LeadsDex

The exhibitor's checklist, before, during and after the show

Not the stand-build list. The list for the people whose job is to come home with orders: what to decide before the doors open, what to do every hour on the stand, and what has to happen on the day after.

16 September 2026 · 4 min read

Every show has a checklist somewhere, and it is about the stand. Graphics ordered, electrics booked, lanyards printed. Useful, and nothing to do with whether the show makes money. This is the other list: the one for the people who are there to sell.

Six weeks before

  • Decide what a good show is. A number. Orders, or leads worth working, or meetings with named accounts. If nobody can say what good looks like, nobody will know on the last day whether it happened.
  • Write the target list. The accounts you came to meet: current customers who have gone quiet, prospects you lost last time, the two companies everyone wants. Names of companies, and if you can, names of people. Twenty is plenty. The guide on mission targets covers how.
  • Invite them. A personal note to each target, not a mass email. "I will be on stand B4, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I would like ten minutes on X." Half will not reply. The ones who do are the best meetings of the show.
  • Decide who works the stand, and who runs it. One person is in charge of the leads: who gets what, what is unowned at the end of each day. Without that person, leads belong to everyone and are followed up by no one.
  • Agree how a lead is captured. Badge scan, card photo, or typed. Whatever it is, everyone does the same thing and every lead gets a rating and a next step at the moment of capture, not at the end of the day. The guide on qualifying in twenty seconds is the standard.
  • Work out the break-even. Total cost divided by a typical first order. That is how many orders the show has to produce. Tell the team the number. The ROI calculator does it in a minute.

The week before

  • Check the target list against what you know. Which of them did you meet last year? What was said? Who owns the relationship? Walking up to a customer and not remembering that you quoted them in March is the fastest way to lose them.
  • Prepare the promised things. The brochure, the spec sheet, the reference list, the pricing sheet. Have them ready to send, so a promise made on Tuesday is kept on Wednesday morning, not "after the show".
  • Prepare the one question. For the visitor who is leaving and you know nothing: "What would need to happen for this to be a project this year?" Everyone on the stand knows it.
  • Set the roster. Who is on the stand when. Nobody works a full day without a break; qualification quality collapses after five hours on your feet.

Every day of the show

  • Morning, ten minutes. Which targets have been met, which have not. Who is on the stand. Any leads from yesterday that need a call today.
  • Every visitor. Capture, rate, reason, next step. Out loud if you can. Twenty seconds. If the conversation deserves more than that, it gets a follow-up booked, not a longer chat while three people wait.
  • Every hot lead. An owner, by the end of the day it was captured. The person who had the conversation, unless there is a reason not to.
  • Lunch. Someone is always on the stand, and someone is always off it. A target walking past an empty stand does not come back.
  • End of day, fifteen minutes. Unowned leads get owners. Hot leads get a call booked for tomorrow or the day after. The target list gets updated. The team says one thing each that worked and one that did not.

The last afternoon

  • Nothing is left unowned. Every lead, a name.
  • The hot ones are called or booked. Not "next week". A date.
  • The promised things go out tonight or tomorrow morning. Someone is responsible for each one.
  • The targets not met get a note. You can still reach them next week: "sorry we missed each other at the show".

The day after

  • Every hot and warm lead gets its email. The follow-up email that proves you listened, with the promised thing attached.
  • Every hot lead has a call within two days.
  • Every open lead has a next step with a date. If it does not, it is on tomorrow's list to fix.

The week after

  • The first report. Cost, leads worth working, pipeline. Not orders yet; those come later.
  • The fourteen-day rule starts. Nothing that matters goes two weeks untouched with nothing booked. The guide on why leads go cold explains the rule; the plan for the whole quarter is in the ninety days after the show.

Ninety days after

  • The real report. Orders won, pipeline still open, return on cost. The decision about next year.
  • The honest losses. Every lead that is not going to happen is marked lost, with a reason. Next year's target list starts here.

Print this, or do not. The point is that the stand list gets done because the venue insists on it, and this list gets done only if someone decides it will.

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