There are three parts to a trade show experience that ensure success. These are before the trade show, during it, and the part where many businesses can stumble after. While it’s important to invest in working with a reliable trade show company to create an optimal exhibit, this can all still fall apart if, once the trade show is over and you’ve returned to work, you fail to follow up on potential leads.

Have A Plan

One crucial aspect of follow-up success is to plan your follow-up. In the same way that you carefully planned things before the trade show, such as securing a trade show company, you should also have a plan in place for what to do after you return to work and have a collection of business cards, email addresses, and other points of contact.

It’s always better to have a plan for these in advance than simply staring at them and wondering how to go about things next.

Prioritize

For best results, you should sort your potential leads into categories that make sense for your business needs. For example, if you conducted a lot of meetings, and you took the time to get a feel for the business people in these meetings and agreed to further talks and negotiations, these contacts should take a higher priority for pursuing.

On the other hand, if a potential contact is known only because they donated a business card, and you know little else about them, it’s not a risk to deprioritize these potential leads and address them further down the line.

Use Social Media

While social media platforms such as X/Twitter or Facebook can be useful, LinkedIn is specifically for people with professional interests. It’s always a good idea to take advantage of what LinkedIn and other social media can provide for furthering a connection with leads.

Take the time to look up higher-priority leads and connect with them. This can often help finalize more productive negotiations and interactions.

All Contacts Are Potentially Important

Finally, keep in mind that acquired contacts are not a zero-sum game. This isn’t “a new client/customer or nothing.” In many cases, simply adding to your professional network and potentially having new, knowledgeable allies to consult with on different matters can yield valuable, if non-financial, results toward bettering your business prospects.

Always keep in mind that meeting new people doesn’t have to turn into converting all of them into customers. A business network has advantages of its own.

If you want to work with a trade show company for your next trade show venture, contact Lighthouse Exhibits.