It’s November and the Fourth Quarter is officially upon us. Are you fully stocked? If not, there’s one place you can go to beef up your inventory that you’ve probably never tried – trade shows. On this episode of Amazon Seller School, Todd breaks down everything you need to know about finding trade shows, being successful, and going virtual. Stay tuned.
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What Are Trade Shows?
Simply put, trade shows are shows where businesses and sellers in a specific niche come together. Trade shows are a great place to get discounts and, when it comes to Amazon, they’re great places to build those key relationships. While phone and email are great, meeting suppliers in-person is your best bet when it comes to building a strong rapport and opening accounts.
Tips For Trade Shows
Trade shows can be huge and overwhelming. For success at trade shows, check out the list of exhibitors on the trade show website beforehand and make a solid plan. Research suppliers and products so you know who to target. Like most things in life, your success depends on how well you prepare.
Also remember to be personable. The great thing about trade shows is that discussing discounts is a bit more normalized than conversations over-the-phone. And if you’re shy, don’t fret. There are always opportunities for self-improvement if you’re willing to work for it.
Finding Trade Shows
Finding trade shows isn’t hard! A simple online search should pull up tabs of results granted you scroll through more than the first page. All you have to do is search “your specialty (crafts, electronics, sporting goods)” and “trade show.”
Going Virtual
Given the COVID crisis, of course, many of these shows have gone virtual. If you’ve ever played a video game, these trade shows shouldn’t feel unfamiliar and they’re great options when you’re not in the mood to fly across the country. Keep in mind, every roadshow has catalogs of exhibitors, so you never really have to go to a trade show in-person. Trade show websites give us quick lists of top suppliers in your niche.
Overall
While Fourth Quarter may feel like a scary time to start Amazon, the reality is, there’s never a bad time. Amazon is the opportunity of our lifetimes when it comes to starting a business and growing that lucrative side hustle. If you’re interested in learning how to improve slow-selling products for a 75% to 100% ROI, check out Todd’s latest webinar! And if you’ve been to ASD, let Todd know in the comments.
As always, happy selling everybody.
Resources From This Episode
Outline Of This Episode
[00:18] Todd’s introduction to this episode
[05:34] Trade shows 101
[10:25] Top tips for trade shows
[12:43] How to find trade shows
[16:11] Going virtual?
[23:50] Todd’s closing thoughts on this episode
Transcript
announcer (00:01):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch,
Todd (00:18):
What is going on everybody? Welcome to another episode, Amazon Seller School. I’m your host, Todd Welch. And we are getting super close to the big holidays in Q4. My sales have just recently started spiking because Amazon is receiving in a lot of my product. Like I’ve talked about in the past. I recently got a hundred thousand dollar line of credit from a bank with an interest rate of 5.9% right now is a variable interest rate. So that could go up, but it allowed me to really stock up for this fourth quarter here, which is coming well. We’re in the middle of fourth quarter, but the holiday shopping season black Friday, and for Christmas is rapidly approaching. Now is the time that people really start buying for the holidays and things will just esclate as we get further in November and December. So really looking forward to this fourth quarter, I hope you out there are stocked up and ready to go.
Todd (01:32):
If you haven’t started selling on Amazon yet, definitely jump in as soon as possible. A lot of people think that Oh, fourth quarter is maybe not a good idea to get started. It is a really good idea to get started. As soon as you possibly can, don’t get paralyzed because it’s fourth quarter or information overload, open your Amazon account and start selling. One thing I challenge you. If you haven’t started selling on Amazon yet open up your account and sell at least one thing by the end of November and get the ball rolling. You can listen to me on this podcast every week. You’ll learn a lot of things, but until you actually do it. Physically go out there and sell a product, buy a product, and sell a product on Amazon. You’re not going to really absorb everything that you need to know. You’re constantly going to want to be learning, but you have to do as well.
