The show is three days. The sale is three months. Almost all of the planning goes into the three days.
Here is what the other ninety look like when they work.
The first two days: sort and own
Before anything else, every lead gets a name on it. Not the team's name. A person's.
Do it on the last afternoon of the show if you can, while the people who met the leads are in the same room. The rule for handing out leads is simple: whoever had the conversation follows it up, unless they are the wrong person for the account, in which case they brief the right one before the show ends. A lead with no owner after day two will not be followed up. It is that reliable.
At the same time, sort. Hot, warm, early, contact. If the rating was done at the stand, this takes minutes. If it was not, it takes a morning and it is worth the morning, because the next twelve weeks depend on knowing which leads matter.
Week one: the promise
Every hot and warm lead gets the thing they were promised, by the day it was promised. The brochure, the price, the reference list, the answer to the question. This is the follow-up email, and its whole job is to prove you listened.
Hot leads get a call as well, within two days. Not a pitch. "Where did you get to with X, and what do you need from me by when."
Early leads get one useful email and a check-in date three months out. Contacts get nothing yet; they are in the system for next year.
By Friday of week one, every hot and warm lead should have a next step booked with a date. If it does not, that is the first thing to fix on Monday.
Weeks two and three: the chase
This is where most shows are lost. The first email went out, the urgent leads got their quotes, and now there is ordinary work to do.
The discipline is one rule: nothing worth working goes fourteen days without a touch and a next step. Every morning, look at the leads that are close to tripping it and do one thing each. A call, a two-line email with one new piece of information, a note that you tried. The guide on why leads go cold has the rule in full.
The chase email is not "just checking in". It is the original ask plus something new: a date that moved, a document that is ready, a question you can now answer. Give them a reason to reply, not a reminder that you exist.
Weeks four to eight: the deal
By now the real deals have declared themselves. Some leads asked for a quote; some booked a visit; some went quiet and were recovered; some were honest and said not this year.
For each live deal, the work is ordinary sales work, and the point is only that it happens in the same place the lead was born, so the whole story is visible: what they said at the stand, what was sent, what was quoted, who they are comparing you with, what was agreed on the last call.
Move the stage as it changes. Qualified when there is a real problem and a plausible budget. RFQ when they ask for a number. Quotation when the number has gone out. The stage is not paperwork; it is what lets the manager see the pipeline without asking, and what lets you see which deals have stalled at the same stage for three weeks.
Set a value on each deal, even a rough one. A pipeline of "quite a few good ones" cannot be planned around. A pipeline of eleven deals worth about this much can.
Weeks nine to twelve: close, or decide
Every deal that is still open at week nine gets one of three outcomes.
- It closes. Mark it won, record the order value, and book the first delivery follow-up. The show just earned its money.
- It is real but slow. Some purchases take longer than a quarter. Keep it open, keep the fourteen-day rule on it, and set an honest expected date.
- It is not going to happen. Mark it lost, with a line on why. Price, timing, went to a competitor, no budget after all. This is not failure; it is the data that makes next year's stand better.
The worst outcome is the fourth one: leads that are neither won, lost nor worked, sitting open because nobody wanted to admit they were gone. They make the pipeline a lie and the next show's plan a guess.
At day ninety: the report
Now, and only now, the show can be judged. The cost, all in. The leads worth working. The orders won and their value. The pipeline still open. The return, so far.
Compare it with the previous show, and with the other shows this year. Then decide: same again, smaller, bigger, or somewhere else. The guide on exhibition ROI covers what to count.
What this needs from the team
Not much, and that is the point. A name on every lead by day two. The promised thing sent when it was promised. One touch every fortnight on anything that matters. Stages and values kept roughly true. Honest wins and honest losses.
None of that is hard. What is hard is doing it without something that shows you, each morning, which leads need you today. That is what the plan is for.