Ep. 489 Trade Shows Pt. 2 | How to Get U.S. Market-Ready with Steve Raye

Thanks for tuning in. I'm Steve Ray, author of How To Get US Market Ready. And in this podcast, I'm going to share with you some of the lessons I've learned from thirty years in the wine and spirits business, helping brands enter and grow in the US market. I've heard it said that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. My goal with the book and this podcast is to share my experience and the lessons learned from it with you so you can apply those lessons and be successful in America. So let's get into it. Hi. This is Steve Ray, and welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This week, we're gonna be talking about trade shows and how they've evolved and how COVID nineteen has impacted them. And then next week, we're gonna follow-up with the focus on making the most from your trade show investment. So thanks for attending, and let's get into it. Hi. This is Steve Ray, and welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This week is going to be the next segment in talking about trade shows. And today, we're gonna be talking about how to make the most from your trade show investment. Okay. Your company has invested thousands of dollars for a trade show booth and for your travel to get there. And this chapter is all about squeezing every penny of value from that investment. Most importantly, exhibitors need to have a precisely defined and measurable objective. This seems logical, of course. But in reality, it's observed more in the breach than in the execution. Many of the folks I work with would say that they are there to find a new importer or a distributor or something even more vague like sell more. And that's okay for a long term goal, but I try to push them to be more specific and focus in on a short term measurable objective. Something you can count. Did I do it or not? That has a higher likelihood of actually getting accomplished. And that is to get agreement to hold the next meeting from a qualified candidate. Last week, we talked about the difference between initiating a conversation and consummating an agreement. What we're talking about here is the the first part of that is qualifying someone to determine if they're a prospect or a suspect. Think of the empowerment that that affords the people manning the booth. They now have two very clearly defined tasks. First is to quantify and just to qualify the booth visitors. And second, turn suspects into prospects who say, yes. So the first question, I guess, is, how do I get more people to stop in my booth? And my response is work your booth, baby, and that means don't just stand behind the table. Get out in front of or at least just beside it. And proactively engage passersby with open ended questions. So don't ask, would you like to taste my product? That's a closed end question and can easily be answered with a no. Better to start the qualification process with the very beginning with a question such as what type of wines are you looking for? What type of Vodkas are you looking for? Or I recognize your company name. Remember, Flattery always helps, and really wanted to find out how you guys have been so successful with x y z. There's lots of downtime working of both. How do I keep from getting distracted by my smartphone and things like reading emails, messages, and social media? That's a great question and one that I I rarely get asked, but I give advice for. And and the answer is put your cell phone away. Don't just put it down. Put it out of sight. And the reason is painfully simple. If you're looking at your cell phone, you're not making eye contact with the passersby. And if you don't catch their eye, it's highly unlikely that they are going to stop. And isn't that the reason that your company invested all the money to be there in the first place? So if you must look at your cell phone, do it in the bathroom. Nobody should be looking at you there anyway. So look at the situation from the perspective of what show attendees see. A friendly face and inviting booth with a potential solution to their needs. Okay, Steve. What's the best way to sell without coming on too strong? And the answer is really simple. Prepare your story. And that's a compelling logical progression that differentiates your brand in a way that's both relevant and meaningful to them in terms of their business objectives. They wanna know how they're going to make money selling your brand and why your brand will make them more money than the brands they currently sell or the guy next to you in the next booth. And your story should be brief, concise, and most of all, personal, and unique. So you really wanna take the time to write this out, practice it. You know, it's a elevator speech. Two sentences, is as long as you wanna get. Another question I get asked is I get overwhelmed with business cards and often can't put a face to a name when I get back to my office. Got any tips? Well, first of all, the idea of business cards is evolving dramatically as well. They're disappearing, but they're not gone. And so one of the tools I've used for many years is write it down. So if they if they give you your or ask for their business card and when you begin the conversation, because remember, the goal of every conversation is to get to the next meeting so that you can qualify them. So if you ask for their business card, now you have a way to contact them and their implicit agreement for you to do so. And I like to ask for the business card upfront and then write down on the back of it, some clue as to who they are or what they what they're wearing, the guy in purple, or whatever it happens to be so that when you go back and look at those business cards, you can connect the name to a face. And another basic on which most people fail to score is take good notes. And here's a great closing suggestion. When the conversation starts to feel like it's coming to a close, ask for a next step commitment and write it down on their business card while voicing a confirming state So we're agreed. I'll follow-up with an email with my priceless and electronic brochure, and we have a phone call scheduled for Tuesday at four PM to move the discussion forward. Wanna stand out a little more aggressively? Here's an idea. Write it on two of your cards. One for you to remember, and keep, and one to give to them so that they'll remember on what you agreed on. I've seen it work. It's beautiful. That begs the next question. What do you do in a world where people aren't using business cards and everything's electronic? My sense is that the majority of people are still using business cards, and that's not an issue. But if it is, pick up your cell phone, and now you can send them a text message or an email or something like that so that you can accomplish the same thing that we just discussed with the handing them two cards. What are the typical questions that I'll be asked? And the answer is, starting with, this is really important. Be prepared for the questions that get asked so that you can turn the conversation into what you wanna tell them. The first one is usually going to be, do