Todd (02:37):
Learn one step ahead, learn what you need to do next. Then do it, then learn the next thing and just keep going. I urge you to get started. Amazon is on fire with the pandemic. COVID all that stuff that’s going on out there. People are buying more online than ever before, and you don’t want to miss this. This is one of the biggest opportunities we’ll have in our lifetime. Amazon is starting to mature, but there’s still a lot of room for more people to get into it and start selling. So I definitely urge you to do it if you haven’t already, if you’ve been selling for a little bit already and you want to learn a new way to sell products, doing what I call the wholesale mine and refine where I find these products that are collecting dust, clean them up and start selling them and maybe get 50 to a hundred sales a month at 7500% ROI, head on over to amazonseller.school/mine.
Todd (03:38):
M I N E. And you can check out the masterclass that I recorded. It’s only 47 bucks dollars right now as of this recording. So definitely go ahead and purchase that. If you’re interested in that at all, I highly recommend it. I’ve heard a lot of really good things about it, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it as well. It’s not for brand new people. You’re going to want to already have been selling and know the basics. But if you already know the basics, this will be definitely a way to add on high ROI products to your wholesale catalog to boost your bottom line of your business. All right, if you want the show notes or anything else for this episode, go ahead and check out entrepreneuradventure./49, which is crazy. We’re on episode 49. Next week will be episode 50, which is huge 50 weeks of making this podcast.
Todd (04:33):
I should say. And this week we’re touching on a really good topic that I think can help you find more wholesale products to purchase and sell out there. And that is utilizing trade shows. A lot of people think that trade shows are a waste of time, but I have had really good luck with them. People have good luck with them, and I think you can have really good luck with them as well. Now, everything with everything your mileage may vary. It depends on categories and things like that. And how good of a personal communicator you are because the wholesale world is all about personal relationships and connecting with people. One-On-One whether you’re connecting with the owner of the business, a sales person or whatever the case may be to get that account open, negotiate discounts and things like that. So your mileage may vary, but I definitely recommend it.
Todd (05:34):
Trade shows if you’re not familiar with what a trade show is, it is essentially a show or a gathering of sellers and businesses in a specific niche. So for example, you could have a craft trade show. You could have a hunting trade show. You could have a home and kitchen trade show, or you could have a beekeeping trade. Joe can really niche down like that. And basically the trade show company will gather a bunch of companies in that space that are selling their services, selling their products, and they will have a booth at the trade show. And us as attendees can go to the trade show, talk to the people at those booths, try to buy the products from them. A lot of times you’ll have big trade show discounts and things like that that you can take advantage of if you buy right there at the show, but it’s really an opportunity to get someone at the business.
Todd (06:46):
Whether it’s a lot of times it’ll be salespeople. Sometimes it’ll be the owner of the business, if it’s a smaller business, but you can talk to them and start that process of getting them to know like, and trust you. And that is really what wholesale is all about. So this is an opportunity for you. If you’re going to an actual trade show to actually meet them in person, get to know them and talk to them about their products and possibly open up an account with the business and by going and seeing them physically, that can actually increase your chances. So like we’ve talked about in the past, a lot of people email to try to open accounts, right? Because it’s easy. Doesn’t take really any work at all. Anybody can send an email, but they’re also super easy to ignore. And that happens a lot.
Todd (07:40):
A lot of times businesses will just ignore the emails, especially if they think that you’re an Amazon seller and not get back to you. The next step up from that is a phone call. You can call them on the phone. That way you can negotiate or not negotiate, but navigate any of their objections, maybe to having an Amazon seller or that they want physical retail. And you can try to get around those objections. So that is benefit of being on the phone because in real time, you can try to get around those objections. And it’s a lot easier to do to get around those objections tha`n using it email. Now the phone call is harder, but you can navigate those objections and try to get the around them on the phone versus in an email you’re going back and forth. There might be a day or two in between emails.
Todd (08:28):
And it’s just a lot easier to just hit delete on an email. It’s more difficult. I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody just hanging out up on me on the phone, right? Most people are not going to do that. And they don’t want to be seen as rude. They might tell you no, but they’re not just going to hang up on you or yell at you or something like that. Now the next step above the phone call is meeting people in person. So whether that is going to their actual business or going to a trade show. Now, if you’re buying from people or businesses local to you, then going to their actual business is definitely a positive thing. You can go to their business, talk with them, maybe see their facilities and things like that and build that connection point. But a lot of times these businesses are going to be all around the country and you can’t be flying around the country.
