What to do when the trade show is over: 7 ways to turn leads into wholesale orders

The fair stand is packed away and your team is back at the office. But the work that turns trade show conversations into wholesale growth is only just beginning.

Trade shows are one of the best opportunities to meet retailers face to face. Buyers can see your products, ask questions and get a feel for your brand in a way that is difficult to recreate online. But a successful trade show should not be measured only by what happened on the exhibition floor.

Some retailers will place an order immediately while others will want to look at the collection again later, discuss it with their team or wait until they have a clearer picture of their buying budget. Existing customers might discover something new but reorder weeks later.

That's why the days and weeks after a trade show matter just as much as the event itself. The goal now is simple: make it as easy as possible for every promising conversation to turn into an order.

1. Start with the contacts you collected

By the end of a trade show, your team might have spoken to dozens or even hundreds of retailers. You are unlikely to remember every conversation in detail, so what matters is making good use of the information you did collect.

Bring together new contacts, leads and orders from the event and identify which retailers need a follow up. This might include buyers who requested more information, retailers who signed up through your stand, existing customers or prospects who did not place an order during the fair.

Where your team did make notes about a conversation, use them. Where you did not, a simple and timely follow up can still keep your brand fresh in the retailer's mind.

2. Follow up while the fair is still fresh

A retailer probably spoke to plenty of brands during the same trade show, which means that your follow up should not arrive weeks later.

Reach out while the event is still fresh and give retailers a clear next step. That could be access to your B2B portal, your digital catalogue or a direct route back to the products and collections you presented at the fair. When sending your follow up, make sure interested retailers know where to find you when they are ready to buy.

3. Give retailers somewhere to continue buying

Your physical stand only exists for a few days, but your wholesale storefront does not have to.

A retailer who discovers your brand at a trade show may not be ready to buy there and then. Once they return to their store, they should still be able to explore your assortment and place an order when it suits them. A B2B ecommerce portal gives buyers a place to do exactly that.

With the Orderchamp B2B Portal for example, wholesale customers can access your assortment online and order using the products, prices and conditions available to them.

With a buying portal, the relationship does not depend on another email, phone call or sales visit every time they want to buy.

4. Make the next order easier than the first

The first order gets a lot of attention but repeat orders are where a new retailer starts becoming a long term customer.

Imagine a retailer placed their first order with you at the fair. A few weeks later, one of the products starts selling faster than expected. How easy is it for them to replenish it?

If reordering means searching for an old order form, emailing a sales representative and waiting for confirmation, it creates unnecessary work for both sides. Instead, retailers can return to your B2B portal and place another wholesale order themselves.

That gives your customers more flexibility while giving your sales team more time for conversations that actually need their attention.

5. Do not let incoming orders create unnecessary admin

Not every customer will order through your B2B portal. Some retailers will continue sending orders by email and others may send a PDF, CSV file or another order document from their own system. With multiple ways orders can come in, your sales team will inevitably have to set time aside to deal with admin - something which can quickly grow into a lot of work when not dealt with straight away.

The Orderchamp AI Order Convert can read incoming B2B orders and turn them into structured digital draft orders. Product references, quantities and customer information can be detected and matched automatically, after which your team reviews and confirms the order.

That means retailers do not have to change how they prefer to order, while your team can reduce the manual work happening behind the scenes.

6. Keep your sales team selling

There is also another question worth asking after every trade show: how easy was it for your sales representatives to actually create orders?

A physical stand can only show so much. With the Orderchamp Sales App, your sales team can take your digital product catalogue with them on an iPhone or iPad. They can search products, show buyers items that are not physically on the stand, scan products and add them directly to an order.

That makes the assortment available to your team much bigger than the space you rented at the fair. The same catalogue and ordering setup can also be used during showroom appointments and customer visits throughout the year.

7. Turn a few days at a trade show into longer term sales

A trade show is a moment but the relationships you create there can last much longer. The strongest wholesale setup connects what happens on the fair floor with what happens afterwards.

Your sales team can introduce the brand and build relationships in person while your B2B portal gives retailers somewhere to continue browsing and ordering. Your Sales App helps your representatives create orders wherever they sell and AI Order Convert can help process orders that still arrive through other channels.

Together, those tools help create a wholesale sales process that does not stop when the stand comes down.

Keep selling after the trade show with Orderchamp Cloud

Orderchamp Cloud helps brands, suppliers and wholesalers connect their wholesale sales channels and reduce the manual work around B2B ordering.

Give customers their own online ordering environment with the B2B Portal, take orders wherever your team sells with the Sales App, process incoming order files with AI Order Convert and connect your existing systems through Orderchamp's integrations ecosystem.

Frequently asked questions

What should a brand do after a trade show?

How quickly should you follow up with trade show leads?

How can a B2B portal help after a trade show?

Can sales representatives access the product catalogue through the Orderchamp Sales App?

What is Orderchamp AI Order Convert?