Skip to content

Free GTM Skills / Events

Event playbook

Run a trade show, conference, dinner or webinar as a pipeline play: choose the event, book meetings before it starts, qualify and capture on site, follow up within days, and report what it produced in leads, meetings and pipeline. Use when a B2B company is deciding which events to attend or sponsor, is going to one and has no plan, came back with a stack of badges and nothing logged, or says trade show, conference, booth, we're exhibiting, event follow up, which events should we do, webinar or was that event worth it. Works on its own; the ICP card and outbound sequence make the targeting and follow-up faster.

By Matt Santos, BOM Growth. Free under the MIT license.

Install

npx skills add BOM-Growth/b2b-gtm-skills --skill event-playbook

Run it in your project folder, then ask Claude Code for event-playbook by name or in your own words.

skills/event-playbook/SKILL.mdView on GitHub

Goal: every event the company spends money or days on comes back with a number: leads captured, qualified, meetings held, pipeline created, and a decision on whether to go again. The event starts weeks before the doors open and ends two weeks after, not when the booth comes down.

Before you start

This skill works on its own. If the person has their own marketing brain folder, read the ideal customer, offers and outreach files. If they do not have one, ask: who the buyer is in a sentence, what the offer and first step are, which events are on the table and why, who is going, and what the budget is. Ask what happened at the last event, in numbers if any exist.

Tools this skill uses when the person has them. None are required; a sheet and a phone camera work.

Step Tool What for
Choosing The event’s exhibitor and attendee lists, LinkedIn, the association’s member list Whether the buyers are actually there
Pre-booking Apollo or Clay for the attendee list, HubSpot or Pipedrive sequences, LinkedIn by hand Meetings booked before arrival
On-site capture The event’s lead scanner, or a short form on a phone, or a photo of the badge and a note Every conversation captured with a qualification note the same hour
Follow-up HubSpot or Pipedrive sequences Personal follow-up within two business days
Reporting The CRM with source = event and source detail = event name; a sheet if no CRM Leads, meetings and pipeline by event

Steps

  1. Choose the event. For each candidate, score 1 to 3: the buyers in the segment are there in numbers (check the attendee or exhibitor list, not the brochure), the decision makers attend rather than send juniors, the company can get meetings (speaking, a dinner, a booth where the traffic is), and the cost against the expected pipeline. Go where the score is high; skip famous events where the buyers are not. Decide the goal in numbers before committing: meetings booked, qualified leads, demos.

  2. Set the plan and the roles. Who goes, who works the booth, who takes meetings, who captures leads, who follows up. A one-page run sheet with dates, the pre-event targets, the booth or meeting schedule, the capture method, the follow-up owner and the report date.

  3. Book meetings before you land. Six to four weeks out: get the attendee or exhibitor list, filter it against the ICP (fits, needs review, does not fit, with reasons, nobody dropped silently), and run a short sequence to the fits: “we will be at the event, worth 20 minutes on day two?” with two time options. Ask existing customers and partners who will be there for introductions. Target a third of the meeting goal booked before arrival.

  4. Prepare what the booth or the meeting needs. The one-liner on the stand in letters readable from six metres. A one-page leave-behind with the offer and a QR code to the booking page. The demo on a device that works without the venue wifi. Three qualifying questions every team member asks in the first minute: what do you do, what is the problem this week, who decides. A short script for the ask: the first step and a time to talk next week.

  5. Capture on site. Every conversation gets logged the same hour, before the next one: name, company, role, the answer to the three questions, fits or needs review or does not fit, the next step agreed, and a one-line memory hook (what you talked about). Scanner, form, or a badge photo with a voice note; the method matters less than the same-hour rule. Each evening, the team spends fifteen minutes cleaning the day’s captures and flagging the hot ones.

  6. Follow up within two business days. Hot leads get a personal email the next morning from the person they met, with the memory hook, the one thing promised, and the booking link. Fits get a three-touch sequence over two weeks that references the event and the problem. Needs review gets a human check of the website, then one of the two paths. Does not fit gets a thank-you and a nurture status, nothing more. Everything enters the CRM with source event and the event name.

  7. Run the post-event demos. Aim for the booked and the hot leads to be in a demo within three weeks, while the conversation is fresh. Use the demo script; mention the event in the recap.

  8. Report at 30 days. Captured, qualified, meetings held on site, meetings held after, demos, deals created, pipeline value, cost, cost per qualified lead and per meeting. Compare to the goal set in step 1. Decide: go again, go smaller, or skip. Note what to do differently in three lines.

  9. Mine what was said. The three questions, asked a hundred times, are a survey. Count the problems named and the objections heard; pass them to positioning and content.

Rules

  • Decide the number before paying for the event. No number, no event.
  • A third of the meetings booked before arrival.
  • Every conversation captured the same hour. A badge in a pocket is a lost lead.
  • Follow up within two business days; hot leads the next morning, by the person they met.
  • Everything in the CRM with the event as source, or the event cannot be judged.
  • Nobody dropped silently; every captured lead gets a label and a reason.
  • Report at 30 days and decide. An event with no report happens again by habit.

Output

Return the event scorecard with the goal in numbers, the run sheet with roles and dates, the pre-event list filter and sequence, the booth and meeting kit (one-liner, leave-behind outline, three questions, the ask), the capture form, the follow-up sequences by lead type, the 30-day report template, and the what-was-said summary.

If the person has their own marketing brain folder, save to it:

  • 4-playbooks/ as events.md: the scorecard method, run sheet template, capture rules and follow-up sequences
  • 5-current/priorities.md: the event dates and follow-up deadlines
  • 5-current/decisions-log.md: the go-again decision and the reason, after the report
  • 2-standards/terminology.md: problem phrases heard on the floor, appended

If they do not have one, return the run sheet and the report as files the team keeps with the event folder. Do not set up a brain unless they ask.

Next: outbound-list-and-sequence for the pre-event sequence at scale. discovery-and-demo for the post-event calls. scorecard-and-okrs to put events on the weekly numbers.

Find out if we’re a fit.

In a 30-minute discovery call, you’ll get honest, no-strings advice you can act on right away, and a clear picture of what working together would look like.

Book your discovery call