How to Prepare Your Export Sales CRM Before SIAL Paris

The stand is booked, the samples are packed and the brochures are printed. What is easy to overlook is the system that will hold the hundreds of conversations you are about to have. If it gets improvised on the stand, the improvisation shows two weeks later, when nobody can find the buyer who asked for a CIF price to Valencia.

SIAL Paris 2026 runs from Saturday 17 to Wednesday 21 October at Paris Nord Villepinte. The organiser expects 8,000 exhibitors and 295,000 professionals. Today is Sunday 11 October, so there are five working days left. This article sets out how to use them, whether your “CRM” is dedicated software or a shared spreadsheet.

A six-day plan to the opening

The order matters. Meeting invitations need to go out early in the week to be useful, and they are easier to send once your existing buyers are in one clean list.

Decide the fields you will fill on the stand

A busy stand allows perhaps a minute of writing per conversation. Choose a short required set and a longer optional set, and make the required set the same for everyone.

Required for every serious conversation

• Company and contact name
• Country (where they are based)
• Email and/or WhatsApp number with country code
• Business type: importer, distributor, retailer, manufacturer, HoReCa, trader
• Products of interest, using your product names
• Next step and promised date
• Priority: A, B or C
• Owner

Optional, when the conversation gives it

• Markets they supply
• Volume and timing (for example “1 x 20ft trial in Q1”)
• Incoterm and port mentioned
• Certificates asked about (for example organic, halal, BRCGS)
• Private label interest
• Language preference

If your team will write on paper, print this as a half-page form and staple the card to it. If they will type, set up the same fields in the same order on every phone or tablet.

A tag naming convention that survives the show

Tags break down when everyone invents their own. By Wednesday you have “SIAL”, “Sial 2026”, “SIAL Paris” and “paris show”, and no filter finds all of them. Agree the names now, write them on the role sheet, and do not add new ones during the show.

Rules that save trouble later:

• One spelling, one case. “Olive oil”, not “olive oil” and “Olive Oil”.
• Year on event tags. You will exhibit again, and “SIAL Paris” alone will mix two editions.
• No personal tags. “Met by Karim” belongs in the owner field; “very friendly” belongs in notes.
• Status tags come later. On the stand, record the next step in notes. Status tags are applied after the show, when the step actually happens.

For a fuller treatment of what belongs in tags versus fields in a buyer database, see how to build an international buyer CRM.

Import your existing buyers first

Your customers and past prospects will visit the stand too. If they are not in the list before the show, you will create duplicates during it, and a customer who has ordered from you for six years may receive a “nice to meet you” message afterwards.

On Monday:

• Export customers and prospects from wherever they live now: accounting software, email contacts, old spreadsheets, phones.
• Put them in one sheet with the same columns as the stand form.
• Put phone numbers in international format and lowercase every email.
• Remove duplicates by email and phone.
• Tag them “Customer”, “Former customer” or “Prospect”.
• Tag anyone you know plans to visit SIAL Paris 2026 with the show tag now, so they appear in the right lists later.

In Double Export: import the sheet as a CSV or Excel file. Duplicate emails and phone numbers are caught and an existing buyer is never overwritten, which also protects you when the same buyer is added again from the stand.

Book meetings before the show opens

A booked meeting is worth several walk-ins: the buyer has planned time for you, and you can prepare. Five days is short notice, but some buyers are still planning their days, and the worst outcome of asking is a polite no.

Who to invite

• Current customers, to discuss next season’s volumes and new products.
• Buyers you quoted in the past year who did not order.
• Recent inquiries that did not go anywhere.
• Prospects in your target markets whom you have corresponded with.

How to invite

Email works for everyone you have corresponded with. Offer two or three specific slots, give your hall and stand number, and say what you will show them. The last day closes at 17:00 with last admission at 14:00, so do not offer late Wednesday slots.

WhatsApp is often quicker for buyers you already message there. If you send through the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta’s opt-in guidance requires that the person has opted in to receive messages from your business over WhatsApp, with your business name made clear. Message only buyers who have agreed to that, and remember that a template message has to be approved by WhatsApp before you can send it, so submit it early in the week.

Record every booked meeting in the list with date, time and who will host it.

Get product information ready to share in seconds

On the stand, buyers ask for “your catalogue” constantly. A heavy printed brochure ends up in a hotel bin. A link or QR code that opens a clear, current page on their phone stays with them.

What the page should show for each product:

• Product name, grade or variety, and photos of the product and its packing
• Origin and HS code
• Selling unit, MOQ, packing type, units per carton and weights
• Price per unit or “price on request”, with the Incoterm and named port it applies to
• Certificates you hold, if relevant to the buyers you expect
• Your contact details, including WhatsApp

A few decisions to make before printing:

• Prices or “price on request”. Showing indicative prices filters out buyers who are far from your level. Hiding them gives you a reason for a conversation. A common middle path is prices for standard grades and “on request” for private label.
• One page or several. One page per product range is easier to scan than one page for your whole catalogue. If you exhibit two very different ranges, make two.
• QR code size and placement. Print it on table cards and on the back of your business card. Test it from two metres away on two different phones.
• A PDF copy. Have the same content as a PDF on each phone, for buyers who want a file.

Our guide to the export product catalogue covers what buyers look for in product information in more detail.

Draft the post-show messages now

On Thursday 22 October you will be tired, behind on orders and travelling. Write the messages this week so that after the show you only fill in names and details.

• First message for A leads, with a line to personalise.
• First message for B and C leads, shorter.
• Sample dispatch message, with space for courier and tracking number.
• Quotation cover message with a validity date.
• Two follow ups that each add something: a specification, a photo, a direct question.
• A last message that leaves the door open.

If you will use WhatsApp templates that need approval, submit them now, while you have time to fix a rejected one. The sequence and timing are covered in our 30-day trade show follow up guide, and what happens after the show in the SIAL Paris 2026 playbook.

Agree roles on the stand

In a two-person team, the same person greets and sells, and each records their own conversations. The recorder role then becomes a 15-minute routine at the end of each day: go through every note, fill the gaps, check priorities and owners while memories are fresh.

Also agree who can promise what. Can anyone on the stand promise free samples? A price? Exclusivity for a market? Write it down. Promises made on the stand under pressure are the ones that cause trouble in November.

Run a dry run on Friday

Before you travel, have each person enter three test leads using the real form and tags, then check the list together:

• Are all the required fields filled, in the same format?
• Did anyone invent a new tag?
• Does the QR code open the product page on every phone?
• Can you filter by “SIAL Paris 2026” and priority “A” and see the test leads?
• Does everyone know who owns which markets?

Delete the test leads afterwards. Fifteen minutes on Friday saves hours of cleaning the week after; what is left to clean is covered in what to do with your buyer contacts after SIAL Paris.

How to set this up in Double Export

You can do all of this in a spreadsheet. In Double Export it fits together like this:

• Buyer list. Import existing buyers into the export CRM, with company, contact person, country, email, mobile, WhatsApp and notes. Create your tags now; tags work as campaign audiences, so buyers tagged during and after the show are included automatically.
• Product Sheet. Build a Product Sheet from your export catalogue with photos, MOQ, packing, HS code, origin, certificates and either a price or “price on request”, plus one Incoterm and named port. Share it by link, QR code for the stand or PDF, and see how often it is viewed.
• Messages. Write WhatsApp templates in the app and submit them for approval this week, then set them up as a WhatsApp sequence for after the show. Email sequences send from your own Gmail or Google Workspace account.
• On the stand. There is no badge or business card scanning, so enter buyers from your stand notes; the trade show lead management page shows the full flow from capture to follow up.

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