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How an industrial equipment maker turned its trade shows into $5.1M of pipeline.
Skillfi scored every event, booked booth meetings before the doors opened and made sure every lead got a follow-up within 48 hours. It's how our fractional marketing service turns event spend into measurable pipeline.
$400,000 a year on booths, and no idea what it returned.
Trade shows were the company's biggest marketing investment: six events a year where plant and operations leaders from food, beverage and pharma came to see machines in action. The booths looked great. What happened after them was a mystery.
Shows were chosen by habit. Meetings were mostly whoever walked past the booth. Badge scans went into a spreadsheet, and around 60% were never followed up at all. Nobody could say which events produced deals, so every year the budget was simply renewed.
We'd come home from a show with a stack of badge scans and no idea which ones mattered.
Head of Marketing, client
Treat every show like a campaign, not a booth.
The real work of a trade show happens in the six weeks before and the 48 hours after. We built a repeatable playbook around both, with follow-up sequences on marketing automation and every lead and meeting tracked to pipeline in the company's CRM.
Shows chosen by score, not habit
An event scoring model based on audience fit, past results and cost per meeting. Two low-value shows were cut and the budget moved to the ones that worked.
Meetings booked before the doors open
Pre-show outreach to target accounts by email, LinkedIn and sales calls, with booth meetings and live demo slots booked in advance.
Every lead, within 48 hours
A lead capture app with qualification notes, follow-up sequences by lead tier, and pipeline reported for every show.
One events cycle, step by step
From six shows chosen by habit to a focused events program that reports pipeline. Here's how the year unfolded.
- Month 1$400K reviewed
Events audit
We reviewed every show's cost, audience and what little lead data existed, and traced past deals back to events where we could.
- Month 1–22 shows cut
Scoring model & calendar
Every event scored on audience fit, past results and cost per meeting, and the calendar rebuilt around the best performers.
- Month 248-hr sequences
Lead capture & follow-up setup
A lead app for the booth team, lead tiers agreed with sales and follow-up sequences built for each tier.
- 6 weeks outTarget list per show
Pre-show outreach
A target account list for each show, personal invites from sales and booth meetings booked before arrival.
- Show week3x pre-booked
Booth meetings & demos
A full meeting calendar, live demos by appointment and a daily debrief so hot leads reached sales the same day.
- Month 12$5.1M pipeline
Year in review
Pipeline and cost per meeting reported for every show, and next year's calendar built on the results.
Four stages for every show
The same playbook runs for every event, so the team knows exactly what happens six weeks out, on the floor and the morning after.
Fill the calendar
- Target account list
- Personal invites from sales
- Meetings & demo slots booked
Capture & qualify
- Qualification in a lead app
- Live demos by appointment
- Daily team debrief
Follow up fast
- Sequences by lead tier
- Meeting recap & next step
- Top leads called within a day
Prove the return
- Pipeline per show
- Cost per qualified meeting
- Keep, change or cut
The first full events cycle
Pre-booked booth meetings per show
Three times as many qualified conversations booked before the show even started.
Now we walk into a show with the week already booked, and every lead is followed up before we're back in the office.
VP of Sales, clientBig event spend, little to show for it?
Our fractional marketing team will score your events, fill your booth calendar before the show and follow up every lead with marketing automation. Want help booking meetings with target accounts? Our outbound sales team can run pre-show outreach.
- An event scoring model & calendar
- Pre-show outreach & booked meetings
- Lead capture & 48-hour follow-up
- Pipeline reporting for every show
30 minutes. No obligation.
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