SIAL Paris 2026: How to Turn Trade Show Leads into Export Orders

A food trade show is easy to judge by how busy the stand felt. A better measure is simpler and slower: how many purchase orders can you trace back to conversations you had there, three, six and twelve months later? Everything in this playbook is aimed at that number.

The gap between a good conversation in Villepinte and a confirmed order is long. It runs through a thank-you message, product information, often samples, a quotation with the right Incoterm and port, some negotiation, a proforma invoice and a payment. Leads are usually lost at one of those handovers, not on the stand. So the work is mostly about making each handover quick and unambiguous.

This article is the overview. Where a step needs more detail, it links to a dedicated guide.

What SIAL Paris 2026 looks like from the stand

The organiser’s published facts that matter for planning:

Two practical points follow. First, the show opens on a Saturday (the organiser says this is to avoid transport peak hours), so plan your team’s travel and the first day’s staffing accordingly. Second, the last day is short and admission closes at 14:00. Treat Wednesday afternoon as admin time: it is the best moment to sort the week’s contacts while you still remember every face.

Five days at that scale means a lot of conversations. Without a system, the people you most wanted to meet end up in the same pile as everyone who took a brochure.

Decide what an order from SIAL looks like before you go

Write one paragraph, for yourself, describing the order you would most like this show to produce. For a hypothetical pistachio exporter it might read: “A first container of in-shell pistachios, 21/25 size, 10 kg cartons, CIF to a port in northern Europe, for an importer or wholesaler who supplies retail packers, with a repeat order before the next crop.”

That paragraph tells you:

• Which visitors to spend time with. Importers, distributors and manufacturers who buy your category in volume, not every visitor who stops at the stand.
• What to ask. Market, volume, packing, certification needs and timing.
• What to have ready. A price basis for the Incoterms you are likely to be asked about, a sample policy and a product sheet that answers the first round of questions.
• What a qualified lead is. Anyone who fits most of the paragraph and wants a next step.

If you have several product lines or markets, write one version for each. Keep them short enough that everyone on the stand can repeat them.

The week before: four things to finish

Today is 11 October, six days before the doors open. If you only do four things this week, make them these. The full setup, including field lists and tag names, is in our guide to preparing your export sales CRM before SIAL Paris.

1. One place for leads. A spreadsheet or a CRM with fixed columns: company, contact, role, country, email, WhatsApp, products of interest, volume, next step, owner, priority. Decide now; switching systems mid-show creates duplicates.
2. Product information that can be shared in seconds. A link or QR code to a page with your range, specifications, packing, MOQ and “price on request” or indicative prices. Print the QR code for the stand.
3. Messages drafted in advance. A first message after the show, a message for samples, a message with the quotation, and two or three follow ups. You will personalise them, but drafting from scratch on 22 October will not happen.
4. Roles on the stand. Who greets, who qualifies, who records, and who owns follow up for which markets.

In Double Export: create a tag such as “SIAL Paris 2026” now, import your existing buyers from a CSV or Excel file, and build a Product Sheet with a QR code you can print for the stand. Duplicate emails and phone numbers are caught on import, so buyers you already know are not overwritten.

On the stand: turn each conversation into a recorded next step

A business card records who someone is. It does not record what they wanted or what you promised. One habit makes more difference than any other: writing a short note for every serious conversation, within minutes, before the next visitor arrives.

A note that will still be useful in three weeks covers the buyer’s business, the product and specification they asked about, rough volume and timing, what you promised and how they prefer to be contacted:

Three questions do most of the qualifying in a two-minute conversation:

• “Which markets do you supply, and through which channel?” separates importers and distributors from consultants and other exhibitors.
• “What are you buying today, and from where?” tells you their volume, current origin and what you are competing against.
• “What would you need from us to place a trial order?” gives you the next step in the buyer’s own words.

End every serious conversation by agreeing the next step out loud: “I’ll send the specification and a CIF price to Antwerp on Thursday; is WhatsApp fine for that?” A clear answer to that last question also gives you the permission you need to message them on WhatsApp later.

The first 72 hours after the show closes

The show closes on Wednesday 21 October. The first working days after it, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October, decide which suppliers buyers remember.

In that window:

• Consolidate. Get every card, photo and note from every team member into your one list. Our article on what to do with your buyer contacts after SIAL Paris covers cleaning, deduplicating and sorting out the suppliers, press and competitors who end up in the pile.
• Prioritise. A for buyers who asked for a price, samples or a meeting and fit your target; B for real buyers without an immediate need; C for everyone else.
• Send the first message to A and B leads. Short, specific, referring to something from the conversation, with your product sheet link.
• Deliver promises first. If you promised a price on Thursday, that matters more than any thank-you note.

