Follow-Up Strategies After Events

There is one stat that drives me completely nuts. And it’s been around for over a decade. 80% of exhibitors don’t follow up on leads. The first time I heard it, it was in a CEIR research (great research). In the context of sales and marketing, Gartner talked about it, and so did Hubspot. Why would you sponsor or exhibit at a very expensive event without following up? Many reasons. The idea that real business comes from somewhere else (crazy). People whose job is not to be at events, nor to follow up (lame).  Over-reliance on notes instead of automation (it’s 2025). No proper lead retrieval system (🤦♂️). But most of all: Lack of an engagement strategy BEFORE attending the event. Pipeline generation is fantastic, but pipeline alone doesn’t pay rent. Some snippets from a recent project I worked on: Strong lead-capturing device (unified) AI tech to grab the conversation AI scoring of the conversation Automatic push to Salesforce/Hubspot Drip campaign based on funnel stage Soft touch for low intent Demo/Sales call for high intent High rewards for immediate follow-up Comments to this post will tell you what more you can do. Because there is more. A lot more.

6 Follow Up Templates That Keep Networking Conversations Alive: 1. The Value-First Follow Up Aim to add value to an initiative you know they're working on: "Hi Sarah, saw your company just announced the new product launch. I came across this article on similar launches in your industry. Thought it might spark some ideas for your marketing strategy. Hope the launch prep is going smoothly!" 2. The Specific Question Angle Asking specific questions shows credibility and can get you info you can use to add value: "Hey David, been thinking about our coffee chat last week. You mentioned struggling with team retention in H2. Have you tried implementing "retention interviews" yet? I saw 3 companies in tech reduce turnover by 40% using them, here's a link to that data." 3. The Introduction Offer Networking is hard (as you know!). Offering to make an intro is a great way to add value to two people: "Hi Jessica, following up from our chat. You mentioned needing a UI/UX designer for that new AI feature. My former colleague Anna just went freelance and she's brilliant. She redesigned our entire app in 6 weeks last year. Happy to make an intro if you're still looking!" 4. The Industry Update Hook Leveraging a shift in the market or industry can be a great way to spark a follow up conversation: "Hey Marcus, did you see [Company]'s new Slack-free hours announcement? It directly impacts what we discussed about interrupted work and team output. Could be something worth looking into for your team?" 5. The Achievement Celebration Everyone loves to be recognized for their achievements. Be that person! "Lisa! Just saw you got promoted to VP on LinkedIn. I remember you mentioned being in an interview process when we met for coffee. I know how stressed you were about the interview with the C-Level. Looks like you crushed it! Would love to hear about your new role if you're up for a chat in the next week or two." 6. The Resource Share Sharing resources aligned with your contact's needs is one of the best ways to stay top of mind: "Hi Tom, I know you'd mentioned how much time your sales team was spending on pre-qualification. A connection of mine just shared an AI automation flow that solves for that exact problem. He said it's saved his team 15+ hours per week and led to more sales. I grabbed a copy if you'd like to see it. Just let me know!" —— ➕ Follow Austin Belcak for more 🔵 Ready to land your dream job? Click here to learn more about how we help people land amazing jobs in ~3.5 months with a $44k raise: https://lnkd.in/gdysHr-r

I attend 30+ data and AI conferences every year, and for the longest time, outreach was complete chaos. Spreadsheets everywhere, notes scattered across tools, follow-ups slipping through, and the worst part was sending generic emails that got ignored. It did not matter how many events I attended, the system just did not scale. So I rebuilt everything inside Airtable. I created a simple but structured system with conferences, sponsors, and contacts all connected in one place. Now I could actually see who I met, where, and what needed to happen next. That alone made things cleaner, but it still required a lot of manual work. The real shift happened when I connected it with Claude. Now I start my workflow in Claude. It pulls context directly from my Airtable base, understands the sponsors I am targeting, the events I am attending, and the history of interactions. Then it goes out, does research on each company, looks at what they have recently announced, and brings back insights that actually matter. From there, it writes everything back into Airtable. New sponsor ideas get added. Outreach emails are drafted with real context. Follow-ups are created automatically based on status. Everything stays structured, tracked, and easy to act on. The biggest change for me is I am no longer jumping between tools or starting from scratch every time. I think in Claude, execute in Airtable, and then go back to Claude to refine messaging or strategy. That back and forth is what makes this powerful. This is how I now manage conference partnerships at scale. Not by adding more tools, but by connecting the right ones in a way that actually works. Learn more about it here – https://lnkd.in/gFCDbR7T #airtablepartner #data #ai #claude #theravitshow

