Lead Scanning Is Not Enough: Why Exhibitors Need Every Touchpoint at an Event
Ask exhibitors why they go to a trade fair, and the answer is almost always the same: to win new contacts that turn into business. For exhibitors, a trade fair is above all one thing: a lead management tool.
In practice, things often look different. Badges are scanned at the stand, business cards are exchanged in the aisles, meetings are arranged and chats are held via the event platform. After the event, these contacts are scattered across phones, inboxes and the Excel lists of individual employees. And if the very colleague who had 50 conversations falls ill after the trade fair, nobody knows who he talked to about what.
The problem is not the scanner. The problem is that classic lead scanning captures only a single moment: the one at the stand.
A lead has many possible origins
A lead is created whenever a person has a real touchpoint with your company. At an event, there are far more opportunities for this than just the scan at the stand:
- Badge scan: Someone comes to the stand or meets an employee in the aisle and gets scanned.
- Contact request via the profile: A participant clicks the contact button on the exhibitor profile and actively asks to be contacted.
- Masterclass applications (coming soon): Anyone who applies for an exhibitor's masterclass shows concrete interest.
- Meetings and chats (coming soon): Anyone who arranges a meeting via the platform or messages an employee also becomes a lead, and for the whole company, even if the chat takes place between two people.
- Business cards (coming soon): Classic cards should be capturable too, because they are still part of every trade fair.
In talque, these sources come together in one shared lead list per company. Today these are badge scans and contact requests, with the other sources to follow. Every lead shows how the first contact came about and who initiated it: the person themselves or an employee.
Every lead needs a responsible person
A list alone does not close a deal. What matters is that it is clear for every lead who takes care of it. That is why every lead is assigned to one person on the team.
How the assignment comes about depends on the touchpoint:
- With a chat or a meeting directly with an employee, it is clear: the employee who has the conversation is responsible.
- With a contact request via the profile, a meeting request via the exhibitor profile or a masterclass application, nobody is assigned at first, because the system cannot know who the right contact is.
- With a badge scan, there is deliberately no automatic assignment. At the stand, scanning is often done by stand staff or hosts, and they are rarely the right contacts for the follow-up.
The assignment can be changed at any time. A processing status shows your team whether a lead is still open, qualified or disqualified. Notes and activities form a timeline of what has happened with each contact. This way, the context is not lost even if a colleague is unavailable.
What are you allowed to do with a lead?
One point is often underestimated in lead management at events: consent. Depending on how a contact came about, different types of communication are permitted, such as a follow-up email, a phone call or being added to a newsletter.
talque therefore records for each lead which communication is permitted and saves every status change with a timestamp and the person who made it. This makes it traceable afterward on what basis your company contacted someone. If in doubt about whether and how you may approach a contact, you should still check with your data protection advisor. The system, however, makes sure the necessary information is documented.
After the event: review first, then the CRM
The obvious move would be to transfer all contacts straight into the CRM. In practice, that rarely makes sense. Not every lead from a trade fair belongs in the sales pipeline, and an unfiltered import quickly dilutes data quality.
That is why the starting point is a clean, complete table: the lead list can be exported with all statuses, assignments and consents. Your team then decides deliberately which contacts go into the CRM. A direct CRM integration and automated follow-up emails are planned as further expansion stages.
What this means for organizers
For organizers, this is more than a feature for exhibitors. The more touchpoints an event offers and captures, meaning badge scans, contact requests, masterclasses, meetings and chats, the more provable leads exhibitors take home. And provable success is the strongest argument for exhibitors to come back next year.
Conclusion
Classic lead scanning captures only the moment at the stand. Exhibitors who combine all touchpoints of an event, give every lead a responsible person and document consent properly take home far more usable contacts. This turns an event platform from a program booklet into a tool that helps exhibitors fulfill the real purpose of their participation: turning encounters into business.
Continue reading: How to use the lead list in talque, all your trade fair leads in one place.
