# Trade Show Lead Kit — Exhibitor Guide

> Folder: `trade-show-lead-kit` · Category: scenario kits · 2–6 booth team · 30 min per show day · offline + online · print props · scenario kit
> License: CC BY 4.0

A booth is a lead furnace with a leak: heat all day, and most of it escapes the moment you stop looking at it. This kit closes the loop — a stand card with a QR that never dies, three qualifying questions every booth human can ask without thinking, an end-of-day triage that takes fifteen minutes, and a 48-hour follow-up with owners and dates. Built for trade shows, conferences and expos — anywhere the business card is still the currency and the pile still goes unread.

## Objectives

By the end of the show, the booth team will have:

1. Every conversation routed into one place — a single scan, not a pocket full of cards — with contact, context and the one thing they cared about attached.
2. A triaged lead list the night before the show ends: A (call before Monday), B (nurture with a date), C (thank and close) — decided by two humans, not by whoever collected them.
3. A 48-hour follow-up already written, split by tier, with names on it — plus the numbers for the post-show report: scans, A-count, meetings booked.

## When to use this kit

- You exhibit more than once a year and the business-card bowl still dies in a drawer afterward.
- Your booth staff range from "great with strangers" to "physically pained by strangers" and you need one play that works for both.
- Lead-capture scanners get rented per event at $200–500 a device — and you have three events and a spreadsheet.

## The economics, honestly

- Vendor lead-retrieval hardware prices per event, per device; the rental is often more than a year of a QR hosting subscription. This kit assumes the cheap stack: a printed stand, a dynamic QR, one form.
- The QR on a printed sign has one fatal flaw — static codes die when the link changes. The kit's answer is a code that points at a page you can edit after the print shop is closed (the folder's QRCard block); if you won't host anything, print fresh stands each show and accept the waste.
- Most leads are lost to speed, not to fit. The 48-hour rule is the whole game; everything else is preparation for it.

## Setup

**Space:** the booth — one stand card at the counter, one at the demo table; a quiet corner for the end-of-day huddle.

**Materials per booth human:** one badge or lanyard card with their personal QR (name + the form), a pen, the three qualifying questions memorized (they are on the card faces, not in a binder).

**Materials for the stand:** printed stand cards from `trade-show-lead-kit-prop-cards.pdf` (QR faces) sized A5 or table-top; the lead form live and tested on the show floor Wi-Fi, not just on hotel Wi-Fi.

**Grouping:** 2–6 booth humans on shift; more staff than that needs a shift rota, not a bigger huddle.

**Roles:** greeter (opens, qualifies, routes), demo host (deep conversations, scans), closer (books the meeting, owns the A-list). One person can hold two roles at a small booth; nobody holds all three during a busy hour.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | What you do | The booth team does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before the show | Set the loop | Build the form (5 fields max: name, email, company, the one thing, next step). Test the QR on the floor network. Print stands and badges. | Memorize the three qualifying questions; agree what an A lead is, in writing. |
| 0–15 each morning | Shift huddle | Name the day's one goal (meetings booked, not cards collected). Assign the three roles. | Walk the booth once as a visitor: is the stand readable from the aisle? |
| During the day | The loop | Every conversation ends in one scan — theirs. The form carries the context; nobody collects paper. | Ask the three questions; scan; if they hesitate, offer the badge QR instead of the stand. |
| 15 each evening | Triage | Two humans, one screen, fifteen minutes: every lead gets A/B/C and a next action. | Defend your A's out loud; the second pair of eyes is the point. |
| Within 48 h | Follow-up | Tiered messages go out with names on them. A gets a call, B a dated invite, C a thank-you. | Book meetings before inboxes refill; log the numbers for the report. |

## The card deck

Use the faces from `trade-show-lead-kit-prop-cards.pdf`: a master card (the loop in one view), the booth-roles card, the three qualifying questions card, the scan SOP card (what a good lead record looks like), the 48-hour triage card, and a watch-out card — plus branded backs and blanks for your product-specific prompts.

## Failure modes

1. **The card bowl.** Paper cards collected all week, dumped into one inbox Monday, dead by Friday. Rescue: one scan per conversation or nothing happened — the bowl is banned at the huddle, out loud, day one.
2. **Everyone is an A lead.** The collector grades generously; the funnel drowns. Rescue: triage is two humans and a written definition of A; the collector never triages alone.
3. **The dead QR.** A printed code pointing at a changed link, a form that works on hotel Wi-Fi and dies on the floor. Rescue: dynamic codes only, and a day-one floor-network test before doors.
4. **Monday's silence.** 48 hours pass, the show becomes a memory, the leads become cold. Rescue: follow-up texts are drafted during triage, not after; the A-list gets called before the deck gets written.

## Variations

- **One-person booth:** greeter and demo host are you; triage becomes a same-evening solo pass against the written A definition, and the closer role is a calendar block before breakfast.
- **Conference speaker:** the stand is the slide footer; the scan is one QR on the last slide; triage happens on the plane home.
- **Open-house / local event:** the same loop at kitchen scale — one stand, one form, five A's to call this week.
- **Online:** the loop survives — QR becomes link, huddle becomes a shared doc, triage becomes a 15-minute screen-share.

## Facilitation notes

- Say the goal in meetings, not scans: "eight conversations that end in a date" beats "many leads".
- The three qualifying questions are the script; let people keep their own words — what must not vary is the third question.
- Photograph the empty card bowl at the end of day one. Show it at the next huddle. Objects argue better than speeches.
- The post-show report is three numbers: scans, A-count, meetings booked. If a number needs explaining, fix the loop, not the sentence.

## Put it on the wall

Print `trade-show-lead-kit-activity-poster.pdf` (A3): the loop, the roles, the triage definitions, the watch-outs — for the prep room wall and the hotel desk the night before.

## Props in this folder

- `trade-show-lead-kit-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): master, booth roles, qualifying questions, scan SOP, 48-hour triage, watch-out, branded backs and blanks
- `trade-show-lead-kit-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this guide + the post-show review, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks (`-Letter.pdf` is US Letter)
- `trade-show-lead-kit-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole loop on one A3 wall sheet
- `trade-show-lead-kit-guide.md` · `-debrief.md` · `-start-here.md` — the exhibitor guide, the post-show review sheet, the one-page start here
- `trade-show-lead-kit-license.md` — what you may do
- `SKILL.md` · `trade-show-lead-kit.zip` — the machine-readable manifest, and the whole folder in one download

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the card deck, the review sheet and this guide with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`), or build the lead form from the five fields in the Setup section. The paper version needs a booth, a printer and a show-floor network. Keep the triage two-person; a solo grader is how every lead becomes an A.