Collecting Valuable
Trade Show Leads

Getting complete information about your trade show leads is essential to effective follow-up for greater sales results. Your booth representatives have the important responsibility of collecting, recording and qualifying trade show leads from visitors who come by your exhibit.

To ensure success, establish a system during your event planning process to gather and qualify leads. Determine what information your representatives need from booth visitors to allow them to:

1. Assess or qualify each visitor’s potential to buy your product or service, including relevant data on specific needs, budget requirements and timing for a potential purchase.
2. Contact prospects after the show through multiple channels including phone, mail, email and personal visits.

Or, you may want to consider renting an automated tracking system that electronically captures data by having booth visitors swipe their nametags when they enter your exhibit area.

First, check with your trade show contact to see if the conference nametags will have electronic strips that can be used for this purpose.

If you decide to use technology that tracks trade show leads, be sure the system's output provides all the information you require for post-marketing initiatives. It is possible that you may need to pay extra for customizing data reporting to fully utilize the information for effective follow-up with trade show leads.

It is important to note that automated lead tracking systems vary so you will want to educate yourself about which equipment and software best meet your specifications. If you can't get what you want from these technology-driven systems, you may opt to track trade show leads manually.

The more information you have about your leads, the more effective your follow-up initiatives will be. You will be able to evaluate the potential of each lead (perhaps on a scale of 1 to 5 or based on a rating of low, medium or high) and implement an appropriate follow-up communication strategy for each level of prospect.

With strong lead information in hand, you can focus your time and respond effectively to convert prospects into customers.

Additionally, timing is essential. The longer you wait to call or contact a strong prospect who visited your booth, the less likely he or she will be to buy.

Always make phone or written contact within one week of the trade show to make the most of your window of opportunity.

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