Todd (09:20):
You know` nobody has that kind of money to fly all over to all of these businesses, at least not in the beginning. For sure. So that’s the benefit of a trade show is you could literally have 50 or a hundred or 300 or a thousand different companies in one place. Now, one of the, probably the biggest trade shows in the country is ASD market week. It’s called and it’s held yearly in Las Vegas. This is probably the most well-known and there are literally thousands of booths and companies there that you can go and visit. Now, ASD is really cool. I haven’t gone myself, but I’ve heard a lot of people. Yeah. I might be going this year, this year. It’s February 28th to March 3rd in Las Vegas at the convention center. So I may attend this year to check it out, but I’ve talked with people who’ve gone in the past and it can be very overwhelming, a large trade show like this, trying to figure out where to go and what to do.
Todd (10:25):
If you’re going to a big trade show like this, you want to schedule or plan everything in advance. You want to make sure you go through all the attendees, right? Which ones you want to visit, maybe look them up on their website, look them up on Amazon. See if they have products that you can potentially carry or that you want to potentially carry and see if it’s worth visiting their booth. Because at a big trade show like ASD, you’re not going to have enough time to hit every single booth in the place, because if you’re doing this right, you might be at a booth for a half an hour, or maybe even more talking with the people that are building the relationship, finding out information, trying to open up an account, maybe getting some big discounts and things like that. You do want to be ready to make a purchase right there at the convention center.
Todd (11:20):
Possibly. It doesn’t always happen like that, but you might want to be ready. Now, a lot of times these companies will extend those discounts past the trade show. So you’ll want to ask about that if you’re not ready to buy right away, because obviously we need to look at things and check them out on Amazon and things like that. So that is a huge trade show ASD. And it’s a pretty cool one to go. If you haven’t experienced it, it can be a lot of fun from what I’ve heard. Like I said, I’m going this year, I’m going to check it out. You hear various things. Some people say it’s not worth to other say it. They found a lot of really good stuff. I think it really depends on how you plan and how you prepare for the show. If you’re just going in there and with no plan and just going to start visiting booths, you’re going to waste a lot of time talking to people that don’t have products that you can sell and that are not worth you selling.
Todd (12:14):
But if you go in there with a plan, figure out what booth do you want to go have a map and go to the booth that you think are giving you the best shot to find good products and allowing you to open up accounts. Then you’re going to have success at these kinds of trade shows. Now, most of the trade shows that I have gone to in the past have been smaller niche trade shows where there’s like 50 to maybe a hundred boots, and you can find these different trade shows by simply going to your favorite search engine. I use duck, duck, go and searching for your niche and then trade shows. So for example, if we search for crafts trade show, you’re going to find some different results. And I’ll just do that right now on the fly. So if I search for craft trade show, I’ve got top 46 best rated arts and crafts trade shows, calendar of craft conferences and trade shows in 2020 arts and crafts trade shows.
Todd (13:24):
All right. So I finally found a good one here. So a lot of these you need to log in or don’t show me the information I’m looking for. So you’ve got to keep searching here, but I found one from in trade shows, dot com craft trade shows in the United States. There’s a list of eight of them. We’ve got N a M K T smart jewelry show, Malibu arts festival. Let’s see J a New York extracts. So a few trade shows here and a lot of these are going to be smaller trade shows. And so you can go to them. And in these ones, you can probably hit every booth potentially, but you’re still gonna want to look at their exhibitors. And what’s cool about a lot of these trade shows is they’ll put their exhibitors, the people who are at the trade show, the businesses right on their website.
