LeadsDex

Mission targets, deciding who you came to meet before the doors open

A stand that waits for whoever walks past is a stand that meets whoever walks past. The best exhibitors go in with a list of twenty names, and the list changes what the whole team does.

16 September 2026 · 4 min read

There are two kinds of stand. One is set up, staffed and waits. The other is set up, staffed and hunting. The difference is a list, written a month before, of the accounts the team came to meet.

It is not a long list. Twenty companies is plenty, and ten is fine. It is written before anyone books a flight, and it is checked against every visitor.

Who goes on the list

Four kinds of account, in this order.

  1. Customers who have gone quiet. Companies that bought before and have not ordered in a year. They are at the show, they know you, and a conversation at the stand is worth three cold calls. Half the list can be these.
  2. Prospects you lost. The RFQ that went to a competitor last year. The quote that was "too expensive". A year on, the competitor has had time to disappoint, and the stand is a neutral place to ask how it went.
  3. Accounts you have never reached. The two or three companies everyone in the team would like to sell to and nobody has an introduction for. The show is where their people are walking around with their company on a badge.
  4. Anyone who accepted an invitation. If you invited them and they said yes, they are on the list with a time next to their name.

Give each one a type, customer, prospect or VIP, and a one-line note: "no order in 14 months", "lost on price last March", "board introduction via a mutual contact". The note is what the person on the stand reads when the badge says the company name.

Why the list changes the show

A target list is not a nice-to-have report for afterwards. It changes behaviour on the stand in three ways.

  • The team stops treating every visitor the same. When a badge from a target company walks up, the rep knows before saying hello that this is one of the twenty, knows the note, and knows who owns the relationship. That conversation gets the senior person, the longer chat, the coffee.
  • The empty hours have a purpose. A quiet Wednesday morning is not a coffee break; it is the time to walk the hall and find the three targets that have not come by. Their stands are in the exhibitor list. Go to them.
  • The last afternoon has a scoreboard. Twelve of twenty met. Eight not. Those eight get a note the following week: "we were both at the show and did not manage to meet". It is the warmest cold email there is.

How to work it during the show

  • Morning. Who has been met, who has not, who is expected today. Two minutes.
  • On the stand. When a visitor is captured, check the company against the list. If it is a target, the rep should know at the moment of capture, not afterwards from a spreadsheet. A visitor from a target company is a Hot lead by default until proven otherwise.
  • Between visitors. Walk to a target's stand. Introduce yourself to whoever is there. Ask for the person you are looking for. Leave a card with a note of when you are on your own stand.
  • Evening. Update the list. The met ones get their next step booked like any other lead. The unmet ones move to tomorrow, or to the follow-up note.

The invitations

The list is twice as valuable if you use it before the show. Six weeks out, every target gets a personal invitation. Not a mass email with a stand number. A note from a named person:

"I will be on stand B4 on Tuesday and Wednesday. You mentioned last year that the packaging line was up for review; I would like ten minutes to show you what we did for a similar plant. Would Tuesday at eleven suit?"

Most will not reply. The ones who do are the best meetings of the show, booked before the doors open, and the whole trip is justified by two of them.

After the show

The list becomes the first section of the report. Targets set, targets met, what came of each. It is the part of the show the team controlled, so it is the part that says most about how the show was worked, separate from how many people happened to walk past.

And next year's list starts here: the eight you did not meet, the customers who met you and still did not order, and whoever turned up that nobody expected.

The one rule

Write the list before the show. A list written afterwards, of the good companies that came by, is a report. A list written before is a plan, and it is the only thing that makes a stand hunt instead of wait.

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