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We’ve all had this happen to us: we get ready for a trade show or other event. We prepare banners, have CDs to handout chock full of demos and other useful information, we get white papers printed out, have testimonials and customer success stories memorized, and then we arrive at the event. By all accounts, its a smashing success, with lots of folks at our booth and lots of business cards collected over several days.

The trade show team gets back to HQ and then they get busy with other stuff. Those leads, so hopeful and glimmering just a few days ago, get very cold. After a few weeks, some action is taken on them, but nobody can remember what the conversation was all about. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

Here are some ideas to turn this thing around. It all comes down to effective lead scoring. On a web site or with tools like Eloqua, you can drive very specific lead scoring techniques that take into account a whole bunch of parameters and vectors. For the kind I’m talking about, you’re going to use some simple rules of thumbs (heuristics) and your trade show or event team. This kind of thing has to work five minutes after the event starts, when everyone is fresh, and be just as effective on the last day of a weeklong marathon.

First of all, you have to have a plan going in. Your trade show team has to know how to evaluate the people they talk to. They have to know, for example, that you are targeting C-level marketing executives at companies with $500 million in revenue (and up) who are looking to purchase in the next 6-9 months. That’s the first tier. Second tier are the people who work for those C-level marketing execs. Third tier are other C-level executives who might have the ear of that first tier (such as the CFO or CIO). Fourth tier is everyone else.

Without this knowledge, your team is flying blind. They won’t know how to categorize the people who visit their booth or talk to them at a networking event.

Once your team is in place, they have to act differently along two vectors: who the person is (as identified by our tiers above) and what their level of interaction is. Don’t assume that just because they are in the third or fourth tier that they are somehow a bad lead.

Let me give you an example. Your team is at their booth, and their perfect tier 1 prospect walks up: a CMO at a $700 million dollar company who self-identifies a need to move within the next quarter or two using your solution. However, he doesn’t linger to talk seriously, nor does he take a Demo CD or schedule a demo later on in the show. He just leaves his business card and walks away. Predictably, you never do get an appointment.

Later on in the same day, though, a lower level marketing manager at a somewhat smaller firm ($300 million) comes by and asks a lot of questions. They sign up for the very next demo at your booth in an hour, stays after for more questions, then leaves not only their own business card but their bosses’ card as well. They want you to call so he can introduce you to the CMO and the CFO (who must sign off on all capital purchases of software).

Who do you think is a hotter lead? Obviously, it’s the second one. The lower-level manager’s level of interaction pushed them up higher in the list.

My suggestion is to keep track of all this activity with a simple system of note-taking. Those visitors who drop by and just leave a business card after minimal interaction get nothing jotted on the back of their card. If they ask general questions about your product or service and take literature, put a star on the back of their card. If they ask specific questions about their own situation and seem to want some kind of assessment, put them down for two stars. If they ask for a demo right at the show, or take a demo CD with them, put them down for three stars. Finally, if they’re seeking a post-event call or want to talk with you further at a happy hour before the show is over, put them down for four stars.

Combine this star rating with what you know about what tier they are in. To me, the more stars, the better (regardless of tier), but let your instinct guide you. It may be possible that a lukewarm tier one prospect might be better for you than a red-hot tier three (as the latter may have no signing authority, ultimately) but at least you have some way, with your star notation, to prioritize trade show leads.

Another suggestion: at the end of each day, enter your business card data into a database along with notes on your interactions (you may have to do this a few times a day to keep your memory from going soft). Urgent or red-hot leads can then get special treatment, like emails to set up calls or meetings, right away, and you can stop worrying that you won’t get to them after the show.

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