Why reach matters
Cover the whole event. Stand or no stand.
Event BDR places trained business development representatives inside an event to work it on your behalf. They find the buyers, investors and suppliers you came for, capture their details, and either bring them to your stand or book the meeting directly into your calendar. You pay a set price for each contact they bring back. It works whether you are exhibiting or simply attending, and it works at any event we cover. The category term for this is trade show lead generation; the difference is that the reps go and find people rather than waiting for them.
The problem, in three numbers
- 100,000 visitors at a flagship event.
- 240 conversations four people can have in three days.
- Under 1% of the event you reach on your own.
- Reps cover the rest, and you pay for what they bring back.
The arithmetic
The arithmetic nobody puts in the proposal
Four people, ten-hour days, half an hour per conversation, no breaks and nobody ever standing idle: that is about 240 conversations across three days. At a 100,000 visitor event it is under 1% of the people in the building.
That number does not change based on which country the event is in, and it does not improve with a better stand, a bigger screen or a louder giveaway. It is a limit on human hours, not on attention.
Stand or no stand, the numbers are the same, and they are hard:
Everything else in the budget is spent on that 1%. The stand build, the flights, the hotel nights and a week of senior selling time all buy a position most of the event walks past.
Two ways to use it
With a stand, or without one
The only lever that moves the percentage is more people having more conversations, and flying in more of your own is the most expensive way to pull it. What changes between the two cases is where the introduction happens, not what the reps do.
If you have a stand
Your team flew in to run the stand, and that is where they stay, selling to whoever walks up. Everyone else walks past. Reps go into the halls, find the people who match your brief, and walk them to your stand for the introduction while your team keeps selling to the people already in front of them.
Your stand stops being the limit of your reach, and nobody leaves it unattended to achieve that.
If you do not have a stand
Plenty of companies go to an event without exhibiting. The stand did not fit the budget, or the event was not worth the build, or the decision came too late. So two or three people fly in with a badge and a list of companies they hope to bump into, and spend three days walking. That works about as well as it sounds.
Without a stand there is nowhere for anyone to find you, so every conversation depends on you finding them first, and you are three people in a hall of thousands. Reps change that arithmetic. They cover the halls you cannot reach, qualify against your brief, and book meetings straight into your calendar, in the venue's meeting areas or at a time that suits.
You get the meetings an exhibitor gets, without the stand, the build, or the week of standing behind it. For a lot of companies this is the honest version of a first year at an event: go, meet the right people properly, and decide whether a stand is worth it next time on something better than a hunch.
Honest differentiation
What this is not
Four things Event BDR is regularly mistaken for. Each is a real purchase with a real use, and none of them does this job.
Not event staffing or promoters
Hostesses and promoters are paid by the hour to hand out material and draw attention to a stand. Useful, and a different job. Reps qualify against a commercial brief and are paid per outcome, so booth staffing and this are not competing purchases.
Not a lead capture app
A badge scanner records the people who already came to you. It cannot go and find anybody, which means it can only ever improve the record of the 1%.
Not an agency retainer
No monthly fee for a team whose activity you cannot see, and no invoice that stays the same whether the halls were busy or empty.
Not a contact list
Every contact is a real conversation a named rep had, logged with where it happened and what was discussed, which is also what makes it disputable if it does not match your brief.
Fit
Who this works for
Companies exhibiting outside their home market who cannot justify flying a full sales team. Companies with a stand who want the halls their own staff cannot physically reach. Companies attending without a stand who need the meetings anyway. Companies evaluating an event for the first time who want a real read on it before committing to stand space next year.
In each case the purchase is the same one: outsourced sales representatives who already work the city the event is in, booked for the days of the event and paid for what they bring back.
While you are there
Things on the ground that have nothing to do with reps
Clients often need something at the venue that is not a contact at all: a stand cleaned, print reordered overnight, coffee on the stand, a screen that failed on build-up day. Because we work these events already, we can arrange local suppliers we have checked, so you are not searching for a print shop in a city you do not know at nine at night. Ask when you book.
Supplier, and want to be on that list? Apply here.
The deliverable
What you get back
Contacts in your dashboard as they happen, each with the hall and stand it came from and a note on what was discussed. Meetings booked into your calendar for later the same day. CSV export and invoicing from the platform, and one account for your whole team rather than a file somebody emails around after the event.
You can act on a contact while the person is still in the building, which is the point of the whole arrangement.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a stand?
No. Reps work the halls either way. With a stand they bring the people they qualify to it and make the introduction. Without one, meetings are booked into your calendar or held in the venue's meeting areas, and the contact record reaches you exactly the same way.
We are only attending, not exhibiting. Is this still worth it?
That is often where it makes the most difference. Without a stand nobody can find you, so everything depends on you finding them, and a small team cannot cover a large event. Reps change how many people you can reach in the same three days.
Which events can we book?
Anything in the published events list. If the event you are attending is not on it, ask on the contact page: whether we can cover it depends on rep availability in that city rather than on the event itself.
Do reps represent our brand?
They work to your brief and introduce your company by name. How they present themselves, what they say about your product, and what they are allowed to commit to are agreed with you before the event rather than improvised in the hall.
What about language?
Reps are matched by the languages your buyers speak, alongside their industry background. That is decided per event, because the languages that matter at an event depend on who actually attends it.
How is this different from Corporate solutions?
This covers one event you are attending. Corporate builds a programme around an objective that is not tied to a single event: delegations, roadshows, market entry. If you know which event you are going to, you want this page.
Read next
Where to go from here
How the service runs once you book it, what it costs, and how to put a return against it that your finance team accepts.
Next step
Cover the halls your own team cannot reach.
Tell us the event and who you need to meet. We will come back with the reps available for it and what each contact will cost you.