Todd (14:17):
So technically you wouldn’t even have to go to these trade shows. You can just find the trade, shows, websites, find their exhibitors list, and you might have 5,000 or a thousand different companies that you can now contact, ideally on the phone. If you’re not going to meet them in person and find products that you can sell on Amazon. So even without going to the trade show, you can get their exhibitors lists a lot time from the previous year or maybe the current year, and use that as a list of companies that you can reach out to and open up accounts. So it’s a really nice way for finding companies in a niche that you may not have already contacted. Maybe you didn’t know that they exist. Maybe they’re a new company with new products. You can reach out to them, start selling their products on Amazon, get an exclusive with them.
Todd (15:16):
You know, the possibilities are endless. And once you find a trade show in the niche that you’re looking for, if you’re going to go to the trade show, like I said, prepare for it, go to it and start talking to the people at the booth. And the way you talk to them is going to be relatively similar to talking to them on the phone. You’re going to talk to them about, you know, what kind of products they have. And what’s the process of opening up an account. What kind of discounts can they offer you? And things like that at a trade show, talking about discounts is even more of a norm than just talking on the phone. So asking for discounts at a trade show is pretty much the norm. So you can get that a lot, a lot of times, big discounts at a trade show.
Todd (16:11):
Now you might be thinking, Todd, you know, we’re in the middle of the COVID pandemic going on, how many trade shows are there actually going to be? And that is the battle for sure, right now, ASD, as I mentioned, is scheduled to go on in Las Vegas here in the end of February. So we’ll see how that goes. But one new thing that is really taking the industry by storm. And I got the opportunity to go to one recently is a virtual trade show. And if you’ve ever in the past played those like massively multiplayer online games where you create your character and you go in, right, and you’re fighting the orcs and wizards and all that other kind of stuff. I was really into that stuff when I was young, like EverQuest and things like that. So I’m used to that kind of stuff.
Todd (17:05):
And that was basically the experience that I had in this online trade show. It was pretty cool. Basically. I registered in their software downloaded and installed it on my computer, logged in. I created my avatar, which was a virtual representation of myself. And when the time came, I logged in, went into the conference room floor and it basically was set up like a normal trade show. And I could walk around, run around transport myself to different booths. And once I was there, the other person Manning the booth would be there and we would have a conversation. And it was very much like a phone call conversation, but a little bit more casual because it had a feeling like we were meeting in person, even though we weren’t, there was a little bit more than a phone call. At least it felt like it to me.
Todd (18:05):
And I was able to open several accounts from this virtual trade show and I’ve got an exhibitor list and something that they called a green book with all of the exhibitors at the event, as well as everyone in the past in terms of other companies that are in this niche. And so I can go through there and contact all of them. Now I found out about this trade show through a supplier who invited me. And so I went to the trade show. I was able to get into it. And I normally, they said I had to have a retail store in the beginning. I kept pushing them and they made an exception for me and allowed me to attend the trade show because of the crazy times that we’re going through right now. And everything is moving online. People are buying more online. So don’t give up.
Todd (18:59):
If they say that you have to have a retail store, I think that’s an important lesson on this. I didn’t give up. I kept pushing them and trying to get into the trade show. And eventually they allowed me into the trade show. Even though I don’t have a retail store now, having a retail store is not a requirement for a lot of trade shows. So don’t worry about that. But I think the moral of that story, whether you’re trying to open up an account with a brand or a distributor or go to a trade show, if they tell you something, don’t just take that as final. A lot of times you can navigate around these things and keep pushing to get the account open, go to the trade show and things like that. So the virtual trade show was a really cool experience and I had a really good time doing it.
Todd (19:48):
I found some good suppliers that I’m ordering from now and selling their products. So it was definitely worth it for me. And what was cool about a virtual trade show is it doesn’t matter where they are, right? A physical trade show. If it’s in Las Vegas, you got to fly to Las Vegas. If you don’t live there, it’s in Florida, you got to go there or wherever, but a virtual trade show. You log into an application on your computer and you are in the virtual trade show. It’s not quite as good as being in communicating with someone in person because you can’t see the way their body is communicating to you. Communication is something like 70 or 80% body language, and only like 20%. The words that we’re saying even less than that, with the words we’re saying, because another large part of communication is the tone of the voice, right?