The day-by-day tasks are in the complete SIAL Paris exhibitor follow up checklist, and the general 30-day plan in our trade show follow up guide.

From product information to a quotation

Plan for stand conversations that end with “send me your prices”. A price list on its own leaves the buyer to do the work of turning it into a landed cost. A quotation that answers the buyer’s actual question does that work for them.

A useful export quotation contains:

Send the quotation as a PDF the buyer can forward internally, and in the message body summarise it in two lines. The validity date gives you an honest reason to follow up: “The price I sent on 23 October is valid until 6 November; would you like me to hold it for a trial container?”

For products with volatile prices, quote a shorter validity and say why. Buyers in dried fruit, nuts and spices are used to crop-dependent pricing; they are less used to suppliers who change prices without warning.

Samples: where SIAL leads can stall

Samples are where enthusiasm meets cost. Decide your policy before the show, so that nobody on the stand improvises:

• Who gets samples. For example, A-priority leads that match your target paragraph.
• Who pays courier costs. Free for qualified importers, or the buyer provides a courier account number, or the cost is credited against the first order.
• What goes in the parcel. The product in its commercial packing where possible, a printed specification, the lot number and a contact card.
• What happens next. A message on dispatch with the tracking number, a message when it should have arrived, and a specific question a week later: “Did the colour and moisture match what you need?”

Check the import rules of the destination before sending food samples; some products need documents even in small quantities. Keep a record of the date sent, tracking number and what was sent against each buyer, so the person following up does not have to ask.

From quotation to purchase order

Once the buyer has the sample and the quotation, the remaining steps are usually commercial and documentary:

1. Negotiation. Price, payment terms, packing, label language and delivery window. Change one variable at a time and confirm each change in writing.
2. Purchase order. Ask for the buyer’s PO number or reference and make sure it matches your quotation: product, quantity, Incoterm, port, price, payment terms.
3. Proforma invoice or order confirmation. A buyer may need a proforma to arrange payment, open a letter of credit or apply for an import permit.
4. Payment. TT advance, LC or cash against documents (CAD). With an LC, check the draft carefully against what you can actually deliver before it is issued.
5. Shipping documents. Commercial invoice and packing list numbered consistently, plus whatever certificates the buyer and destination require.

A first order that runs smoothly is what turns a SIAL contact into a buyer who reorders. Errors in documents are remembered longer than a good price.

For a stage-by-stage view of this path with exit criteria for each stage, see the export sales pipeline from first contact to purchase order.

Track the path from contact to order

You do not need software to see whether SIAL worked. A spreadsheet with one row per buyer and these columns is enough:

Review it once a week for the first month, then monthly. Food buying cycles are long, so a buyer quoted in November may order in March. Keep the source column intact so that when that order arrives, it is counted for SIAL. Divide the full cost of the show by the orders traced in that column and you have a cost per order you can compare with other shows.

The “Reason lost” column is the most valuable one over time. If most lost deals say “certification”, you know what to fix before the next show.

How to do this in Double Export

Double Export is built for exactly this path: from a buyer met at a show to a quotation, a confirmed order and the shipping documents. You can do everything above in a spreadsheet; the difference is that here the steps are connected.

• Leads and tags. Add each SIAL buyer in the export CRM with company, contact, country, email and WhatsApp, and tag them “SIAL Paris 2026” plus a priority and status such as “Samples sent” or “Price requested”. Double Export has no pipeline board or lead scoring; tags and order stages show where each buyer is. More on this approach on the trade show lead management page.
• Product information. Share a Product Sheet by link, QR code or PDF, with your Incoterm and named port, MOQ, packing and certificates. You can see how many times the sheet was viewed and when it was last opened; that tells you about one buyer only when you made the sheet for that buyer and linked it to their record.
• Follow up. Run a WhatsApp sequence for the tag, which stops automatically for anyone who replies on WhatsApp, or an email sequence from your own Gmail or Google Workspace account. Email sequences do not stop on reply, so stop them for that buyer from the campaign results. The WhatsApp and email follow up page shows both side by side.
• Quotation to order. Build an export order from the buyer record and your catalogue. Double Export generates the PDF, which reads Quotation at the Quoted stage and Order confirmation once Confirmed, and you send it to the buyer yourself. You can raise the commercial invoice and packing list from the same order in export order management.

Plans start at $49 per month; the pricing page shows what each plan includes.