Most teams treat big events like Singapore FinTech Festival, Money20/20 or API World as a three-day sprint and a photo opportunity.
They:
Collect badge scans or business cards
Dump everything into a spreadsheet or CRM
Send one generic “Great to meet you at the event” email
Then move on to the next crisis
90 days later, the only evidence the event happened is an invoice and some selfies.
But events can be one of the fastest, cleanest sources of outbound fuel you’ll ever have — if you treat them as the starting point for a 90-day pipeline sprint, not a one-off moment.
This article breaks down how B2B SaaS, fintech and API vendors can turn events into 10–20 qualified meetings and US$300–500K of pipeline in 90 days, even if you don’t have in-house SDRs.
Events aren’t just about “brand visibility” or “networking”. For growth-stage vendors, they have three main jobs:
Validate your ICP and messaging in real time
– Who stops at your booth and why?
– Which pains make people lean in vs politely nod?
Generate signal-rich leads
– Not just badge scans, but conversations where you learned something about their stack, pain or timing.
Seed outbound
– The event gives you a warm context and a prioritized account list to build a 90-day outbound sprint around.
If you only measure scanned leads and not post-event pipeline, you’re leaving most of the value on the floor.
A good 90-day post-event sprint actually starts before you show up.
Answer three questions:
Who do we most want to talk to?
– Region(s), company size, verticals
– Roles (e.g. Head of Product, CFO, Head of Compliance, VP Engineering)
What problem are we showing up to solve?
– Not “we do AI for banks”, but “we help APAC banks cut false positives in AML by 30–40%” or
“we help B2B SaaS teams get 10–20 more ICP meetings in 90 days without hiring SDRs”.
What would a successful 90 days after the event look like?
– X–Y qualified meetings
– Z opportunities / evaluations started
– A certain volume of new pipeline (e.g. US$300–500K)
This gives you a target for the sprint, not just a vague hope for “follow-up”.
Don’t wait for badge scans to decide who matters.
Before the event:
Build a Tier 1 account list of companies you’d love to speak with
Identify key personas you want from each (e.g. Head of Product, CIO, Head of Risk)
Use the exhibitor list, speaker list and sponsor list as inputs, not the whole strategy
Your SDRs (or SDRaaS partner) can then:
Start light pre-event outreach to book meetings at the show
Warm up LinkedIn connections (“Saw you’re speaking / sponsoring at SFF – would love to say hello”)
This way, you arrive with some meetings already on the calendar and a prioritized “hunt list” for the sprint that will follow.
Badge scans alone are almost useless.
Before the show, define the fields you actually need:
Role and function
What tools they use today (if relevant)
1–2 pains or projects they mentioned
Timeframe (e.g. “just browsing”, “2025 initiative”, “actively exploring now”)
Priority tag: A/B/C
Make this easy for your team:
A very short form in your event app or CRM
A simple Google Sheet your team can edit from their phones
A “cheat sheet” printed behind the booth so staff know what to ask
The goal: when you look at the list on Day 1 after the event, you should instantly see who to prioritize in the sprint.
At the booth, your job isn’t just to give demos and free swag.
Train everyone on 3–4 core questions they should always ask:
“What are you focused on in the next 6–12 months?”
“How are you handling X today?”
“Is this more of a ‘nice to have’ or a live project right now?”
“Who else on your team cares about this problem?”
These questions give you qualification data you can use later in outbound.
Don’t trust memory.
Right after each conversation (while they’re still scanning badges or before the next person comes up), your team should:
Add a quick note (“Bank – Head of Compliance – hates current AML false positives”)
Tag the priority (A = hot, B = warm, C = just swag)
Capture any timing signal (“budget in Q3”, “replatforming 2026”, etc.)
Ten seconds of tagging during the show saves hours of guessing later.
If someone is clearly interested:
Offer to book a 30-minute follow-up right there on their calendar for the next 1–2 weeks
Have one person at the booth designated as the “calendar captain” with access to AE calendars
Every meeting booked during the event is one less you have to chase later.
Once the event is over and you’ve had one day to recover, the sprint begins.
Think of it as a layered campaign:
Immediate warm follow-up to people you spoke with
Targeted outbound to look-alike accounts who didn’t visit your booth
Event-themed messaging for your broader ICP
Speed matters.
