The Trade Show Lead-Capture and Follow-Up Sprint

A 60-Minute Sales Training — a runnable team working session.

Most trade show leads die in a spreadsheet. A team spends thousands of dollars and three exhausting days at a booth, scans a few hundred badges, and then almost nothing happens. Reps go back to their open pipeline, the show list sits untouched for two weeks, and by the time anyone calls, the prospect has forgotten the conversation — or already bought from the competitor in the next aisle.

The problem is almost never the show. It is that the team never built a *system* for what happens at the booth and in the 72 hours after. This session fixes that.

In 60 minutes your team will build the exact qualifying questions reps ask at the booth, a capture standard so every lead is usable, a tiered prioritization rule, and a written 72-hour follow-up plan with real first-touch messages. Reps leave with a plan they will actually run at the next show.

Run this session before your next trade show, conference, or industry expo. If you have a show coming in the next 90 days, run it this week.

Who Should Be in the Room

• Every rep who will work the booth or receive show leads
• The sales manager (facilitator)
• Whoever owns marketing/event logistics, if you have that role — they own the lead-scanning tooling and the post-show list

Keep it to the people who will actually touch show leads. This is a working session, not a briefing.

What You Need Before You Start

• A whiteboard or shared doc projected for everyone
• The name and date of your next actual show (this session is built around a real event, not a hypothetical)
• Each rep's laptop with CRM access
• If you have last show's lead list and its outcomes, pull it up — it is the most honest teaching tool in the room

The 60-Minute Agenda

This agenda runs from 0:00 to 1:00. The minute counts below sum to exactly 60. Keep time honestly — the follow-up build is the part that pays for the show, so do not let earlier sections eat it.

0:00–0:06 — Frame the Problem (6 minutes)

Open with the number. Say out loud what the next show costs all-in: booth space, travel, hotels, the stand, shipping, and three days of selling time for everyone working it. Put that figure on the board.

Then ask one question and make the room answer honestly: "Of the leads from our last show, how many turned into a real opportunity?" Most teams cannot even answer because nobody tracked it. That silence is the point.

State the goal of the session plainly: by 1:00 we will have a written system so that the next show's leads become booked meetings instead of a dead spreadsheet. Two facts to anchor it:

• A trade show lead has a shelf life measured in days, not weeks. The prospect is meeting dozens of vendors. Memory of your conversation decays fast.
• The team that follows up first, fastest, and with a *specific reference to the booth conversation* wins the meeting. This is a speed-and-specificity game.

0:06–0:18 — Build the Booth Qualifying Questions (12 minutes)

A scanned badge is not a lead. A scanned badge plus three things you learned is a lead. The job here is to agree on the four to five questions every rep asks at the booth so every captured lead arrives back with the same usable information.

As a group, on the whiteboard, draft the booth qualifying questions. Good ones are short, conversational, and reveal fit and timing without feeling like an interrogation:

• "What brought you to the booth — what are you working on right now?" (surfaces the actual trigger)
• "How are you handling that today?" (surfaces the current state and pain)
• "Are you actively looking to change that, or just scouting?" (separates buyers from browsers)
• "Who else would be part of a decision like that?" (surfaces the buying committee early)
• "If we set up a proper conversation, would the next two weeks or the following work better?" (books the meeting at the booth — the single highest-value move)

Lock the final list. Every rep working the booth uses the same questions. Write them where everyone can copy them.

0:18–0:30 — Define the Capture Standard and Lead Tiers (12 minutes)

Now decide what gets written down and how leads get sorted, so the follow-up team is not guessing.

The capture standard. For every booth conversation, the rep records — in the lead-scanning app's notes field or a quick form — four things: (1) the trigger/what they're working on, (2) current state, (3) buying intent, and (4) any next-step agreed at the booth. No notes, no usable lead. Make this the rule.

