Case study · Freight · Client name shared after a qualification call
How an LTL freight provider cut 16,600 exhibitors to the 318 people who sign
An LTL freight provider with two sales reps and a co-founder who runs sales needed new shippers. The exhibitors at one large trade show were its shippers, 16,600 of them. This page shows how that list became 318 people who sign, what the provider did with those 318 names (a booth offer, with paid ads behind it), which part of the plan failed, and which results came from the ads.
By Kyle Meagher · 10+ years · 4 Fortune 500 brands · 123 businesses helped
The numbers, each with its channel
- 16,600exhibitors on the show's list, filtered to 318 decision makers (list work).
- $84Kdeal closed in 70 days at a 6.1x return on ad spend (paid ads).
- $336Kin pipeline from $11.5K in ad spend, in phase one (paid ads).
- 4.4%accept rate on a cold LinkedIn connection sequence to people on the show list (LinkedIn).
How do I use a trade show exhibitor list for prospecting?
Kung Pow Marketing uses a trade show exhibitor list for prospecting by filtering it twice, first by company size and then by who signs. For an LTL freight provider, two passes cut a list of 16,600 exhibitors to 318 decision makers, a list small enough for one co-founder to read every name on it.
01
The client and the problem
The provider has two sales reps, and the co-founder runs sales. Its customers are shippers that move bulky freight by <button type="button" class="term" data-def="Less-than-truckload: a shipment that shares a truck with other shippers' freight.">LTL</button>. It spends on furniture trade shows because its shippers exhibit at them.
A show list of 16,600 exhibitors is more than two reps can work. The job is deciding which few hundred people deserve a conversation.
02
Pass one: company size
The show list Every exhibitor at one large trade show
16,600 exhibitors
Pass 1 Revenue $50M to $200M
companies left
Pass 2 The person who signs
318 decision makers
The numbers
| Step | What it keeps | What it removes | Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | Every exhibitor on the show's list | Nothing | 16,600 |
| Pass one | Companies with $50M to $200M in revenue | Companies too small to ship the volume, and companies large enough to buy through a procurement department | Not published |
| Pass two | The logistics and transportation managers, operations and supply chain leaders, and finance leaders who sign for freight | Everyone else at those companies | 318 |
The first pass runs on revenue. The provider filtered the exhibitors to companies between $50M and $200M. A shipper below that range does not move enough LTL freight to be worth a booth conversation, and a shipper above it buys through a procurement department that a small provider will not get into.
The value of a shipper sets the floor. A shipper running 50 LTL shipments a month at $65 gross profit each is worth about $39K a year to the provider. The provider's line about that shipper: "Once they see the difference, they don't leave."
03
Pass two: who signs
The second pass went from companies to people. It kept the ones who decide on freight: the logistics or transportation manager, the VP of operations or supply chain, and the CFO, who watches the freight line. That left 318 LinkedIn decision makers.
A co-founder can read through all 318 names in an evening.
04
The booth offer and its qualifier
The provider gave those 318 people a reason to stop at the booth. The offer had three parts: a free dimensioner (equipment that measures a pallet's true size), a review of the prospect's last 30 days of freight data, and a no-reweigh guarantee. The team demoed all of it live at the booth.
The qualifier is a shipper who can put 50 or more LTL shipments a month on a test lane, which is the volume the $39K above assumes.
The co-founder put the lead math this way: "if we're paying $500 to $1,000 per qualified lead and closing at 33%, that's an easy trade we'd make every day." In the provider's own words to shippers: "Every broker says they have great service. Almost none can prove it or back it with real guarantees and data."
05
The 4.4% sequence
Before the show, a LinkedIn connection sequence went out to people on the list. A set of founder posts was planned to go out ahead of it, so that the buyers would have seen the company before the request arrived. The posts were mine to write, and they didn't get written.
The sequence ran without them. The co-founder reported the result in his own words: "Not great TBH ... 4.4% accept rate." The list was right. With nothing published that those buyers had already seen, the request read like any other vendor's.
A 3PL founder's requests went to people who had already seen his posts, and the counts for both are on the LinkedIn acceptance data note.
06
The deal and the pipeline
The provider closed an $84K deal in 70 days at a 6.1x return on ad spend. The channel was paid ads: Google Ads behind the booth offer.
Separately, phase one of the program produced $336K in pipeline from $11.5K in ad spend.
07
Run your own two passes
Copy this table into a spreadsheet. Write your two criteria in the column headings, run your list through each, and write the count left under each pass.
| Company | Pass 1: Is the company the right size for your sale? | Pass 2: Is this person the one who signs? | Name and title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Count left |
If you finish pass two with more people than your reps can work in a season, the list is still too large.
The First 25
Send us your show's exhibitor list, a CRM export or your last 20 clients. The count of decision makers in your market and the first 25 rows of your Sniper Sheet come back to you before we talk (the account, who signs, who sways the decision and a way in). Then we spend 30 minutes on them. You keep the sheet. Send us your list.
Ask for the client's name
The client's name is the one thing on this page we hold back. Tell us a little about your business, including what one customer is worth to you per year, and we walk you through the name and the rest of the engagement on a short qualification call. If the client agrees, the call includes a conversation with the co-founder. The customer-value question comes first because it decides whether the call is useful to you.