Adele stood at the threshold of two worlds.
Behind her was everything she had ever known about events—the polished booths, the badge scanners, the endless lists of leads that never quite turned into conversions.
Ahead of her was the unknown—the path Cassian Vale had revealed, where success wasn’t measured in numbers but in the conversations that didn’t end when the event did.
She had spent years playing by the rules, refining the system, making it better.
But now, she saw the truth.
The system was broken.
And now, she had to convince an entire company to change it.
The resistance
By the time she reached the Nexora booth, Sienna was already deep in conversation with two executives who had flown in for the final day of the expo. David Caldwell, the company’s VP of Marketing, and Julia Patel, the Head of Sales Strategy.
Dominic stood beside them, arms crossed, radiating smugness.
“Adele,” David said as she approached. “Good timing. We were just talking about the event so far. Dominic says we’re on track to pass our lead goal.”
Adele glanced at the screen behind him, where a number flashed in bold white letters:
642 LEADS CAPTURED.
Three days. 642 scans. By every traditional metric, the event had been a success.
But Adele no longer trusted those metrics.
“We need to change how we handle follow-ups,” she said, cutting straight to the point.
David frowned. “What do you mean?”
Adele inhaled. She had one shot at this. One chance to make them see what she saw.
She turned to the monitor displaying their lead data and tapped the screen. “642 leads. That’s great. But how many of them are actually going to turn into deals?”
Julia tilted her head. “That’s what the sales team figures out after the event.”
Adele shook her head. “That’s what I used to think, too. But what if I told you we could predict the real opportunities before the event even ends?”
Dominic scoffed. “Oh, here we go.”
David shot him a look. “Go on, Adele.”
She stepped closer. “I ran an experiment today. I picked one of our leads—just one. Instead of waiting to follow up later, I found him on the floor and had a second conversation with him. Not a pitch—an actual conversation. I asked him why he stopped at our booth, what he was looking for, what problem he was trying to solve.”
She let the words settle before delivering the punchline.
“By the end of that conversation, I had a commitment for a second meeting. Not an automated follow-up. A real, scheduled next step.”
The group fell silent.
Sienna’s gaze flickered between Adele and the executives, her eyes wide with understanding.
Dominic let out a sharp laugh. “So, what? You’re saying we should just walk around and chat with people instead of tracking them?”
Adele met his gaze, calm and unshaken. “No. I’m saying we should stop treating leads like numbers and start treating them like relationships.”
Julia leaned in slightly. “You’re suggesting we engage people in real-time instead of relying on post-event outreach?”
“Yes.” Adele’s voice was steady. “We have the data. But data alone doesn’t close deals—engagement does.”
David exhaled, rubbing his jaw. “So, what would that actually look like? How do we change the way we operate?”
Adele had anticipated this. She had spent the last hour thinking through how to take the theory of event alchemy and make it actionable.
She turned to the large monitor, tapping through to the lead dashboard.
“Right now, we capture leads, but we don’t prioritize them. We treat a junior analyst the same as a VP. We follow up with someone who barely glanced at our booth the same way we follow up with someone who stayed for a demo and asked in-depth questions.”
She clicked again, pulling up the engagement heatmap. “What if we flipped that? What if, instead of scanning and moving on, we flag high-value leads in real-time?”
Sienna’s eyes widened. “So our team knows who to follow up with before they even leave the venue.”
“Exactly,” Adele said. “And not just that—we create a system where the first follow-up isn’t an email. It’s a conversation. A second touchpoint, face-to-face, before the event even ends.”
David nodded slowly. “You’re talking about a real-time engagement strategy instead of just lead collection.”
Adele nodded. “Yes. Because a lead is just potential. Engagement is what makes it real.”
Julia tapped a pen against her palm, thinking. “Okay. Let’s say we do this. How do we track it? How do we measure success?”
Adele took a steady breath. “We stop focusing on total leads collected. We measure the number of leads that turn into scheduled follow-ups before the event is over.”
David’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
A new metric. A new way to define event success.
And in that moment, Adele knew she had them.
The final test
Dominic shook his head, unimpressed. “This is a nice theory, but it’s not scalable. What happens when you have a thousand leads? You can’t have personal conversations with every single one.”
Adele turned to him. “You’re right. We can’t.”
She let that hang for a second before continuing.
“But we don’t need to. Because not every lead is the same.”
She pointed at the screen. “Right now, we treat every single one of these names as equal. But they’re not. Some are high-value prospects ready for deeper engagement. Some are just browsing. And some? Some were never going to convert in the first place.”
She faced him fully. “Wouldn’t you rather know which ones actually matter while the event is still happening?”
Dominic opened his mouth. Closed it. And for the first time, he had no argument.
David let out a slow breath. “Alright.” He turned to Julia. “We still have a day left at this event. What if we test this?”
Adele’s pulse quickened. This was it.
Julia nodded. “Let’s create a priority list of leads who engaged the most today. We’ll assign team members to find them on the floor and start second conversations.”
Sienna lit up. “And we track how many of those lead to an actual next step.”
David smiled slightly. “Let’s see if this alchemy of yours works, Adele.”
Adele exhaled, steadying herself.
It wasn’t just her alchemy.
It was the beginning of something bigger.
To Be Continued…
