Just realized the trade show booth metric we all chase is backwards

At the Minneapolis B2B expo last March, our team spent $18,000 on a booth with live demos and fancy lighting, but the real leads came from me sitting at a folding table in the hallway answering questions about our API. Everyone measures foot traffic or scanned badges, but those numbers don't tell you who actually reads your follow-up email or picks up the phone when you call. Has anyone else found that the best conversations happen outside the booth, or is our industry just overvaluing the wrong data?

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jamie7942d ago

Last year at the Chicago event, I spent 14 hours on my feet by the demo table and got maybe 10 real conversations, but the 3 deals that closed all came from someone who grabbed me during a coffee break near the escalator. The badge scanner data ended up being pure noise too, half the people who scanned never even opened our first email. You're spot on about the hallway thing, I'm starting to think the expo floor is just a really expensive backdrop for the real work.