Todd (20:45):
You can say the same thing, three different ways, and it’s going to mean three totally different things, depending on the tone of the voice. So body language is a big thing. You need to who’s that in a virtual world, but it still allowed me to break down some of those barriers. I actually opened up an account with a distributor that was at the conference that normally does not allow people without a retail store. I was able to talk them into allowing me to open up the account because of the crazy times we’re in, we’re in a virtual trade show and everything, and I was able to get that account. So it was a lot of fun, definitely looked for virtual conferences and trade shows as well, I should say. And the same way we find normal trade shows, all you do is just add the word virtual.
Todd (21:37):
So if you’re looking for craft trade shows, search for virtual craft trade shows, and now you’re going to find some virtual craft trade shows. You might have to go through the first five to 10 pages to really start finding some good stuff. Don’t give up on that first page. A lot of times the beginning results are going to be like indexes and catalogs and things like that that are not the actual trade shows. So sometimes you have to go to the second, third, fourth, fifth, 10th, 20th page. So definitely go down in the search results, but you’ll find a lot of them trade shows are popping up right now. It’s becoming a pretty big one thing for obvious reasons. But the real life trade shows are coming back as well. And as things start to move forward, I think we’re going to see a hybrid where you’re going to have maybe the once or twice in person trade shows for a company, and then maybe they have one, two, three, four virtual trade shows and you can attend either way.
Todd (22:41):
And it could become a pretty big thing, especially as people are not, you know, wanting to get together and things like that quite as much. So we’ll see how ASD goes here. It’s going to be interesting with everything going on. But it’s definitely a way to find more suppliers. And that’s kind of what this episode was all about is to find more suppliers using the trade show system. Now, another thing you can do is search for trade shows in your state, especially if you live in a state with a big city, you’re probably going to have some trade shows here in Utah. We have salt Lake city, which is the surrounding areas like 2 million people. We have a fair amount of frayed shows even in a city or an area of that size. So a lot of States are going to have trade shows.
Todd (23:35):
So for those ones, you might be able to even just drive to it. So you can search for craft trade shows in Utah or whatever state that you’re in and find ones local to you, go to them and get those accounts open as well. That is the trade shows. I hope that gives you some really good ideas on ways to find new accounts and open new accounts. It’s one of the hardest things that new people have is finding and opening accounts with companies and utilizing trade shows, whether you go or not at least go to their website and get that exhibitors list. And you’re going to have a list of companies that you can contact. Try to open up accounts. Remember phone calls a lot better than emails. In-Person even better than phone calls. And if you’re not an extroverted kind of person, you don’t feel comfortable getting out there and talking with people just know that you can break through that.
Todd (24:35):
You can get through that. You can change your personality. In that way. I used to be really shy and I’m still shy. Most people laugh at me when they say I’m shy. I don’t consider myself a shy person anymore because I made a decision that there was things in life that I wanted to do and being shy just wasn’t an option. So I got out of my shell. I started talking with people, put myself in front of the camera right here or on the microphone and forced myself to start talking. You might stumble and feel stupid in the beginning, but you’ll get better. You’ll get better. You’ll get better. And the person on the other end of the line is most likely not going to care if you mess up and if they do care, they’re not going to remember you a few minutes after you get off the phone.
Todd (25:24):
So don’t worry about what the other person thinks. Just start making phone calls, go to trade shows, talk to people, get yourself out there and you’ll get better at it. Practice makes perfect. You’ll get better. You’ll get better. You’ll get better. So that pretty much wraps up this episode with trade shows. If you have any questions or comments on trade shows, if you’ve gone to ASD, let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you’re on YouTube, if you’re on the podcast, amazonseller.school and contact me there. And let me know your thoughts. If you have any questions that you want answered on an upcoming podcast, again, remember to head over to amazonseller.school/ask and you can leave a voicemail there. And I could answer that, or I will try to answer that on an upcoming podcast for you. The show notes, amazonseller.school/49. And if you’re interested in that wholesale mine and refine amazonseller.school/ M I N E, to check that out. So with that, this is Todd Welch signing off happy selling everybody and have a great fourth quarter.
announcer (26:41):
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.