I do these 6 steps after each conference. A friend asked what to do to not lose all the great learning after a conference? Returning from IAPP #PSR24 got me thinking so here's what I do! - I reach out to my new connections on LinkedIn. - I say great to see you with existing privacy peeps I saw! - I set up follow-up meetings to dive deeper. - I summarize my notes to consolidate key takeaways. - I share insights with my team & clients —teaching reinforces learning. - I choose 2-3 actionable strategies to implement over the next month. ✍ What do you do to keep the learning going?

🚨 📖 Final output this year: I am thrilled to present the summary report from our summer symposium “Reckoning with AI Agents”, co-authored with Amy A. Ross Arguedas and Linda Eggert. ➡ https://lnkd.in/epYT7NAq This May, Linda and I brought together an eclectic bunch of experts, academics and practitioners at Balliol College, University of Oxford to discuss what we should make of AI agents: what they are, what they mean for the world for work, how they should be governed, and what we should think about them in the context of information, news, and democracy. Funded by the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute and supported by Amy as our rapporteur and Michelle Disser, we had Rahul Santhanam (Oxford Computer Science), Jonathan Hvithamar Rystrøm Rystrøm (OII), Gill Whitehead (NatWest), Adam Mahdi (OII), Scott Hale (OII), Chris Moran (The Guardian), and Zeynep Pamuk (DPIR Oxford) as impulse givers and people from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, OII, the Financial Times, the Faculty of Law at Oxford, Said Business School, Stanford University, BOOM, Scroll India, the AP, the BBC, City University of London, Big Brother Watch, the Financial Conduct Authority, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, El Diario, the Institute for Ethics in AI, TechUK, PoolDeck and a number of others in independent capacity as discussants. It turned out to be a day of lively discussions. Our report (which should not be read as a piece of research!) summarises the main themes that emerged during the symposium and outlines a list of open questions to address in future work Some key takeaways: - AI agents at their most basic are capable of acting in (and reacting to) the world around them, executing complex tasks without human intervention. - Agents have a long history and exist on a spectrum with variable degrees of autonomy, efficacy, goal complexity, and generality - The usefulness of AI agents derives in large part from their autonomy, but with greater usefulness tends to come greater risk. - A lot of the discourse about agentic AI is currently clouded by marketing and hype (but there is some real progress underneath) and they are already being used formally and informally across sectors like government, finance and healthcare. - The growing role of AI (and potentially AI agents) as news and information intermediaries extends existing concerns about how the changing media environment may harm democratic life. However, there are also opportunities in providing people with access to information in new and better ways and to strengthen democratic life. Many, many thanks to to all attendees for their great contributions. Daniel Patiño Quintana deserves a special mention for the terrific layout and graphic design. ➡️ Find the full report here online and as a PDF: https://lnkd.in/epYT7NAq

