SOP 14IndustryIntermediate11 steps

Prospect a trade show from its exhibitor list

Turn an exhibitor directory or show guide PDF into scored leads with booth number, category and sponsorship tier attached.

Verified against the live platform

2 steps rest on platform behaviour that has not been decisively probed. Everything else was checked live.

Where the list comes from

The official exhibitor directory on the event site is richest. A show guide PDF works just as well and is often more complete.

The steps

  1. 1

    Orient

    Confirm the inputs, compute the expected cost, and tell the user what the run will do before anything spends a credit.

  2. 2

    Locate the exhibitor source

    In order of data quality: Official exhibitor directory on the event site, richest, usually includes category and booth number. Sponsor page, carries tier, the strongest value signal available.

  3. 3

    Extract

    Pull Company Data from PDFs & Images is the star tool here. It does OCR plus structured entity extraction and lets you describe the wanted fields in plain English, exactly the show-guide problem. Describe fields explicitly.

  4. 4

    Strip headers, footers and junk rows

    Use AI - System Prompt (0.5c), tuned for event documents.

  5. 5

    Normalize and deduplicate

    Clean Company Names (0.1c), Clean Location (0.1c). deduplicate_auto, companies frequently appear once per booth, once per category and once in the sponsor list.

  6. 6

    Resolve domains

    Follow the numbered detail in the skill file. This step is mechanical and its exact tool ids are resolved at run time.

  7. 7

    Enrich

    Industry Classifier (0.2c), Company Headcount (0.2c), Company Annual Revenue (1c), Business Model Finder (0.2c), Clean Location (0.1c).

  8. 8

    Classify exhibitor type

    Workaround

    No event participation classifier. Sponsor, exhibitor, speaker company, vendor and attendee company are materially different prospects and nothing distinguishes them.

  9. 9

    Repeat participation

    The strongest scoring signal available, and the one most often skipped. If a prior-year list exists: import it as a second project and use Find Existing People / Find New Companies (both FREE) to flag overlap.

  10. 10

    Score

    Gate: scores spread; sponsors outrank plain exhibitors.

  11. 11

    Run the shared outbound tail

    Personas: Head of Marketing, Events Manager, Field Marketing Manager, Partnerships Manager, Sponsorship Manager, Brand Manager, and Founder at smaller exhibitors.

Where the run should stop

  • Strip headers, footers and junk rows before resolving a single domain.
  • Normalise and deduplicate before enrichment, because large exhibitors appear several times.
  • Weeks to event is computed at the start and drives the whole priority order.

What you should end up with

Companies exhibiting, sponsoring or speaking, each with booth, tier and category, classified by participation type, scored, with buyer contacts and personalisation that names the event.