More B2B companies are doubling down on in-person events. According to the 2025 State of Events and Industry Benchmarks report, 66% of organizers plan to host more in-person experiences this year— up from 42% the year before. Half of attendees agree that B2B conferences offer the best networking opportunities. The investment is clear, the intent is there, and the crowds are showing up.
Yet for all this activity, most organizations struggle to convert event attendance into actual pipeline revenue. The problem isn’t a lack of conversations— it’s the gap between making connections and closing deals. That gap comes down to three critical friction points: speed, organization, and timing.
Sales reps engage in dozens of promising discussions throughout a conference. But when the event ends, details blur, follow-ups get delayed, and hot leads cool off before anyone can act. By the time a generic email lands in a prospect’s inbox days later, the moment— and often the opportunity— has passed.
The solution isn’t attending fewer events or having fewer conversations. It’s building systems that convert moments into momentum. That means mastering brief interactions, engineering seamless follow-through, and scaling what works into a repeatable event-to-revenue engine. Get those three elements right, and every handshake becomes a potential closed deal.
Make Every Five-Minute Window Count
At most conferences, you have less than five minutes before your prospect heads to their next session or gets pulled into another conversation. That compressed window feels like a sprint, but it’s enough time to create a meaningful connection…if you’re prepared.
Preparation starts before you arrive. Research the attendee list, identify priority accounts, and know which decision-makers you want to meet. Walk in with a hypothesis about their business challenges, not just a pitch deck in your back pocket. The reps who convert best at events are generally those who’ve done their homework on who’s in the room.
Resist the urge to pitch during the conversation. Instead, lead with insight. Share an observation tied directly to their role or industry. Ask questions that reveal intent and urgency, like “what’s driving this conversation for you right now?” Listen for budget signals, timeline clues, and whether they’re exploring solutions or just browsing.
Most importantly, don’t trust your memory when you’re juggling ten conversations in an afternoon. Capture the context of each conversation as you go, whether via a notes app, voice memo, or CRM mobile entry to log details on the spot. You can even exchange and store contact information instantly using digital business cards (DBC) or QR codes. No more transcribing illegible handwriting or chasing down lost cards.
Build Systems That Bridge Conversations to Close
After a single event, you’re managing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of leads, each with different levels of interest, urgency, and fit. Without a system, even your best conversations get lost in the noise.
Any delay comes with a cost as event leads cool off quickly. A prospect who was engaged on Tuesday morning is fielding ten other vendor follow-ups by Wednesday afternoon. By Friday, they’ve moved on.
That’s why what happens after the handshake determines whether you close the deal. The infrastructure for follow-up needs to be as intentional as your booth strategy. Sync captured contact data directly into your CRM so it’s accessible to your entire team instantly. Set up automated workflows that trigger based on lead quality. Hot prospects can get a calendar invite within hours, while lower-intent contacts enter a nurture sequence.
Personalization at scale is the key. Generic “great to meet you” emails don’t work anymore. Reference the specific challenge they mentioned, the timeline they shared, or the question they asked. While technology makes it possible to pull that context from your CRM notes and embed it into templated outreach without manual copying and pasting, the content still needs to feel human.
Lastly, follow the 24-hour rule. Immediate, contextual outreach outperforms batch email campaigns every time. And segment aggressively: hot prospects who asked about pricing deserve different treatment than attendees who stopped by your booth out of curiosity.
Digital tools should enhance connection, not replace it. Know how to use automation to deliver the follow-through your best conversations deserve.
Create Your Event-to-Revenue Engine
The difference between teams that convert and teams that don’t comes down to whether they’ve built systems to extract value from every interaction. Consider auditing your current approach by examining where your leads are falling through the cracks. Is your team capturing context in real time? Do your follow-up playbooks reflect actual conversations? If the answers reveal gaps, pick one systematic change and implement it fully.
Every conversation at an event has revenue embedded in it. The only question is whether your system is designed to extract it.
Ravi Pratap Maddimsetty is the co-founder and CTO of Uniqode, responsible for all technology strategy, product innovation and engineering execution. Ravi likes to describe himself as a compulsive technologist with roots in the Linux/open-source world. Before founding Uniqode, Ravi spent four years at Washington D.C.-based technology startup Hillcrest Labs as a manager in its software products group. Prior to Hillcrest, Ravi was with Morgan Stanley in New York as an associate in its technology group. Ravi holds a master’s degree in computer science from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.
