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#17 How We Turned 61 Business Cards from a Trade Show into Real Sales Conversations

May 4, 2026

Hi there. This is 服部陽良, founder of coiai Inc.

coiai is an IT company centered on making things, doing system development and product development. Episodes have ended up going out every other Monday lately, but I'm still aiming to get back to a weekly rhythm.

This time, I'm continuing from where I left off last episode about the day of the trade show itself. Today I want to talk in detail about the follow-up work after getting back.

First, Sorting the 61 Business Cards

The first thing I did after getting back from the trade show was sort the business cards. I split the 61 cards into three categories.

For Tier 1 companies, I put together demo apps and dedicated proposal materials. For Tier 2, I sent general explanatory materials. For Tier 3, I sent only a light inquiry about a potential meeting, without giving away too much information about us.

Jotting Notes on the Back of Business Cards Matters

Right there at the show, I immediately wrote notes on the back of each card. For companies I exchanged digital business cards with, I logged notes in my phone's notes app instead. Recording "what to send this person later" on the spot makes a huge difference in how accurate your follow-up ends up being.

Thank-You Emails Went Out Two Days Later (a Regret)

I sent the thank-you emails two days after the show. I had something scheduled the next day and couldn't get them out on the day itself, which is my one regret here. As a result, they went out on a Saturday, and the recipients probably didn't check them until Monday. I really should have sent them sooner — ideally the same day or the day after, I think.

A Stretch of Sales Meetings Every Single Day

From last week into this week, I had a sales meeting scheduled every single weekday. Some turned into collaboration discussions, and there was even a case that actually moved forward into considering an on-premises AI deployment.

Honestly, on-premises AI isn't a product with a particularly high margin. But it's a genuinely effective way to build a relationship with a company. If it actually gets deployed, it becomes a track record; even if it doesn't get that far, it's still a chance for people to see what our technical capabilities look like. Just for that alone, I feel the trade show was worth exhibiting at.

Building a Demo App the Day Before, with Vibe Coding

The shift in development speed lately has been genuinely astonishing — thanks to so-called vibe coding, coding leveraging AI, building a mockup has gone from one to two weeks down to a single day.

What this means for sales meetings is that I can build a demo app tailored to a client's specific needs the day before the meeting and just bring it with me. What used to mean "I'll build it and show you later," ending in me taking the request back home, can now be shown right there on the spot. That speed has become a real weapon.

Mass-Producing Proposals with Claude Code

For Tier 1 companies, I put together individual proposal materials tailored to each company's specific use case and needs. None of this was done by hand either — I used Claude Code to build these efficiently.

The approach I talked about in an earlier episode — "structuring design guidelines for AI" — really paid off here. I'd already built a proposal template ahead of time too, which let me move quickly.

The Structure of a Proposal Document

Here's the concrete structure of a proposal document.

  1. Cover page
  2. Presenting the problem — industry-specific pain points, or concerns we heard directly at the show
  3. System proposal — an overview of the system being proposed
  4. Feature list — organized in table format
  5. Use-case scenarios — concrete examples of how it would actually be used
  6. Rollout steps — how it would proceed, phase by phase

By turning this structure into a template, I can build a proposal document using the same framework even when the industry changes.

The Whole Trade-Show Follow-Up Flow

Summing up the whole sequence so far, it looks like this.

  1. Collect business cards at the trade show
  2. Sort the cards into three tiers and follow up accordingly
  3. Mass-produce industry-specific proposals with AI
  4. Send the proposal and move it toward a sales meeting

I managed to get one full cycle of this running. What comes after the sales meeting itself — closing, and maintaining the relationship — is honestly still an area I'm not great at. I want to keep at it patiently, and make sure I don't let the relationship go cold.

Personal Update: Things Have Gotten Busy

Over the past one to two weeks, between handling the post-show sales meetings, pushing forward our own product development, and having a core-business-system development project in motion as well, things have gotten pretty busy.

The podcast has ended up going out every other week, but I'm still aiming to get back to a weekly pace going forward. To everyone who's kept listening — thank you, genuinely.

Announcement: Virtualium — Entertainment in a Rented-Out Planetarium

One last important announcement.

We're actually working on a project called "Virtualium" right now. We're developing immersive entertainment on a hemispherical dome screen inside a rented-out planetarium — think of it as something like a mini version of the Las Vegas Sphere, and you'll get the idea.

We ran a demo the other day at Galaxcity in Nishiarai, and managed to pull it off at a genuinely high level of quality.

We have another planetarium event planned for June. We're bringing in a DJ for an event where you can experience sound and visual content together.

If you're interested, please reach out through the contact form at coiai.net. We'll send you an invite.

About coiai

coiai Inc. works in the following areas:

Our motto is "build it beautifully." If you're currently getting quotes from other companies, please do get a competing quote from us too. Quotes are always free. Cheaper than any other company, with higher quality — that's something I'm genuinely confident about.

Please feel free to reach out.

This article was adapted from episode #17 of the podcast "The Reality of Year One as a Founder."