Leads
Scanning badges at the stand, what makes a captured lead different from a business card, and how the follow-up continues after the hall empties.
The complaint after every trade show is that the leads went nowhere. It is usually true, and the cause is almost never the show — it is that there was no mechanism between a conversation at the stand and a follow-up on Monday.
Capturing
Scan a visitor's pass at your stand. Because the pass belongs to a verified identity, what you capture is a known business rather than a handwritten name nobody can read afterwards.
That is the whole interaction. No form, no dictating an email address over hall noise, no bowl of business cards to transcribe.
What a captured lead actually is
A verified business
Not a name typed into a form. You know who they are before you follow up.
A real enquiry afterwards
It continues in the same governed flow the rest of the platform uses, rather than ending as a row in an export.
Contact on acceptance
Their details reach you when they accept the follow-up — not the instant you scanned them.
Scanning is not consent to be called
Someone letting you scan their pass starts a conversation they can accept. It does not hand you their phone number for a campaign. That is the difference between a lead and a list, and it is why the people you do reach are willing to talk.
Working the stand so there is something to capture
Following up
Decide before the show who follows up and when, because the plan made afterwards never survives contact with the backlog on your desk.
The useful window is short. A buyer who spoke to fifteen suppliers in three days will remember the two that made contact that week.
Measuring whether the show worked
Leads captured, and how many became accepted enquiries, is the number to take into next year's booking decision.
It is a far better measure than the footfall figure in the organiser's brochure, which counts people who walked through a door rather than people who stopped at your stand.
Give the organiser your feedback
Once the show has finished, you can tell the organiser how it went — footfall against what was promised, the quality of the leads, how the venue and the organising ran.
Submitting it earns credits back into your wallet, so some of what participation cost you comes back. It is also the number a good organiser fixes next year's show on, and the thing that lets another exhibitor judge whether to book.
Your booth
Choosing a position from the live floor, understanding what shell scheme includes, buying the extras a stand actually needs, and getting passes for the people staffing it.
Overview
Sponsoring a show — what you are actually buying, which terms matter, how the sign-up works, and what a sponsor seat gives you during the event.