Business matchmaking at the entrepreneur's fair

The Feira do Empreendedor is one of the events that most brings small businesses together with suppliers, franchisors and buyers. Inside it, the business matchmaking event tends to be the activity with the highest density of conversation per hour: instead of walking the aisles hoping a good meeting happens, the participant sits down and talks to a new group at every table change.

This article is about making the most of matchmaking inside a fair, whether you are an exhibitor, a visitor or the person in charge of running the activity.

Why matchmaking works better inside a fair

A large fair has a known problem: too much stimulus and no schedule. The visitor circulates, collects leaflets and leaves without a single real conversation. Matchmaking solves that because it imposes structure on the meeting. There is a time to start, equal time for everyone to speak and a signal announcing the change.

The practical effect is easy to estimate. At a table of 6 seats, each participant talks to 5 people per round. Over 6 rounds, that is 30 business conversations in a little over two hours. No stand delivers that volume of qualified contact in the same interval. The comparison between the two formats is in the efficiency of matchmaking against fairs and events.

If you are taking part: the preparation that changes the outcome

• Study the list. If the organisation publishes who will be present, pick

out the five companies that interest you most and prepare a specific question for each. Arriving with a question ready is worth more than arriving with a leaflet.

• Prepare the two-minute pitch. Your name, what you do, for whom, and what

you are looking for there. A clear ask is what triggers the referral. If you freeze when it is time to speak, see how to present your idea well.

• Take countable physical material. If the event has 6 rounds of 6 seats,

you will need at least 30 cards. Taking 10 is the most common mistake and the easiest to avoid.

• Take notes on the spot. On the card you receive, write one word about the

conversation. The next day, that word is the difference between a contact and a stranger.

• Follow up within 48 hours. Beyond that, the memory of the fair has already

dissolved. The script is in how to strengthen relationships after the event.

If you are running the matchmaking inside the fair

Running it inside a fair has constraints a standalone event does not have, and they have to be part of the planning from the start.

The time is borrowed. The fair's schedule rules. If you have a window of two and a half hours, the design has to fit inside it with room to spare, because a delay at a fair means losing the space to the next activity.

The noise is high. A fair hall is noisy. The table change signal has to be audible above the ambient noise, and the instruction for that moment has to be visible on a screen, not only said over a microphone.

Absence is higher. Whoever registers for an activity at a fair fails to show up more often than someone paying for a separate matchmaking ticket. Work with that margin in the sizing and have a plan for redoing the distribution on the spot.

The arithmetic that has to add up before you announce

Do the calculation with the real window the fair gave you. Add the speaking time of all the seats at the table, add the gap between speakers and add the table change. That gives the duration of one round. Multiply by the number of rounds and compare it with the window.

Example: tables of 5 seats, 3 minutes of speaking, 1 minute for the change. Each round takes 16 minutes. In a window of 2 hours, 7 rounds fit with room to spare for the opening and the close. Each participant meets 4 people per round, or 28 people in total. That is the number you can announce, and it should appear in the promotional material exactly like that.

Where the tool helps

In Rodada de Sucesso, the planner shows what that combination of participants, tables and seats supports, with the measured alternatives alongside. Registrations can be brought in by importing a spreadsheet, with a check before saving, which avoids typing a fair's list by hand the night before.

On the day, the operation controls the speaking time, the interval and the change, with audible alerts by file and a second projection screen showing the current round, the clock and the instruction. When someone is absent, the minimal-adjustment recalculation redoes what needs redoing without touching the rounds already held. And attendance marking is recorded for the report.

After the fair

The fair ends and the material disappears. What is left is what was recorded: attendance, incidents, the participant list and the feedback from whoever was there. If you organised, export those documents the same day and use them in the proposal for the next edition. If you took part, turn the list into a schedule of contacts with deadlines. It is worth reading what to do after the event and 10 tips for efficient networking.

The fair provides the audience. Matchmaking turns the audience into conversation. The record turns conversation into business.