Maharashtra’s one of the largest building & constructions show, the “CONSTRO” building & constructions Fair was held on 13-16 Feb 2014 in Pune, attracting manufacturers from around the world, showcasing the their latest products and services. No one wants to miss this golden opportunity like this to meet and get engaged directly face to face with the customers.
“CONSTRO” fair provides a one-stop sourcing platform for everyone. Here, exhibitors go all out and show their creativity with the style of booths in order to present their new technology and high-end products in the best possible way. Having a good track record in past 12 series, the 13th edition of the “CONSTRO”- Exhibition of building & constructions for this year was full of hopes for exhibitors and organizers. With a high projected investment in the infrastructure sector in India, the global players dealing in the infrastructure sector, especially the construction equipment industry have immense opportunities grow with the help of events like this.
The main advantage of events like this. is that we got the opportunity to meet the prospect buyers face to face and where buyers come to you directly and you have all the time to give him and inform about your company and what are your specialties and can know about themselves. During this show, we interacted with lots of clients and came to know about them more.
It has a long term benefits and thinking of getting business right after the event is not a good idea. The main focus of this event is to promote our brand, so our brand awareness increases. Once customer knows about the company and our business, we just have to put little efforts and business will come at less cost.
it would be very disappointed for us if a when a customer tells us that he doesn’t know about the south and its product quality and why should he buy our product.
Being a branch Manager from last many years, I know that a positive cash flow beats everything else. To have positive cash flow, you have to have a “positive customer flow”. Most businesses have competitors nipping at their heels. Back in time, when I first got engaged into CONSTRO, the primary means was to have business, to grow customer base was meeting prospects customers face-to-face. In retrospect, what we were doing was staggeringly inefficient. I used to travel around the state to meet with clients, feeling fortunate if I could squeeze in three or four calls a day. Today I can be in contact more customers than what can handle via Internet within a few hours. What is more, before contacting them by phone or Go to Meeting, I can gather a great deal of information from the tools we use to automate our workflow: Sales force, LinkedIn and Google.
A prospect that browses the Internet or a magazine’s ads generally does not invest a significant amount of time and money in his/her search. On the other hand, a trade show attendee does invest significant time and money to search for goods and services. People who comes to show are genuine and from good companies like L&T, Valecha, Rohan Builders, IVRCL and many more like this. If we directly go to them, there are high chances that they would not entertain us. From this expos, we get to meet and can meet them in their office once we have seen each others. Companies make significant investments of money in Internet-related services in order to identify and market to prospective customers. They also invest to exhibit in trade shows. Leads acquired via the web are typically followed up, especially where automated inbound marketing is utilized. We should participate more often in the exhibitions like this. We could get many leads and a good customers base.
When it comes to trade show leads, the story is rather different. According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, over 70 percent of trade shows leads are never followed up, not even one time. There are reasons for this dismal statistic, but none that cannot be overcome. Imagine investing tens of thousands of rupees to exhibit at a trade show, then not following up your leads. After all, each lead is in reality a person that invests several days of his time and hundreds, or more likely thousands, of rupees to attend an event, one major purpose of which is to meet prospective suppliers.
What kind of money is at stake? Here’s a personal example. I asked one of our competitor about exhibition business in “CONSTRO”, we met in food court on very first day of the trade show. All I wanted to know about his company’s success in the show. He responded that things are going good. Despite their very small stall, they have acquired over 100 leads. then surprisingly, I asked what kind of business resulted. Pink-faced, he admitted that he and his staff been so busy that they have no time to pursue their leads. Just following up using an automated system could have solved the problem. As a business person, I value every lead.
before I decided to participate in the event, these were my concerns
- How many of my prospects clients would attend this show?
- What type of promotions I would undertake to meet to meet target market?
- What are the costs and benefits from exhibition and how could I reduce the cost & materialized benefits?
As the exhibition is over now, I could say that we had a great success in the show and had got lots of business leads, which can be turned into deals. I would like to thank you for your trust on me and letting me to participate in this expo and after that, to all my associates who stood there and worked so hard and attended every person who came to our stall. My experience from this exhibition says that we have met our target. My main objective was to promote our brand name and then have business, which seems to be fulfilled.