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Most trade show leads die on the train home.
You meet someone on Thursday who’s actually interested. You talk for fifteen minutes, they ask good questions and want pricing, and you say you’ll send it over. Then you meet forty more people and eat a sad conference sandwich. By Monday, all you have is their card, with no notes on it, obviously. You also have a vague memory that they wore a green jacket. Or was that the other guy?
So you write “Great meeting you at the event, just wanted to follow up!”, hit send and never hear back. Fair enough. I wouldn’t reply to that either.
The weird part is how much effort goes into everything before this moment. Teams spend months choosing the event, arguing about the booth, printing banners and paying for the badge scanner. Then the one bit that turns into revenue gets left to whoever has a decent memory.
If you’re the one running the event, this is a big part of what Nunify’s event management platform is for. Registration, check-in, attendee messages and reporting all sit in one place, so your follow-up starts from real data instead of a pile of cards. If you’re exhibiting at someone else’s show, you have to build that discipline yourself. That’s what the rest of this is about.
Before You Go
Make a list, and keep it short. Pick five to fifteen people or companies you’d actually like to meet. Pull them from the agenda, the speakers, the sponsors, the exhibitor list, or whatever opt-in networking app the organizer is pushing this year.
They don’t all need to be buyers. If you’re an accountant, two business advisers who send you referrals every month are worth more than twenty random attendees you’d have to convince from scratch.
Look each one up for a few minutes. Then message the ones worth it before the event, and keep it short:
“Hi Maya, saw you’re speaking at the retail summit next week. I’ll be there too, would be good to say hi if you have ten minutes.”
That’s the whole message. People attach decks to these. Please don’t.
Also figure out what “worth it” means for you before you’re standing in the hall. Is it three follow-up meetings? One referral partner? Pick a number. Otherwise you’ll come home and call it a success because the booth was busy.
On The Floor
Everyone has met the person who launches into the full company pitch the second you ask what they do. You stand there nodding. Five minutes later you know their founding year and nothing about whether you can help each other.
Ask them about themselves instead. Why did they come? What’s annoying them at work right now? If they’re shopping around, what else are they looking at?
That last question surprises people more often than you’d think. Half the time the real competitor is a spreadsheet and a tired ops manager, and you’d never have guessed it.
If there’s no fit, just enjoy the chat and move on. Point them to someone useful if you can.
If there is a fit, try to leave with a next step you both actually said out loud. “I’ll send the pricing breakdown tonight.” “Let’s do twenty minutes Tuesday.” Anything more concrete than “let’s stay in touch,” which almost always means never.
And write it down. Do it right then, between conversations, even if you’re balancing a coffee.
“John, retail, interested” is useless on Monday. “John, 3 stores, 4th opening Jan, stock on spreadsheets, wants pricing + a customer example” tells you exactly what to send. It also tells you roughly when he’s going to start panicking about it. If someone else on your team picked up your follow-ups, they should be able to work from that note without calling you.
It doesn’t matter much where the notes live: a CRM, your phone’s notes app or a spreadsheet. Use whatever people will actually open. And go easy on the data you collect. A badge scan is not consent to your newsletter for the rest of time.
After The Show
This is where the lead gets won or lost.
The first email has one job: remind them why talking to you was worth it. Compare:
“Great connecting at the expo. We’d love to tell you more about our solutions.”
vs.
“Good meeting you yesterday. You mentioned the stock mess since the second shop opened, here’s the example I said I’d send.”
Nobody is winning awards for the second one. But it’s obvious you were listening, and that’s most of it.
For the people who were properly interested, send it the same day or the next morning. If you promised a quote or an intro, send that first and leave the pitch out.
Then go at their speed:
- Demo next week? Send a calendar invite and name one person on your side. Done.
- Buying next year? Maybe send a relevant case study in a month or so.
- Said no politely? Leave them alone. Seriously. A seven-email nurture sequence for someone who said no is how you end up in spam folders.
If you’ve got a lot of contacts, use a loose rhythm:
- Day one: a personal note and the thing you promised.
- First week: something genuinely useful.
- Around week two: ask the interested ones whether a call makes sense.
- After that: only get in touch when you’ve got an actual reason.
The most boring fix that works is putting one name against every follow-up. “Sales will handle it” means the lead sits in a shared inbox until it’s too late to matter.
About The Big Shows
Honestly, a lot of small businesses would do better skipping them. Picture a financial adviser running a retirement planning session for twelve people in a hotel meeting room. They get more real conversation out of one evening than out of a weekend at a giant expo. The same goes for a coffee shop doing a tasting for the businesses on its street.
These events are less work to run than people assume. You need a room, a topic people care about, a guest list you can handle and a plan for afterward.
The registration form is the bit most hosts waste. It’s the one moment every guest tells you something before they walk in, and most forms ask for name, company and job title, then stop. Ask what they’re hoping to get help with instead. A good event registration software lets you branch the questions, so the accountant and the café owner each see the ones that make sense for them, and the confirmations and reminders go out from the same place. You’ll walk into the room already knowing who to talk to first.
Was It Worth It?
A busy booth will lie to you. At one show we scanned 312 badges and booked nine meetings from them. Another two came from people we’d messaged the week before. The other 303 scans are probably still sitting in a CSV somewhere.
So count booked meetings, real opportunities and anything that closed. Put that against what the event cost once you add staff time and flights.
Then, before the next one, reread the notes from this one. Which leads went somewhere? Which died, and where?
Related: 4 Real Trade Show ROI Case Studies (And the $811 Mistake None of Them Made)