Stand qualification fails for a practical reason rather than a strategic one: the process designed for a desk does not survive a show floor. Four questions, asked conversationally and written down within a minute of the person walking away, is the version that actually gets used.
The four questions, asked as conversation
What are you trying to fix. Is there a project, a budget cycle or a deadline. Do you decide this, influence it, or are you researching for somebody. What should happen next, and by when.
None of those sound like a form, which matters, because a visitor who feels processed stops answering. They are the same four used everywhere else in the business, so the records are comparable with every other channel rather than being a separate pile nobody reconciles.
Write it down before the next conversation
By seven in the evening the eleventh conversation of the day has merged with the other ten. The record has to be written within a minute or two of the person leaving, on whatever tool the stand is using, against the contact rather than in a notebook.
Pick one capture method before the show and test it on every phone on the team. A badge scanner, a CRM app or a form: one of them, not three. Three is how a show produces three incompatible lists and a fortnight of cleanup.
A badge scan is not a lead
A scan proves somebody stood near your stand. It carries no problem, no timing and no next step, and reporting it as a lead is how a show appears to have performed well and produces nothing in the quarter that follows.
Scans are worth keeping as a separate list for a different purpose, which is a low-pressure follow-up sequence rather than a sales call. Mixing them into the pipeline is what makes the pipeline unreadable.
Grade on the spot
A has a real problem, a timeframe, access to the decision and a next step with a date. B has fit and a problem but no timing or no access yet. C is anything else.
Grading at the stand rather than afterwards is the difference between a judgement made with the conversation still fresh and one made from a name on a list. It takes five seconds and it is the most valuable five seconds of the exchange.