After the fair
The first week after the fair
Uğur Yılmaz · Brand & Visual Communications Manager · 3 min read · Last updated:
Short answer
What should happen in the first week after a fair?
The first two working days go to the urgent records, and that group is telephoned rather than emailed. Days three and four bring personalised emails to the middle group, with the promised document, sample or price attached. On day five the team holds an hour-long review and writes the observations down. Notes about the stand, the logistics and the organiser are recorded in the same week, because they become the brief for the next show. By Friday you should hold a follow-up list and a one-page first assessment.
The first forty-eight hours
The team comes back tired and finds a week of work waiting. So follow-up is planned as part of the fair calendar rather than a task for afterwards: the day you return is a follow-up day, and nothing else goes in the diary.
The first two days belong to the urgent records only. That group is telephoned, because a call is faster than an email and reaches them while they still remember you. The call has one purpose: to get a date for the next step.
Everything promised at the show goes out in the same two days. Samples, technical documents, price lists, reference images. A document promised and not sent cancels out all the work done on the stand. As a team we prepare that list before the fair even ends.
Keeping the return day clear is a plan, not a privilege. A diary that books meetings into the week after the show has already handed that week’s work on to the next one.
Who writes to whom
The follow-up is sent by the person who had the conversation. A bulk email from a general marketing address erases the personal contact made on the stand. Keep it short, and let the first sentence refer to the conversation: which product, which question.
The second sentence carries what was promised, the third proposes a concrete next step. Propose a date, because "whenever suits you" goes unanswered. Limit attachments to one or two.
Who writes to whom is settled during the show. Two messages reaching the same person from two colleagues shows the recording routine is not working and leaves a poor impression. The owner field on the form exists for exactly this.
Write in the language the conversation happened in. If the stand spoke English, the follow-up goes out in English, because a message that reads like a translation loses the warmth of that first contact.
The meeting at the end of the week
On day five, hold an hour-long review. Three headings: numbers, observations, fixes. The numbers are the record count and the spread of qualification. The observations are which product drew interest and which question kept recurring. The fixes are notes on the stand, the staffing plan and the logistics.
Hold it immediately after the show, because the detail fades within a fortnight. Write the notes into one file the same day, and the brief for the next fair grows out of that file.
Pass the stand notes to the builder as well: which area was too tight, which store was too small, which detail fought back on site. Without that feedback, the second stand is a copy of the first. With us, those notes feed straight into the design stage.
What comes out of the meeting is not a document but a list of three. Long minutes bind nobody, whereas three items with an owner and a date actually get done before the next show.
After how many days is follow-up late?
Two working days is the limit for urgent records. Past a week, the other side struggles to separate you from the other conversations they had.
Does tear-down not delay the follow-up?
It should not. Tear-down belongs to the site crew, follow-up to the sales team. When both fall to the same people, it is always the follow-up that slips.