Tennis, Baseball, and Golf

Play any sport that involves hitting a ball with a stick and the coach will tell you that follow-through (continuing your motion after contact is made) is just as important as your form and strength prior to contact.

Same goes for marketing.

I recently attended the big Home and Interior Design Show that comes to town a couple of times a year. Hundreds of merchants and manufacturers set up fancy (and some not-so-fancy) booths where their salesiest or salesy salespeople try to convince everybody walking past that they need a new roof/hot tub/gutter/shower/furnace/stereo/countertop...

I'm in the process of building a house so I actually welcomed the sales pitches. So, over the course of a couple of hours I gathered together as much information as I could about windows, doors, heating, cooling, and every other topic imaginable.

So on to the follow-through.

A couple of weeks later, and I don't think I've been proactively contacted by anyone I met at the show. Most of those that I've contacted have been very slow to respond (if they've had any response at all) and don't seem interested in answering many questions.

I suspect that, like most small businesses, the participants at the event saw it as a one-off. They simplistically look at the attendance numbers and hope that a significant portion of the attendees will magically turn in to buyers.
I also suspect that there are enough of these instant and easy sales to justify the expense of the show.
But if many people are like me and not quite ready to buy (which should be a safe assumption for high-consideration products like these), the vendors are missing an enormous opportunity.