The lead tiers. Agree on three tiers and the rule for each, so prioritization is automatic:

• Tier A — Hot. Active buying intent, a real trigger, and ideally a meeting already half-agreed at the booth. Rule: contacted within 24 hours.
• Tier B — Warm. Genuine interest and fit, but no urgency or no clear trigger yet. Rule: contacted within 72 hours.
• Tier C — Cold / scouting. Browsers, students, competitors, no fit. Rule: added to nurture, not worked by reps.

Assign tiering responsibility: reps tier each lead at the booth, the same day, while the conversation is fresh — not a week later from memory. End this block by deciding who owns the consolidated, tiered list when the show ends.

0:30–0:48 — Build the 72-Hour Follow-Up Plan and Messages (18 minutes)

This is the heart of the session and the part that actually pays for the show. Do not let it get compressed.

As a team, build the 72-hour follow-up plan on the board — the exact sequence of touches for a Tier A and a Tier B lead:

• Touch 1 (within 24h, Tier A / within 72h, Tier B): A personal email or message that *names the booth conversation specifically* — references the trigger they mentioned — and proposes two concrete meeting times. Generic "great to meet you at the show" emails get ignored; specific ones get replies.
• Touch 2 (day 2–3): A phone call. Reference the conversation again, leave a specific voicemail, and follow with a one-line text or message.
• Touch 3 (day 4–6): A different angle — a relevant resource, a customer story in their space, or a direct "still worth a conversation?" — sent on a different channel than touch 1.

Then write the actual touch-1 message together, right now. Pick one realistic Tier A persona for your next show and draft the email on the board as a group. Make it specific enough that a rep could send it with only the name and trigger swapped in. Have every rep save this template to their CRM before the block ends.

Finish by assigning ownership: every rep is accountable for first touch on their own Tier A leads within 24 hours of the show closing. Put that commitment in writing.

0:48–0:57 — Live Drill: A Booth Conversation, Scored (9 minutes)

Time to pressure-test it. Run two quick role-plays.

• Round 1 (about 4 minutes): One rep plays a booth visitor who wandered over; another rep works the booth. The booth rep must run the qualifying questions, capture the four required notes out loud, tier the lead, and attempt to book the meeting at the booth.
• Round 2 (about 4 minutes): Swap roles with a harder visitor — someone "just looking" — so reps practice quickly identifying a Tier C and not burning booth time on it.

Spend the last minute on group feedback: Did the rep book the meeting at the booth? Did they capture all four notes? Did they tier correctly? The facilitator scores it against the standard the team just built.

0:57–1:00 — Commitments and Close (3 minutes)

Go around the room. Each person states one specific commitment for the next show — for example, *"I will book at least two meetings at the booth itself"* or *"I will send first touch to every Tier A lead within 24 hours of the show closing."*

The manager confirms three things are now owned: the qualifying questions are locked, the tiering rule is set, and the touch-1 template is saved in everyone's CRM. Set the post-show check-in date now: one week after the show, the team reviews how many leads became booked meetings.

How to Make This Stick

A session is worthless without the loop that follows it.

• Run the show with the system. The questions, the capture standard, and the tiering all happen live at the booth — not reconstructed afterward.
• The 72-hour window is non-negotiable. Tier A within 24 hours, Tier B within 72. Speed is the entire advantage.
• One week after the show, hold the review. Count it honestly: leads captured, meetings booked, opportunities created. Compare to the last show that had no system. That number is your proof — and your argument for the next show's budget.
• Carry the template forward. Refine the qualifying questions and the touch-1 message after each show. By the third show, this is a sharp, repeatable engine.

The One-Page Takeaway

A trade show is not a lead-generation event. It is a *meeting-booking* event — and the meetings are won in the 72 hours after the booth closes, by the team that follows up first and references the actual conversation. This session gives your team the questions to ask at the booth, the standard for capturing a usable lead, the tiers that make prioritization automatic, and the written follow-up plan that turns badge scans into booked meetings.

Run it before your next show, work the show with the system, and hold the review one week after. That is how a trade show finally pays for itself.