You had a fantastic trade show. Beautiful booth, steady foot traffic, knowledgeable, engaging staffers who successfully captured lots of great leads. Fun was had by all and your plane even arrived home on time.

So now what? You may be surprised to learn that follow-up is where many companies drop the ball. After doing all that work to capture qualified leads, it’s commonly stated that as many as 80% those leads are never contacted after the show.

Here are seven successful trade show follow-up strategies to help you make the most of your trade show experience.

1. Classify all your leads, in order of importance, as soon as possible upon return and input the information into a database. Use a code that’s event specific so you can later tell where your prospects came from.

2. Write a script for the follow-up calls and keep the information you got from the visitor at the event handy. If possible, have a suggested solution ready to share in order to show that you listened to their needs during the show.

3. Contact the leads in order of importance. All leads should be contacted no later than 14 days after the event.

4. Book a meeting with everyone involved with the show as soon as possible after the event. Inform your team of the results and whether specific goals were met. Discuss what went well and what could be improved.

5. Ask everyone to write down his or her impressions of the event, or have an evaluation form ready.

6. If you had a staff contest during the show, hand out prizes at this meeting. You should also take the opportunity to give general feedback on how the staff behaved in the booth. Accentuate the positive. If someone’s performance was substandard, save that talk for a personal meeting.

7. Finally, document your conclusions and future recommendations in an event report. Include images of the booth, advertising and press materials. Collect all information in an event binder for future reference.