Trade shows are great for discovering new merchandise and making new contacts. All too often, though, attendees return to mountains of backed up work. Faced with the challenge of catching up, they soon forget to follow up with vendors, cultivate personal networks and capitalize on industry trends revealed at the show.

It shouldn't be that way. "What you really go to a trade show for is what takes place after the event is over," says Francis J. Friedman, a trade show specialist and president of the New York City-based consulting firm Time & Place Strategies Inc. Like golfers working on their follow-through, successful trade show attendees are always trying to improve the quality of their after-show swing. That means sharing knowledge with staff, placing follow-up calls with the right exhibitors and organizing business cards and notes so they don't end up collecting dust on a shelf.

But is attending a show worth the effort in the first place, when so many products can be seen in full-color catalogs? Most people say yes. "Show time is very well spent," says Joe Murtagh, president of The DreamSpeaker in Charlotte, NC. "Where else can you have such concentrated exposure to such a vast array of information that is well organized and presented? There's nothing like being able to see the quality of goods and holding them in your hand."

Here are some techniques, then, for capitalizing on everything you picked up and learned at the show.

Share the Wealth

If one piece of new information from a show can help you make more profit, imagine the results if your whole staff could use the same knowledge when dealing with customers. Make sure everyone has an opportunity to benefit from the trade show information, be it educational information from seminars, industry insights from business peers met in the aisles or new product descriptions from the booths. This communication may be delivered via memo, meeting or internal email. The key is to disseminate the information formally so that it is taken seriously.

Don't forget that communication is a two-way street. Encourage your personnel to share insights that may enhance or alter your view of what happened at the show. This is particularly important when making decisions to take on a new line of goods or services. Your staff may know of products that are a better fit and should be compared and investigated. You may discover that you were being overwhelmed by an enthusiastic salesperson.

Staff feedback can also help adjust order levels up or down, or time the placement of additional orders over the following months. This is especially helpful with new lines from young companies, which may not produce enough inventory to satisfy unforeseen orders down the line. If there are no sufficient advance orders, supplies can evaporate just as customers are clamoring for more.

Once orders are set and delivery dates slated, assign duties to the various members of your team. What needs to happen before the goods arrive? Who needs to do what in terms of promotion and space planning? Where will you position the new goods and how can you clear space?

Good post-show follow-through depends to a great extent on advance planning. If more than one person from your business will be attending the show, assign different duties to each. Personal beats might include new products, industry trends and materials needed for a new department.

To encourage great work, make sure each attendee realizes a report will be expected back home. "People engage in a very different level of note taking when they realize they will be held responsible for teaching others," says Palo Alto, CA-based consultant Mina Bancroft. "They realize they will really need to understand a subject." Finally, assign a high priority to the meeting in which knowledge is shared. "Prior to attending the show, schedule the follow-up meeting on your calendar so it doesn't slip between the cracks later," suggests Bancroft.

Draw upon each person's abilities when conveying information to your staff. "Because each person has unique strengths, each communicates in a different way and sees a trade show with a personal perspective," says Donna Messer, a trade show consultant and president of ConnectUs Communications (www.connectuscanada.com), a consultancy in Oakville, ON, Canada. "Some learn by hearing, some by seeing, some by experiencing. So each person attending the show will describe what they saw in different ways to everyone back home. Encourage this and you will have one heck of a team," says Messer.

And how about those great seminars? Wouldn't your whole staff benefit from knowledge gained? Sometimes seminars have training materials you can distribute to your staff, saving you the effort of putting together a report. If that's not the case, jot down the key points from the seminar and have a short, informative report distributed to your personnel. Or, ask permission to record the seminar and have the tape transcribed for your staff.

Speaking of communicating news to your staff: What can you do with all those notes you scribbled as you walked the aisles? In the rush of business they can fall through the cracks. Too often they end up collecting dust on a shelf or disappearing into your file cabinet.

Develop a plan to efficiently process those notes. Go to the show with this plan in place and you will be able to maximize the profitability of your notes when you return to your business. Rather than enter all of your notes on a running series of pages, try dividing a notebook into sections by topics such as new products, personnel changes, industry trends and government regulations. Once back at your business, process the notes by removing the pages from your notebook and inserting them into a vertical hanging file organized by topic.

