Unpopular opinion: everyone obsesses over the wrong metric at trade shows

I used to track total booth scans like they were gold, but after a show in Denver, I realized most were just people grabbing free pens. The real number to watch is qualified leads who book a follow-up call within a week. How do you filter out the junk data?

3 comments

3 Comments

caleb_ross121mo ago

How do you even start filtering that? Honestly, I feel this so hard because we wasted a whole quarter chasing those exact same pen-grabbers. The only thing that worked for us was asking a qualifying question right at the scan.

lopez.simon22d ago

Caleb, I had a buddy who ran into this same problem at his trade show booth. He started asking people what they were hoping to find at the show, right after they grabbed the pen. Turned out like half the people just wanted a pen (and free coffee, you know). The ones who actually answered with a specific product or problem ended up being legit leads.

shane6551mo ago

Man, that's a solid move. What kind of qualifying question did you land on? We tried a budget check early on but it just made the whole scan feel like an interrogation.