The difference between good and great performers isn't avoiding mistakes - it's what they do immediately after. Here’s the 3-step sequence I teach NFL players: I’ll break this one down with a quick story… I had an NFL quarterback who came to me 5 games into the season. High expectations, but he was making more mistakes than he or his team wanted. His arm was fine. His reads were solid. But if he made a mistake – that's when things got messy. After he threw an interception, missed a completion, or made any kind of bad play… He'd get stuck in his head, replay the mistake, and become self-critical. And that mental noise would carry into the next play, the next drive, sometimes the entire game. So we built a simple system: Release-Reset-Refocus. Release: A quick physical motion to let go of the mistake. For him, it was a subtle hand flick - literally releasing the error into the past where it belonged. Reset: One deep breath to return to the present moment. Not dwelling on what went wrong, but coming back to baseline. Refocus: Immediately engage with what's next. Get back in the huddle, call the next play. During hurry-up situations, he'd clap his hands and jog to whatever was next. The whole sequence took maybe 10 seconds. But it kept one mistake from turning into five. I recently adapted this same framework for a CEO during fundraising season. When he said something in a pitch he wasn't happy with – release by jotting a quick note, reset by returning to his core message themes, refocus by making eye contact and delivering the next line. The beauty of this system isn't that it prevents mistakes. It prevents mistakes from cascading. Most high-performers know how to work hard. But few consciously know how to bounce back systematically when things don't go as planned. You can't just grind through every mistake. You need a system for moving past them. Because in high-stakes environments, it's not the mistake that gets you. It's the spiral that follows. What's your go-to method for bouncing back from setbacks?

“I never lose. I either win or I learn.” It’s a quote from Nelson Mandela we hear everywhere in sport. But the truth is… learning from a loss is not easy. Losing hurts. It frustrates you. Sometimes it stays in your head for hours or even days. Every player experiences it. Even the best players in the world lose matches. Many of them. So the real difference between players is not who loses and who doesn’t. It’s what they do after the loss. Over the years, I’ve noticed something very clear with the players I’ve worked with. There are two types of players: Those who just lose and those who learn how to win from their defeats. The biggest progress I’ve seen in players’ careers often came right after losses. Why? Because those moments force you to ask the right questions. But before asking questions, you must do one thing first: Get rid of excuses. No blaming the weather, the court, bad luck… Take full responsibility. Then start analyzing the match. Ask yourself: If I had to play the same player tomorrow, what would I change? What was my original tactical plan? How did I win my points? How did I lose them? Did I actually apply my winning patterns during the pressure points? And if not… why? Then look at the mental side. Was I in control of my emotions? Was I clear about my goals before the match? Did I follow them throughout the match? Did I speak to myself the way I planned to? When you answer those questions honestly, something powerful happens. You turn frustration into information, information gives you corrections and corrections create progress. That’s why some players improve after a loss… while others keep repeating the same mistakes. #tennis #TennisAnalysis #Coaching #PlayerDevelopment #MentalStrength #Mindset #TheCoach

I do dozens of interviews with top CMOs every year. I always ask what the best performing marketing channel is. And right now everyone is saying events. Post COVID events are back, but also now in an AI world, I think there's a stronger appetite to get out and connect with real people vs. just getting answers from ChatGPT. But: like anything in marketing, running events just because everyone else is doing them is a great way to set money on fire (and still not drive any incremental business). Whether it's a booth at a trade show. A VIP dinner. A 500-person conference. They can all work. They can all flop. The difference: having a real plan and strategy for that event going in. Why do it in the first place? (which continues to be the most important lesson in marketing - what's in it for me? what's the hook? why should people come to our thing?) We talked to two event experts on the Exit Five pod recently Stephanie Christensen and Kristina DeBrito — and here are 5 keys they shared for B2B event success: 1. Pick the right format. Not all events do the same job. Big splash? Go flagship. Want pipeline? Try VIP roundtables. Tiny budget? Host micro-events around existing conferences. Set real goals. 2. “Leads” are not enough anymore. Are you driving awareness? Accelerating deals? Generating pipeline? Define this upfront—or you’ll waste time measuring the wrong stuff. There are more metrics than just "did we get leads from this event" and in today's world leads are tablestalkes. 3. Align your team, bro. Sales and marketing must move in lockstep. Slack alerts for registrations. Sales meeting updates. Leaderboards. It all matters. This is a team effort. 4. Make it memorable. People forget panels. They remember custom pancakes and great venues. Was the food good? Did the WiFi work? Did Oprah show up? Just kidding. Making sure you'r reading. But think surprise and delight, not branded frisbees. 5. Put the work in on the follow up. Events don't close deals - follow-up does. Segment attendees. Create custom offers. Babysit the handoff to sales like your job depends on it. Because it does. You just went shopping and got all these fresh groceries - dont let them spoil. B2B buyers want real connection again. Events can create that. Are you feeling this desire for events? Are you doing events in your business right now? Let me know...