you have scores or awards for your products from recognized competitions in the United States. Recognized that international awards from Decantor, Gambaro Russo, Guipenyan, are good, but they don't have the same relevance in the US. So you should become familiar with all of the potential scoring evaluation ratings and so on and so forth. And you can find an updated list and links to how to enter and what the deadlines are. Again, on my blog, nevologyinc dot com. Click on blog, and it'll be the first one, or second one on the top. Many of the, ratings and reviews that matter in the US will accept, wines and spirits that are not currently imported. And on my list, I identify what they are. You know, a lot of people on the wine side think, well, the only ones that matter are wine spectator or Robert Parker. Well, I'd argue with that by saying that if you're a new brand to the US, they're not gonna evaluate you. So you really can't rely on that. You have to find other ways of doing it. And and recognize that the idea here is when somebody's asking you, do you have scores, if the answer is no, they're gonna walk by. That's why they're asking the question. Point number one. Point number two is not only will they not accept wines that are not currently imported to many consumers and millennials in particular, wine spectator and Robert Parker or the wine authority are invisible because millennials don't subscribe to magazines or pay subscription fees to access ratings. So as far as they're concerned, those two wine spectator and and, Parker, don't exist. Need convincing? Look at it this way. Look, wine spectator circulation is approximately four hundred thousand. Vivino has been downloaded twenty four million times, do the math. And it's a good idea to have a separate one sheet, I'd like to call it, ready to hand out with your current and most important past awards, citing brands, product, vintage score, and images of the relevant bottles and labels. Also have a stapler available, and you can staple your card to that sheet. And then they'll, for sure, know who they talk to and what they talked about. The second question you're probably gonna get is tell me about you or your company or your wine or your spirit. And our first and best advice is what not to do. Please don't answer with, I make really great, whatever. Wine, Scotch, Pisco, whatever it happens to be. That's because the quality of your product is not relevant in the initial stages of the conversation. What is relevant is your business proposition, the w I I f m story. This is your opening to give your elevator pitch, which consists of two, no more than three, concise sentences that differentiate your company and brand from everyone else in the show. I like to call that a point of difference that makes a difference that talks about the business. So in many cases, it's make more margin. Get more customers to come into your restaurant and things like that. That's what they're interested in. They're not interested in how wonderful your Bruno is. Next question, can you send me a sample? And there's really only unanswered one answer to that is yes. And this assumes you've already qualified them and moved them from suspect to prospect. Define a date by which they will get it and confirm the address to ship it to. And if you wanna communicate that you're really serious, have a system set up with your home office or headquarters, such that samples get shipped out with a personal note referencing the conversation the very next day. They'll be impressed with your follow through when they see it already waiting for them when they get back to their office. And one more tip on that, what, if you are talking about products that you didn't bring with you or don't or or have at the show that can't be shipped for whatever reason, it helps to have some stash, if you will, of sample products in the US that somebody in the US can ship to a prospective customer on your behalf. Could be your brother-in-law, could be your cousin, could be your son or daughter who's attending Stanford, and I I do that for many of my clients and just maintain a small inventory of their product so that we can respond really, really quickly. It's pretty impressive when somebody says, can I get a sample and they wake up in the morning and it's on their desk? Follow-up. Follow-up. Follow-up with everyone. You should get specific, actionable next steps with defined deadlines and deliver on every promise, whether it's an email, a price quote, a sample to be delivered, whatever. Remember that even if the discussion didn't go anywhere, they are by definition a valuable network connection that you should reinforce and expand just by virtue of the fact that they're at the show too. So if you haven't already, sign up for LinkedIn and follow-up from the fair by asking to connect with everyone you spoke to, and then do it on LinkedIn. And here's a great idea. I saw, one of my, one of my, I think, the best salesman business do it a trade show. It was brilliant. We were there with a group of, suppliers from a particular region, and, weren't getting a lot of ethic. It's an odd out of the way place in the booth floor. Maybe it wasn't the right people attending the show. Who knows? Whatever. There wasn't a lot of business, and most everybody was looking at their cell phones and reading their email and not making eye contact with people. When I went from booth to booth and asked how the show is, pretty much uniformly, everybody says, oh, this is a disaster. No one's coming by. No business. Nothing happened. When I get to one guy, I said he's a great salesman, Carlos. You'll know who he is. I asked how was the showys? It was amazing. He reached into his pockets and he pulled out handfuls of business card. He was at the same show with the same traffic in the same place as everybody else. The difference was he worked his booth. He knew clearly what he wanted to do is to make connections with a whole lot of people whom he can then qualify. And he walked away with that. And at the end of the day, what he got was a sale to a major chain in the Pacific Northwest. Who would have thought that would have happened for a show in New York? So bottom line here is, yeah, it's all technology, business cards, but There are still a great tool. And the key to this whole thing is don't stand behind the booth and look at your cell phone, put the phone away. Stand next to the booth and engage people in a conversation in a non I'm going to sell you something. Manner and be ready to answer the question when they ask, well, tell me about yourself. It is not. I make a really good so and so. So when they introduce themselves, they may be from a particular place in the world that you've been or work for a company that you've heard about or a particular product that you've had an experience with. Something there's always something when you're meeting someone for the first time that you can use to get the conversation going and get them talking. This is Steve Ray saying thanks again for listening on behalf of the Italian wine podcast. I've learned that when you harbor bitterness, happiness, will dock elsewhere.