Volume 1 · Chapter 9

Heather Bundgaard

Senior Exhibit Consultant & Certified AI Consultant

Contributing Author & Seen on CNBC and Various Podcasts

Heather Bundgaard is a 30-year trade show industry veteran who helps companies turn exhibits into high-performing revenue drivers using strategy, execution, and AI. She's managed $50+ million in booth budgets and worked with brands including Anthem, AZEK, US Foods, Invesco, and the American Hospital Association. She's the creator of Booth Boss Bootcamp, an online training program where marketers learn to convert trade show programs into measurable business outcomes.

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“"We created demand like pros. Then handled it like amateurs."”

Chapter 9

AI in the Trade Show Arena

How to Out-Prepare, Out-Target, and Out-Follow-Up Your Competition

AI in the Trade Show Arena opens with a story that will hit close to home for anyone who has ever walked off a show floor feeling like a rock star, only to watch the momentum die by Monday morning. Heather Bundgaard takes you inside her real experience as a Marketing Director, where her team collected hundreds of leads at Ironman events, then lost almost all of them to slow, generic follow-up. That story sets up the core problem she solves throughout the chapter. The chapter is built around her A.I.M. Framework: Automate, Interact, and Maximize. Each phase covers two specific AI Power Moves with real prompts you can use right now. You'll learn how to confirm your Ideal Client Profile using your own customer data, score your attendee list before you book floor space, personalize outreach at scale, capture live conversations on the show floor with an AI note-taker, and build a tiered follow-up system that goes out automatically, before you even leave the venue. Every step is practical, direct, and built from 30 years of real trade show experience on both sides of the business. What makes this chapter different is that it doesn't just tell you AI can help. It shows you exactly where the money gets lost, why most exhibitors keep repeating the same expensive mistakes, and how to stop it. If you've ever come home from a trade show with a stack of leads and nothing to show for it 60 days later, this chapter was written for you.

Key Takeaways

We created demand like pros and handled it like amateurs. That ends today.
The battleship moves slowly. Be the speedboat. Your competitors aren’t using AI yet.
AI doesn’t replace the handshake. It handles everything else.
Stop scanning badges. Start capturing conversations. A name and an email tell you nothing.
If your follow-up plan doesn’t exist before you leave home, it doesn’t exist.
Your booth is the best focus group you’ll never pay for. Twenty people saying the same thing isn’t small talk.

Double Qualified Leads Without a Bigger Budget (pdf)

A free resource from Heather Bundgaard

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❤️ Please allow approx 3 weeks for delivery. The book is currently being printed, after which I will personally sign and send each copy. ❤️

About Heather Bundgaard

Heather Bundgaard is a 30-year trade show industry veteran who helps companies turn exhibits into high-performing revenue drivers using design, strategy, execution, and AI. She’s managed $50+ million in booth budgets and worked with brands including Anthem (Blue Cross Blue Shield), AZEK, US Foods, Invesco, and the American Hospital Association. Heather is also a certified AI Consultant and AI Agent Consultant, helping teams apply AI to improve marketing execution and results. As a former Marketing Director and active Senior Exhibit Consultant, Heather brings a rare, real-world perspective to trade show performance, understanding both the pressure to deliver and the execution required to succeed. She’s also the creator of Booth Boss Bootcamp, an online training program where marketers learn how to plan, execute, and convert trade show programs into measurable business outcomes. Heather has been featured on CNBC, multiple podcasts and stages, and speaks on trade show strategy. Lastly, her newest endeavor is being a Contributing Author of: AI in the Field: The Builders Blueprint — curated by Alicia Lyttle, the “Queen of AI."

Work with Heather Bundgaard

Speaking

Heather Bundgaard has stood on both sides of the trade show floor, and that's exactly what makes her worth listening to. As a former Marketing Director, she lived the frustration of spending big on a show and watching the ROI disappear by Monday morning. As a Senior Exhibit Consultant, she's spent years helping companies build better booths and better strategies. That combination gives her something most speakers can't offer: she's not just talking about the problem. She's lived it from both ends. Today, Heather helps exhibitors understand how AI is changing what's possible before, during, and after every show. Her talks are honest, fast-moving, and packed with tools audiences can act on immediately. She's a co-author of a multi-author AI book, a featured guest on CNBC, and the founder of Booth Boss Bootcamp, an online training program for trade show exhibitors. When Heather takes the stage, people stop checking their phones. She combines three decades of hard-won industry experience with a sharp, practical take on AI that doesn't require a tech background to follow. Her audiences leave with a clearer strategy, real tools in hand, and the kind of energy that makes them want to fix their process the moment they get back to the office.

Consulting

Heather Bundgaard brings 30 years of trade show experience to her AI consulting work, and that background is what makes her different. She's been on both sides of the industry, first as a Marketing Director running booths, then as a Senior Exhibit Consultant helping companies build them. She knows where the money gets wasted, where the process breaks down, and exactly where AI can step in to fix it. Her consulting work helps businesses integrate AI into their trade show strategy across all three phases: pre-show targeting and outreach, on-floor engagement, and post-show follow-up. She's not teaching theory. She's sharing the same tools and workflows she uses in her own businesses every day. Heather is a co-author of a multi-author AI book with a chapter titled "AI in the Trade Show Arena: How to Out-Prepare, Out-Target, and Out-Follow-Up Your Competition," and the founder of Booth Boss Bootcamp, an online training program for trade show exhibitors. She's also been featured on CNBC. Her approach is direct, practical, and built for busy marketing professionals who want real results without a six-month learning curve.

Booth Boss Bootcamp

Booth Boss Bootcamp is a US-based online training program built specifically for trade show exhibitors. It's for marketing professionals, business owners, and booth staff who keep showing up to shows, spending real money, and walking away without the ROI to justify it. The program teaches a complete trade show strategy across all three phases: what you do before the show, what you do on the floor, and what you do after the doors close. Most exhibitors focus only on the middle part. BBB fixes all three. You'll learn how to identify the right shows to exhibit at, how to attract the right people to your booth, how to train your staff to start real conversations instead of standing around looking at their phones, and how to build a follow-up system that doesn't fall apart the minute you get home. BBB was built by someone who spent 30 years in this industry, first as a Marketing Director running booths, then on the exhibit house side building them. That dual perspective is what makes it different. It's not theory. It's the exact process she wishes had existed when she was figuring this out the hard way.

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