sitting down with the brand and really thinking through so do what is right for you but the biggest biggest biggest tip is to have a budget that is broken down into your biggest drivers and the categories that make sense for your business so that you can really have a clear view and you can be building your collection out from a profit perspective while you're shopping and while you're walking through because you might see a line that you're like oh my god I'm obsessed with that and then you think about that budget I just talked about and you're like well that price point doesn't work for my customer or I would need to buy to hit that minimum I would have to buy double what I actually can afford right now so I'm going to earmark that brand for fall or whatever future season that that would make sense and you can move on it'll help you to just say yes or no without having your emotions tied into it so that is that is really big you know another thing too is as you are going through and you're meeting all these different brands you want to get really intentional about who you're spending a lot of time talking to so I'm saying this from a good-hearted place because you might want to just have conversations with the brands because you get really into it but you have to remember that the brands that are there are having these conversations with you with the hopes and the intentions that you're going to be buying from them so if you spend a lot of time talking to them because you kind of like fall in love with them and the idea of their brand but you don't really have an intention of ever buying from them because it's not really the right fit for your brand like it's too high of a price point it's not the right product fit even though you love it but it's not right for your business you probably should stop the conversation because first of all they're freaking tired and their voices are shocked but also you just want to be really cognizant and respectful of their time and you don't want to leave anybody on so that's just like a tip from the other side that I just learned from years of working with these brands that I think it's it's good to just kind of think about whenever you're going into these shows so have your budget be intentional about the conversations that you're having and whenever you get home you can lay everything out and you can say all right here's what makes sense it'll be easier for you to build out your buys based on that so that's just a little little bit of a tip there for those of you that are on the buying side of this podcast so I hope that this is helpful I cannot wait to go to New York next week and when this comes out it'll be the week after and so if I saw you or met you in person that was awesome but I hope that you find this helpful please definitely reach out to me and send me a DM if this resonated with you or if you want to talk through your strategy for your own business whether you're going to the trade shows or not let's have a conversation and I can kind of help fine-tune what you're doing to help you have the best results from your connection and your outreach to buyers and if you are a buyer and you feel like you're a little bit stuck with your process with buying reach out to me too let's talk about that I love talking all things buying so the next two episodes I am really pumped about so next week you're gonna hear from my friend Jessica Richards she is a trend and style forecaster and we have such a fun freaking conversation I cannot wait for you guys to hear this but we talk about what's trending for 2024 and just from like a trend forecaster perspective just how trends can influence your marketing and your collection is a really fun conversation and in the week after that that episode I'm gonna share with you the trends that I spotted at the trade shows and when I was shopping New York so the next two weeks are all about what's trending and what's happening in the market that will be influencing consumer decision-making all right hope you enjoyed the chat and I will see you next Monday