Within the first 3–5 business days:
Send personalised follow-ups to A- and B-priority conversations
– Reference what you talked about (“You mentioned you’re rethinking your KYC process…”)
– Propose a short call with a specific time window (“Would a 25-minute session next week work to map this out?”)
For C-level leads (swag hunters, vague interest), send a short “good to meet you” plus a link to a relevant resource (case study, article) and a light CTA.
At the same time, your SDR/SDRaaS motion should:
Create account views in your CRM for top event accounts
Attach conversations and notes, so future outbound is grounded in context
Start multi-threading within those accounts (e.g. if you met a PM, now also reach out to the Head of Product / CTO)
By the end of Week 2, you want:
All high-value event leads touched at least once
A handful of post-event meetings already booked
Now you use what you learned at the event to hunt beyond the room.
Look at which kinds of companies showed the most real interest:
– Size, vertical, region, tech stack, specific pains.
Use that to build a look-alike account list:
– Companies who match the profile but didn’t necessarily visit your booth.
Design sequences that reference the event as social proof, not a crutch:
“We spoke with a number of Heads of Risk at SFF who are trying to reduce false positives without missing real cases…”
“A lot of SaaS teams we met at SFF are struggling to get consistent outbound meeting volume without hiring a full SDR team…”
Run a structured SDR/SDRaaS campaign against that look-alike list:
– Email + LinkedIn
– 7–10 touch sequence over several weeks
– Weekly review of which verticals & personas respond best
By the end of Week 6, in a healthy motion you should see:
A clear group of non-event accounts entering the pipeline
Refined messaging based on replies from both event leads and look-alikes
The final stretch is where the pipeline takes shape.
Key priorities:
Conversion of meetings to opportunities
Track meeting → opportunity rates for event leads vs cold outbound.
Look at which segments have better conversion and prioritise them.
Nurture sequences for “not now” leads
Create light touch cadences for people who said “Q3”, “next year”, or “after we finish project X”.
Use content (case studies, articles, short videos) to stay on their radar.
AE involvement and follow-through
Make sure AEs have clear next steps after each meeting (evaluation, technical deep dive, pilot discussion).
Run a weekly pipeline review specifically for “Event + Event-sourced outbound” deals.
By Day 90 after the event, you should have:
A clear count of qualified meetings sourced by the event + its outbound halo
A visible set of opportunities / evaluations / POCs in progress
A realistic pipeline value (often in the US$300–500K+ range for mid-market SaaS & fintech)
A decision about how to treat events in your GTM plan next year
These will vary by event, ACV and brand, but as a directional guide for B2B SaaS/fintech:
Over a 90-day post-event sprint, you might expect:
10–20 qualified meetings with ICP accounts (mix of event leads + look-alikes)
25–40% of those meetings becoming opportunities or formal evaluations
US$300–500K of qualified pipeline initiated (or more if ACVs are higher)
More importantly, you’ll know:
Which segments responded best
Which messages landed
Whether the event produced better, similar or worse pipeline than a standard outbound sprint with no event anchor
That’s the data you need to decide whether to sponsor again, go bigger, or shift budget.
If you don’t have in-house SDRs, events can feel overwhelming to follow up on. That’s where a focused SDR-as-a-Service sprint can help:
Before the event: shortlist ICP accounts, prep messaging, pre-book a few meetings
During the event: capture structured notes, tag leads properly, prioritise conversations
After the event (Day 1–90): run the outbound engine against both event leads and look-alike accounts, with weekly reporting and clear SDR→AE handoffs
Instead of your team staring at a messy spreadsheet two weeks after the event, you get:
A 90-day plan
Clear numbers
And a decision: “Do we scale this motion or park it?”
The difference between a forgettable event and a growth lever isn’t the booth design or swag budget. It’s what you do in the 90 days after the show.
If you:
Start with a clear ICP and event thesis
Capture useful data during the event
Treat the next 90 days as a structured SDR sprint, not “ad-hoc follow-up”
…events stop being a cost centre and start becoming one of the most reliable inputs into your outbound engine.
And the nice part: you can copy this pattern across every major event you attend — not just one flagship show per year.