How a Trade Show App Can Make Selling Simpler

How Apps Can Enhance The Trade Show Selling Experience

Trade shows are high-pressure selling environments where brands must juggle product presentations, buyer interactions, and order processing all at once. Tradeshow apps can help streamline the entire experience by digitizing the process, making it easier to manage inventory, capture orders, and maximize every opportunity, whether you're on the booth or on the move.

‍

When buyers visit your stand at a trade show there’s a window of opportunity to close a sale, but it can be a challenge to sell your brand and get the buyer to fill out the relevant paperwork while also fielding multiple questions about the collection, showing swatches, discussing color alternatives and taking on board valuable feedback. This is where trade show apps come in to help make wholesale selling simpler.

‍

How apps can support your business and enhance your trade shows:

• Extend access to your entire collection: Showcase as many styles as you like without shipping them to the trade show as buyers can browse every product in high resolution on a tablet, making your booth more dynamic and less limited by logistics.

• Eliminate waste: No more pen and paper order forms. By digitizing your order-taking process, you reduce printing costs and admin workload, while also minimizing errors from manual data entry.

• Seamlessly take orders: Input orders in just a few taps whilst also taking deposits for faster order confirmation and a smoother experience for both buyers and reps.

• Easily edit orders: Allow your entire team to log in later to review, update, and approve purchases. You can adjust quantities, swap styles, and send revised confirmations with ease.

• Sell from anywhere: Many apps work offline, alleviating the need for Wi-Fi and allowing you to take and save orders whether on the shop floor, grabbing coffee with a buyer, or away from your booth.

‍

How Do Apps Help Brands Sell at Trade Shows?

Showcasing your collection in a digital format on an app allows you to place and edit orders from an iPad or tablet.  You can use apps to:

‍

Digitize Your Wholesale Process 

Traditionally, brands took orders at trade shows using paper forms, creating large amounts of admin and high potential for human error. But why write orders when you can tap them? Trade show apps allow you to save time and money by replacing paper linesheets and faxed purchase orders with modern technology. The entire wholesale process can now be digitized, including placing orders, so now all you need is a tablet to make a sale.

‍

Choose an app with scanning capabilities, so you can instantly scan Universal Product Codes using your iPad camera or a scanner to pull up the right information for a buyer. This saves time searching through heavy folders or detailed spreadsheets. Working from a tablet also gives you the ability to capture notes of buyer preferences, so you can quickly customize a linesheet to best suit their needs.

‍

Unlimited Showcase Potential  

Digitizing the trade show selling process means there are now no limits on the number of pieces you showcase. There are no worries about how much product you can physically bring to a show because our app allows you to access your entire collection across multiple product lines. You can display all your linesheets and styles with full color pictures and buyers can find what they're looking for by filtering through sizes, colors and styles.

‍

Simplify The Order Process  

Trade show apps often offer an intuitive, e-commerce-like shopping cart experience so you can make a sale in just a few taps. You can hand your tablet or iPad to a buyer so they can swipe through and browse styles for themselves, and in just a few taps, they can add their chosen styles to an order. In the case of using JOOR, combining JOOR Pay functionality means you can also checkout in your currency of choice in a few simple steps.

‍

Instantly Make Changes To Orders

Typically, after a trade show, brands would return to the office to begin a long admin process of placing the orders with suppliers and logging sales on a spreadsheet, but with a trade show app orders are instantly captured, and so Reps and retailers can log in to modify and approve purchase orders. Using an app also makes it simple to send order details to clients via email - if they provide feedback or edits, instant changes can be made. 

‍

Sell No Matter Location

Selling at a trade show used to require you to be present in person at your booth to physically make the sale and process it through your POS system, but apps give you the freedom to sell from anywhere. They often do not require internet connectivity to take orders, so if the WiFi at the event goes down, you step outside for a coffee with a potential buyer, or you receive a message from them before you board a flight home, you can still instantly put through their order and make the sale. 

‍

Can’t make it to the event in person? Create a master collection online and sync to multiple iPads in one step so you can send your entire team to the trade show all armed with the same system, ready to sell. Each team member can capture and sync orders simultaneously, maximizing your revenue potential.

‍

Some app even allows you to track sales performance through real-time order reports during the show, so even if you aren’t on location with your team, you can instantly see how they are doing, offer advice and feedback on this live data to help them adjust their selling strategy, align with them on lines or products that need to be pushed, and ensure you are successfully selling through collections.

‍

In Conclusion

Despite growing travel costs, trade shows still provide an effective opportunity to secure retail orders. JOOR’s recent Spring Market Survey revealed that 86% of buyers will be attending market appointments this season, so in-person events remain a great way to drive business growth for fashion brands.

‍

Securing sales isn’t always easy, but with an app, you can simplify the selling process and give your business the best chance at maximizing revenue.

‍

For the best chance at trade show success, request a demo of the JOOR Orders App today. Prefer to meet in person? Schedule a time to connect with the JOOR team at your next trade show.