We came back from TechSparks with 160 contacts. Three days later, the rep had stopped following up.
I noticed it Wednesday afternoon. No CRM activity. I messaged him - casually, not to accuse. He replied in two sentences. He could not figure out who was real. He had moved on to other things.
I pulled up the list.
He was right.
Half the contacts had no notes. No qualification questions, no lead rating, nothing. Just a name, a company, a badge scan. Some were duplicates - two rows for the same person, neither with useful information. At least twenty had scanned at our prize draw and kept walking. I recognised a few of them from the floor. They had worked every booth with a game or a gift. Mine included.
The problem did not start in the CRM. It started at the booth.
We had run a game that day. Good foot traffic. Long lines. The sales team looked busy. Nobody asked a single qualifying question. Scan, spin, collect the prize, move on. The game was designed to attract people. It did exactly that. It attracted people.
What it did not do was earn a conversation. We finished day one with 90 scans and not a single note about what any of them actually did, what they were buying, or whether they had a problem we could help with. Just names and company logos.
The rep's job was to follow up. Follow up on what, exactly? A row in a spreadsheet with a job title, a company name, and a LinkedIn URL. No context. No note. Just data a badge scanner collected in two seconds.
The rep did not fail the follow-up. The booth failed the rep.
I had designed the booth for a number, not a list. A high scan count was something I could put in the debrief deck. TechSparks delivered. Here is the proof. The CMO would move on to the next question.
The rep's silence was the honest debrief I had not scheduled.