IndiaMART, TradeIndia and directories: what to expect, and what to track before you renew

The renewal call comes a few weeks before the package ends, and the only number you have is "we got a lot of enquiries". Expect a directory such as IndiaMART or TradeIndia to send a wide mix. Some are real buyers with a quantity and a site. Others are traders collecting rates, people who want one piece, and vendors selling to you. That mix is normal. What decides the renewal is two counts per platform: how many enquiries became a priced quotation, and how many quotations became an order.

What a directory sends a manufacturer

A listing on a B2B directory works like a signboard on a busy road. Anyone can walk in, and the walk-ins fall into a few kinds that each need a different reply.

• The buyer with a requirement. A contractor, a plant or an OEM with a quantity, a size and a delivery town. This is the enquiry you are paying for.
• Rate collectors. Traders, and contractors bidding for a municipal or project tender, gathering three prices. A few come back months later, when the tender is won.
• One-piece buyers. A house owner who needs one gate valve or one cover for a sump. Real people, but not worth a factory quotation.
• Sellers in disguise. Raw material traders, software vendors and agencies who found your number on the listing.
• Out of reach. A genuine buyer for heavy goods in a town where freight eats the margin.

Which kind dominates depends on how your listing reads. A listing titled "gate valve" draws every plumber. "Cast steel gate valves, 50 to 300 mm, for process plants" draws fewer people, and better ones. A purchase engineer types a part, a grade or a size, not a company name, so the product names on a listing matter more than its tier.

Buy leads, picked from a shared pool of posted requirements, are a separate stream. The note on converting IndiaMART leads covers how to pick them. Record them in the same register under their own label.

The register: one row per enquiry

Keep one sheet for all your platforms. Most columns fill on the first call. The quote and order columns are the ones nobody fills, because the answers live in other files.

Fill the quote and order columns from those files, not from memory. A salesperson's "I think they ordered" is not a row.

Two definitions keep the counts honest. A quote counts only when a priced quotation went out against a stated quantity. A price list forwarded on WhatsApp proves nothing about the buyer. And when the same buyer writes on two platforms in one day, that is one enquiry, recorded under the platform used first.

When you have enough rows to judge

Do not judge a platform on its first busy month. Judge it once the oldest enquiries in the register have had as long to close as your normal order takes, from first call to purchase order. For a stock item that may be a few weeks. For a part bought against a tender or a building project it can run far longer. Keep those open quotes in their own pile, and do not call them lost.

If a plant you first met on a directory becomes a regular buyer, mark it as an account the platform brought. Its repeat orders are your team's work, so leave them out of the platform's order count.

The renewal decision, read off the register

Compare the two counts for each platform, quotes per enquiry and orders per quote, and the decision follows.

1. Many quotes, few orders. The platform found buyers and your team lost them. Fix the quotation and the follow-up before you blame the listing.
2. Lots of enquiries, hardly any quotes. The listing is drawing the wrong people. Rename products, state a minimum order and drop the categories that bring one-piece buyers. Moving up a tier only buys more of the same.
3. A modest flow, most of it quoted, some of it ordered. The platform suits your product. Add the lines you most want to sell before adding anything else.
4. Orders whose margin does not cover the package and the hours spent on it. Drop to a lower or free listing, or stop.

This rule is for catalogue products. If you make to drawing, directories bring few serious enquiries whatever you change, and the same money goes further on visits to named plants.

Imagine a manhole cover maker in Howrah

Imagine a foundry in Howrah making cast iron manhole covers, gratings and frames, listed on IndiaMART, on TradeIndia and on one smaller directory. The details are illustrative.

The owner judged the three by enquiry count. IndiaMART brought the most, so the owner moved it up a tier and let the smaller directory lapse. Orders did not rise.

A relative then built the register from the lead lists, the quotation file and the invoice book, covering one full season of municipal and builder work. It took a fortnight of evenings. Most IndiaMART enquiries were house owners wanting one cover for a sump, plus traders collecting rates. The smaller directory had sent far fewer enquiries. Nearly all of them came from drainage contractors who asked for load class and quantity, and two of its quotes had become the season's largest orders.

Two changes followed. The IndiaMART listings were renamed to state the load classes and a minimum order, and fewer house owners wrote in. The smaller directory was renewed rather than dropped, and the IndiaMART tier went back down. The package money already spent on the higher tier was not refunded.

What a listing will not do

A directory brings enquiries. It does not answer them. A buyer who writes to four suppliers takes the first sound quote, so a listing without someone to call back is money spent on other people's orders. Nor will a listing make a buyer trust a made-to-drawing supplier they have never met.

Before the next renewal call

Pull the last full season of enquiries from each platform into one sheet, then add the quote and order columns from your quotation file and invoices. The manufacturing hub has the other posts on running enquiries. If you want the register built from your own enquiries, with IndiaMART and marketplace lead management behind it, tell us what you need.