A greenhouse climate control company in Venlo came back from GreenTech in the RAI Amsterdam with around four hundred badge scans, a few dozen business cards with notes scribbled on the back, and three sales engineers who were due on customer sites in Westland and Spain the following Monday. A month later, fewer than a hundred of those contacts had heard from the company, and several of the growers who had asked about a specific controller at the stand had already had a demonstration from a competitor.
The businesses in this article are illustrative examples, not named StartAutomate clients.
Key takeaways
- Trade fair leads cool quickly, and most companies follow up only a fraction of them personally.
- An AI agent can call every contact within days of the fair, ask what they were interested in, and book meetings with the right sales engineer.
- It calls business contacts who gave their details at the stand, and it respects anyone who asks not to be contacted.
Why fair leads go cold
A badge scan records that somebody stopped at the stand, not why. Sales teams sort the cards they remember and plan to work through the rest after the backlog from the week away is cleared, which in practice means they rarely do.
The growers and installers who visited are meanwhile meeting other suppliers from the same fair, and the ones with a real project in mind usually act within a few weeks.
Calling every contact within days
The agent calls each contact in the days after the fair in whichever language they used at the stand, reminds them which part of the stand they stopped at, and asks whether there is a real project behind the visit or just curiosity about the new controller.
It asks the questions a sales engineer would ask, such as the size of the greenhouse, the crop, the current climate system, and the timing of any renovation, and it books a video call or site visit with the engineer who covers that country.
Handing warm leads to sales
Every call is written back to the CRM, whether that is HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics or Exact, with the notes and a clear next step. Contacts who are not ready get a follow-up date rather than a place on a newsletter list they never asked for.
The sales engineers start their first week back with a calendar of meetings with growers who said they had a project, which is a better week than one spent dialling badge scans.
B2B consent and objections
Business contacts who handed over their details at a stand to discuss a product can generally be called about that product, but a company's own number may be registered in the Bel-me-niet Register, and anyone who asks not to be called again must not be. The agent says it is a digital assistant at the start, as the EU AI Act requires, and records objections immediately.
Contacts from other European countries are called according to their own country's rules, which the company should confirm before the fair rather than after it.
Common questions
Can AI follow up trade fair leads?
Yes. It calls contacts after the fair, asks about their interest and projects, and books meetings with your sales team, recording everything in your CRM.
Can it call in several languages?
Yes. It can call in Dutch, English, German, Spanish and other languages your visitors speak.
Is it allowed to call trade fair contacts?
Business contacts who gave details to discuss your product can generally be called about it, subject to the Bel-me-niet Register for businesses and each country's rules. Anyone who objects is not called again.