In another approach, some attendees walk the trade shows with tape recorders, making continual short comments that are later transcribed by someone back home. Here's a related idea: While walking the trade show aisles, very often you will see displays of materials you want others in your company to be aware of. Request permission to take photos (some shows do not allow this) then distribute the pictures to everyone.

Follow Through With Vendors

Exhibitors can be as forgetful as buyers when the trade show glitter has faded. If they move on to other things and fail to send promised information, everyone loses. Smart business owners will mark their calendars with ticklers to remind laggard vendors.

There are three benefits of prompt follow-through with vendors. First is the reduced risk of misunderstanding. Your memory of what an exhibitor said may differ from that of the vendor's, and the latter may forget a deal that was not put in writing because of the rush of people at the show. So call and nail down your agreements. Second, calling can confirm schedules for on-site visits by vendor reps. Finally, you can avoid the disappointment that can arise when you wait too long to place orders and vendors make unanticipated production cuts.

Vendors will offer you a plethora of brochures and catalogs as you walk the aisles. When you return home, the stack of accumulated brochures can seem so overwhelming that you avoid looking at them for months. Ask vendors to mail catalogs and brochures to you, and assign a staff member to file them in an accessible way. You might want to sort the catalogs alphabetically by company, then create a Rolodex or computer database that references the company names by product or service for rapid access.

Trade show buyer's guides can also fill a need long after they have served their original function as trailblazers to booth locations. They can be referenced for contact information throughout the year. And in yet another post-show resource, many venues now host websites with market planning tools that can help track the elusive supplier after a show. Because many such sites are searchable electronically, buyers can quickly find supply sources for specific lines.

Finally, how about all those business cards collected during the show? Too often they remain wrapped in their rubber band cocoons, never to be looked at again. Try categorizing business cards on a scale of one through four, with one being the most important to contact. Back home, make sure you call the one cards first. Try writing relevant information on the back of the cards rather than on a separate paper. That avoids having to match things up at the office. On each card, note what was interesting about the product and what needs follow-up.

If it all sounds like smart networking, that's because it is. Trade show experts encourage such relationship building. "When an attendee actually follows through with vendors met at a show, a light goes on with suppliers," says Messer. "They say, 'This is one I want to keep.' You have brought to the attention of exhibitors that you are different." The results can be beneficial. "Down the road, you may be called for a testimonial, or you may be offered something to try out because you have been responsive," says Messer. And, of course, you will be the first to know of any buying opportunities.

The squeaky wheel rolls farther down the road to success. "If you are lazy and don't follow up, you will be treated the same way," says Friedman. If you establish a dialog, on the other hand, you become a partner for mutual profit rather than just another name on a customer list. "We are in an era of relationship building, but the hard part is that we are hiding behind our email and phone systems."

Inform Your Customers

We've covered coworkers and vendors. Who but the customer is the ultimate reason for this trade show commotion? One way or another, customers need to be informed about what you have seen at the show. For your most important customers, a personal call is not out of the question.

While one-on-one calls are great, it may be impossible to get to everyone in a timely manner. That's where some creative communication comes in. Either a special mailing or a section of your regular newsletter can be devoted to a report on what you learned at the trade show.

As the comments in this article suggest, getting the biggest bang from the buck invested in attending a trade show depends on how you sweep up after the dust has settled and the glitter has faded. "When you get back to work, the important thing is to have a plan in place that prioritizes the information you've obtained," says Bancroft. "I suggest that you start processing the information while you are still at the show, and especially as you travel back home. Ask yourself, what is the top thing I have learned and what will I do with it?" Make sure to efficiently tackle the big pile of new information; in other words, break it into manageable pieces. "If you end up with information overload you will not be able to process any of it," says Bancroft.

The more you keep your goals in mind, the more successful you will be as a trade show participant. Cultivate the employee, the exhibitor and the customer, who as a group form a three-legged stool of post-show success. If you take careful aim at your target and follow through with a good after-show swing you'll land a business owner's favorite hole-in-one: more profit on your bottom line.