Trade Show Lead Collection on a Budget

We get a lot of calls from people asking if we have a replacement for the lead retrieval scanner they rent at the shows. Usually the goal is to reduce the cost of this rental at every show. I definitely understand this because $350 is a hefty charge for 3 to 5 day rental of a simple electronic device. Unfortunately, there is no direct replacement for the lead retrieval box that will work at every show.

Obviously you can find software products that can read all the trade show badges, but that is going to be a little more expensive than $350 per trade show. More like $1000 per show to rent a lead retrieval software system that is customized and managed by a company like ours, or between $2500 and $8500 to buy one and manage it yourself.

So what can you do if you want to get better leads for your sales people and don't want to spend thousands improving the system. There is no easy answer to this question. Without an internal or external person to drive the trade show lead capture and follow-up process, you are not going to get the results that you want.
However, one idea is to use the show's rental lead collection box and program it with a BANT lead form. BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline.

In my opinion, there is not enough importance put on the lead collection/qualification and processing of the leads after the trade show. At a trade show where a company will spend more than 10K to exhibit, with the goal of collecting some sales ready leads, why is $350 too much when it is the only direct expenditure that is helping to collect and qualify the trade show leads.