Sebrae business matchmaking events

Sebrae runs business matchmaking events in practically every Brazilian state, with formats that vary a great deal: sector events inside trade fairs, meetings with anchor buyers, regional editions tied to productive hubs and virtual events. For micro and small companies, it is usually the way into this kind of event.

This article is about two things: how to make the most of a Sebrae event and what to learn from it if you intend to run your own.

How to take part

The route is simple, but there are details that make a difference.

1. Contact the Sebrae office in your state. The calendars are state-level and change through the year. What is open in one state may not exist in another.
2. Read the terms or the regulations. Many events have prerequisites: company size, sector, minimum production capacity, certifications.
3. Fill in the registration with specificity. This is where almost everyone loses an opportunity. Writing "clothing" in the supply field produces a much worse match than writing "knitwear, own production, capacity of 2,000 pieces per month, delivery in 20 days".
4. Bring plenty of material. Over the rounds, you will talk to a lot of new people. Bring enough cards and catalogs for all of them.

What a Sebrae event teaches whoever organizes

Two practices recur at these events and hold for any organizer.

Curation before volume. Sebrae filters participants by size and sector. That reduces the number of registrations and raises the rate of business closed. A room full of people who do not buy what the room sells is the most expensive mistake at a matchmaking event.

Preparing the participant. Workshops on pricing, presentation and catalogs before the event change the quality of the conversations. A supplier who arrives with no price defined wastes the table.

When there is an anchor company, preparation starts earlier, with the demand it publishes, as we explain in anchor buyers at business matchmaking events.

The format has to fit the room

Whoever decides to organize their own event tends to start with the number of rounds. That is the wrong order.

What is yours to decide is the experience: longer conversations with fewer people or quick contact with more companies, an open or a sector event, how much time each person has to speak. Those are choices for someone who knows their own audience.

The rest, the room decides. How many people come, how many tables fit and how many people sit at each one define the new conversations available, and every round uses up part of them. That is why the number of rounds is a consequence of the design, not a scheduling choice.

Announcing the format before checking is what makes two people who have already talked sit together again. Whoever came to meet new people notices, and the other way out, cutting rounds on the spot, frustrates those who expected more conversations. See how many rounds fit in your event.

In the demo, the software shows what your room can hold, with your own numbers.

Mistakes made by participants

• A generic registration. Supply and demand filled in poorly produce badly built tables, and the blame appears to fall on the organization.
• Arriving with no price. A buyer asks the value. Having no answer ends the conversation.
• Talking about the company instead of the problem. Its founding, its history and its values do not answer the question the buyer is asking.
• Not following up. Without contact within a week, the conversations of the day generate nothing.
• Expecting to close on the day. A corporate purchase goes through an internal process. The event opens the door, it does not sign the order.

Mistakes made by whoever runs their own event

• Copying the size without copying the structure. A large event demands another level of operation. Start smaller.
• Announcing the format before checking the design. The number of rounds is a consequence, not a choice.
• Having no plan for absences. It is the variable that most disrupts a matchmaking event.
• Not recording the result. Without figures for attendance, conversations held and feedback, there is no convincing proposal for the next edition.

How the operation supports an event like this

If you are going to organize, the strategic part stays yours: who comes, what the framing is, what the price is. The operational part is what is worth automating.

In Rodada de Sucesso, the planner takes participants, tables and seats and shows the grid that combination supports, with measured alternatives. The list of registrations comes in by importing a spreadsheet in xlsx or csv, with a check before saving, which is essential when the registration was done through a form.

The schedule is generated with zero repetition as a hard rule, also avoiding colleagues from the same company at the same table, and every meeting has a compatibility score that you can look up and explain to the participant.

On the day, the operation controls the speaking time, the interval and the change, with configurable audible alerts and a second projection screen. Attendance and incidents are recorded, and when someone is absent, the system reorganizes only what is necessary, while the rounds already held do not change. At the end, the indicators come out along with the material in PDF and Excel.

To continue

See business matchmaking at the entrepreneur's fair, business matchmaking at a business association and how to organize a business matchmaking event.

Taking part in institutional events is the best school for anyone who intends to organize. Go, watch the operation and note what worked.