Firm Forward

INTA closes today. The real conference starts Friday.

The numbers most firms do not measure are the ones that determine whether the trip was worth it.

How many of the people you met this week have heard from you by next Wednesday.

How many of the conversations you had produced a specific next step — a call scheduled, an article shared, an introduction made.

How many of the warm contacts from last year's INTA you reactivated this week, even briefly.

The firms that treat the week after the conference as the high-value window outperform the firms that treat the conference itself as the destination.

There is no version of conference BD that survives a one-week delay in follow-up.

Memory of who said what to whom evaporates within five business days. The chance to deepen a connection while the introduction is still warm closes by then.

If the follow-up is going to happen, the system for it should already exist.

Drafted before the trip, not improvised after.