Some excellent points there, Paul, about visitors who come to sell. Clearly for many, IFE represents a great opportunity to talk to a lot of their “targets.” Sometimes, these are genuinely interesting opportunities. However, those too lazy to do their homework on companies’ needs before approaching them and taking up space (so preventing valuable visitors to the stand) are doing themselves no justice.
It is easy enough to do your research on exhibitors before the show and plan your day accordingly. We had a good number of visitors who had a list of “targets” with whom they corresponded in advance and who made appointments with us before hand. Such organisation is professional, gives you a good impression of their interest and is a good reflection of how well they do business themselves.

With reference to handouts, giving away a lot of your produce can be very expensive, so we have decided to produce small trial pots which also look good. Selling something as unusual as fruit vinegars and herb jellies does mean that we need to encourage people to try (invariably with enthusiastic results)so we have sample dishes for dipping bread into. This works great for us since we can continue conversations and make contacts without having to prepare lots of food. Mind you, we were glad of the odd sausage hand out, too!

On the work part, IFE requires a lot of planning beforehand and hard work for the four days. But, as you so rightly say, Paul, this counts for nothing unless you follow up your leads and plan well how to manage all the enquiries and opportunities which IFE presents.For small businesses like ours at Womersley, this requires good delegation and prioritising. We will contact everyone, but I am happy to say that we have quite a lot, so it will take a few days! This is the important part, though, when we have the chance to devote some proper time to the enquiries made at the show and make progress with them.

So, I’d better stop now and get back to the phone!

Rupert

Good advice for someone entering this industry.

It was our first time exhibiting at IFE and we were impressed by the quality of the visitors and enquiries, give or take the odd plumber who cooly asked if he could take a display sample. Hmm.

More importantly though we found it was a real chance to get out and chat to other producers from all sectors, including our own. It was invaluable to thrash over production strategies and growth management issues, share contacts and make new introductions.

It was also a rather humbling experience to over-hear the in-coming phone order for 100,000 litres of hand-mande (in every sense) ice-cream (sadly not ours!). But more importantly just seeing how hard everyone works getting their products out there makes you realise you are not alone…

The UK should be rightly proud of how vibrant the sector remains, despite these rather tricky days and I for one am proud to play just the smallest of parts in it. So here’s to brighter days ahead and plentiful orders.

Alison

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