using your sales team. Conferences and tradeshows have a bad (ok, terrible) reputation for generating worthwhile leads - for good reason! Most tradeshow attendees are overwhelmed with the amount of activity and options at a show. They are bombarded with free giveaways to get them to give their names up. They sign up for everything for freebies, regardless of whether they care about the product or not. It's not the fault of tradeshows, the responsibility for lead generation falls to the attendees, who have to carefully think through the whole lead generation process (including prior preparation and post-event follow through) on how to generate real business from the event. You need a process that emphasizes quality of leads over quantity of names. The Event Team Who is the person responsible for lead generation for this specific event? Who is the "event sales team"? (Who are the sales reps/people doing the work?) It's best to have a consistent team of people for the entire process: preparation, execution at the event, and follow through. How is success going to be measured? This is never about the number of names logged at an event. Is it the numbers of leads qualified within 2-4 weeks? Is it qualified pipeline generated after 1-3 months? Closed business over the next 2-6 months? Phase 1: Preparation Research as much as you can to shape a list of who and which companies are attending. Preferably do this at least 3-4 weeks in advance, because you will need more lead time than you think. Review and really prioritize the list. Go for quality over quantity: it's better to target fewer, better-fit companies. Have the event sales team prospect in and make initial contact to research the targets: Do they have a current competitive system? Who are the right decision makers to target?