A lot of the value of attending or speaking at a conference doesn’t come from being there. It comes from what you do afterwards. How many times have you come back from a conference or event and thought, “I should’ve done more to maximize that experience”? Not just attending the sessions or showing up at the networking receptions, but turning it into something meaningful for your visibility, your relationships and your business development efforts. Me too 🙋🏼♀️ It’s easy to get caught up in our busy lives, especially after returning from a conference and then move on to the next thing without following up. What you proactively do after the event is what can turn conversations into relationships and visibility into opportunity. Here are some ways to make the most of attending your next conference: ✔️ Prioritize the people you met and follow up with context on LinkedIn or by email, referencing your conversation and suggesting a clear next step ✔️ Follow up with organizers to share feedback and express interest in speaking or getting involved in future programming ✔️ Turn your conference notes into key takeaways and share them as content (LinkedIn post, blog post or short video) connected to your work, your clients or what you’re seeing in the market ✔️ Host your own webinar to recap key themes and extend the conversation ✔️ Interview speakers or attendees whose perspectives stood out and use that content in a webinar, blog post or on social media ✔️ Host an internal recap to share key insights and connect them to your team’s work ✔️ Turn questions or conversations from the event into content or targeted outreach ✔️ Share insights from the event in an email newsletter ✔️ Add relevant new contacts to your email list so you can stay visible with them ✔️ Create a simple system to stay in touch with the people who matter most ✔️ Review the attendee list and reach out to people you didn’t meet ✔️ Follow up with speakers you admired, even if you didn’t connect in person ✔️ Identify one trend or theme you kept hearing across conversations and proactively share that perspective with clients or colleagues You already put in the time and energy to be there. This is how you carry that momentum forward. Which of these ideas resonated most with you? #LegalMarketing #ClientDevelopment #LinkedInTips #BusinessDevelopment #PersonalBrandingTips

𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: 𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 As a sport psychologist, I often talk to athletes about coping with negative emotions following an error (e.g., dropped ball, misplaced pass, or a missed penalty), and how their reaction to mistakes is very important. It is important that athletes (and people) don't dwell on mistakes when they are still in the performance situation - reflection can occur later - and manage their emotions quickly to continue performing so that one mistake does not impact the remainder of the performance. This allows them to prepare for the next play or involvement. This video highlights why this is so important - Ronaldo fails to score from a free kick, outside the box, and within a matter of seconds, he has another opportunity to score. If athletes dwell too on a mistake or a setback and don't cope effectively with negative emotions, they may not be ready for their next opportunity. I have researched coping and coping effectiveness among elite athletes for over twenty years, but this is the first time I have considered the speed at which a person can alleviate negative emotions to be critical. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴? Coping strategies used to regulate emotional distress during a stressful episode are considered emotion-focused coping strategies (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). 4️⃣ 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗡𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 1️⃣ Recognise how you feel after a stressful incident (i.e., lost point, poor shot, or wrong call from an official). 2️⃣ Accept this feeling. 3️⃣ Deploy an appropriate emotion-focused coping strategy. This will depend on what has happened and the time available to cope, but it could include any of the following:  🌬️ Deep Breathing 🖼️ Re-evaluate or reframe the situation 🙂 Forgive yourself for a mistake 💬 Engage in self-talk 👥 Seek social support 4️⃣ Generate a challenge state to create a positive emotion. Research has shown that challenge states can cause positive emotions (Thompson et al., 2020). Do this by: Focus on what you want to happen during the next point or next play and how you will achieve this. Reference. Mark Thompson PhD, John Toner, John Perry, Rachel Burke, PhD, & Adam Nicholls. (2020). Stress appraisals influence athletic performance and psychophysiological response during 16.1 km cycling time trials. Psychology of Sport & Exercise, (2020), 101682.