Picture the scene: You've just had a few succesful days at an expo or a trade show ; Plenty of enquiries, business cards, competition entries and contacts made. You're on a roll and ready to get down to picking up the phone and specifying the next step with your new aquaintances.

As you walk into the office on Monday morning, your enthusiasm for strengthening ties with new contacts begins to evaporate: your email inbox is overflowing, reports sit on your desk to read and it seems everyone wants a piece of you. Here's where you must decide to prioritize or lose the chance to work with some of the new contacts: Lose sales, lose market share, lose money invested in the expo/trade show.

Some of the contacts you made are decision makers and will quickly forget you if you fail to contact them THIS week. 

It's easy to drown in "busy work" and lose focus on the reason you attended the event in the first place.

Sound familiar? You're not alone. So how do you make the most of this situation? You could risk annoying a lot of colleagues by ignoring their requests all week, or you could take the bold step of engaging a professional lead generation/telemarketing company or person to help you. You could even take the chosen person with you to the event so they get a greater understanding of who you're coming into contact with.

It's really up to you what you do, and unless you want to join the ranks of those companies that threw their events budget out of the window, probably the most crucial work you'll do will be to assure that the people you met, obtained contact details for and spent time building rapport will actually hear from you again. You said you'd call again, you even fixed times with some.

Be as good as your word. Make it happen… or wonder what the competition will be selling to these contacts at your expense.

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photo credit: Tomás Fano