For convention centers, exhibition halls & civic event venues
The Ultimate Main Event
We find the associations, trade-show organizers, and enterprises planning conventions, trade shows, and large meetings, pinpoint the planners who choose the host city and venue, and put qualified site-visit meetings on your calendar, including the planners already researching your venue, so your team books more dates and drives room nights instead of waiting on inbound RFPs.
Your venue sells itself on a site visit, the exhibit halls, the meeting space, the location, the room-block capacity do the work. Growth comes down to one thing: getting the right planner in front of your sales team before the host-city decision is made. Most centers lean on inbound RFPs, repeat shows, and the local CVB. But an RFP means you're already one of several competing on price, and almost no center has anyone systematically finding the organizations choosing a future venue and reaching the decision-maker first.
Sources: U.S. events-market analyses (2026); Events Industry Council / Oxford Economics RFP & room-night data (2025); TSNN Top 250 economic-impact analysis (2026).
The opportunity is enormous. The U.S. events market is roughly $466 billion and climbing, in-person convention demand has fully rebounded, RFP activity hit a record 102% of 2019 levels, and a single major show stacks exhibit space, meeting rooms, and hundreds of thousands of room nights into one booking that can mean billions in regional impact. The catch: by the time an RFP reaches your inbox, the planner has already shortlisted venues and you're competing on price. The bookings you want are the ones being planned now, before the RFP, visible in the data if you know the signals.
But who's making that happen? Usually a sales team buried in active RFPs and on-floor shows, with no time to prospect cold. Generic lead lists and stale RFP feeds don't reach the planner before the shortlist forms. The organizations are out there, choosing future host cities right now; no one is identifying them and reaching the decision-maker on purpose. That's the part we fix, and it's squarely our wheelhouse: we've spent years selling to and for corporate decision-makers, and running corporate travel programs like Boston Coach, so we know how to reach a show organizer or an executive and speak their language. With data that pinpoints the organizations, including the ones already researching your venue, and outreach that lands with the decision-maker, we get your center in front of them first.
Not "leads." Not a cold RFP. A confirmed meeting with a planner or executive at an organization that genuinely has a convention or show in planning, the right size for your halls and room-block capacity, at a real planning trigger, and early enough that you're in the conversation before the RFP and the shortlist, warmed up before they arrive, ready for your sales team to do what it does best: sell the site visit.
We find the program before the RFP, combining firmographic fit (associations, trade-show organizers, and enterprises whose events fit your halls and city) with intent signals (a host-city rotation coming due, a show outgrowing its current venue, a new executive director or show organizer, and the planners already researching your venue) using ZoomInfo and premium data. Then we pinpoint the planner and executive who decide, qualify fit and timing, and book the meeting. You meet organizations with a real convention in planning, not recycled lists.
That qualification is the whole point: your sales team's time goes to organizations that genuinely have a convention your venue can host, not cold lists or price-shopping RFPs. You spend your days on site-visit meetings that become signed bookings.
Programs run $5,250/mo (one dedicated Playmaker) to $14,750/mo (three), on six-month terms, data, technology, and management included. Set that against the math that actually matters for a center: a single convention stacks exhibit space, meeting rooms, and hundreds of thousands of room nights into one enormous booking, and a recurring show rebooks for years. One won show usually pays for the whole engagement, many times over.
In-house BD rep
~$154K
per person, per year, all-in
Salary, benefits, tools, data, management, and a 3 to 6 month ramp before they're productive. A rep who can't fill the pipeline still costs every penny.
Calling shop / per-seat
~$11K
per seat, per month, typical
Cold RFPs, stale lead feeds, activity reports. You pay to compete on price after the shortlist is already set.
Alleyoop programs
$5,250–$14,750
per month, six-month terms
One flat fee, the team, the data, the technology. Qualified site-visit meetings on your calendar, live in under 30 days. See the programs →
One connected system, not a phone bank. Firmographic data finds the organizations that book conventions, marketing warms them to your venue, we de-anonymize and score the planners already researching your venue, we read the signals that reveal a show choosing a host city, and a real person books the site-visit meeting.
We build the target list, associations, trade-show organizers, and enterprises whose events need the exhibit space, meeting rooms, and room-block capacity your destination offers, pinpointed by firmographic data and event-planning signals using ZoomInfo and premium data.
The right marketing warms those exact organizations to your venue and its convention credentials before any outreach, so your name carries weight when the first conversation happens.
The hottest trigger is your own website. We de-anonymize the planners researching your venue pages, score them by intent, and surface the ones worth a call, alongside off-site signals like a host-city rotation coming due, a show outgrowing its current hall, or a new show organizer, often long before the RFP goes out.
We qualify the things that actually matter, program size and fit for your property, the real decision-maker, and planning timing, so a site-visit meeting is a serious opportunity, not a curiosity.
When an organization genuinely has a convention in planning and the decision-maker is genuinely interested, a dedicated Playmaker, a real person, has the conversation and books the site-visit meeting on your calendar.
By the time an RFP reaches your inbox, the organization has already decided to run the convention and shortlisted venues, and you're competing on price. But the program showed up in the data well before: a planner started researching your venue, the host-city rotation opened years out, a new show organizer took over, the show outgrew its current hall. Those triggers are visible before the RFP. The center that reads them and reaches the planner first gets the site visit, and shapes the bid, before it's a price war.
So the outbound has to be always-on and signal-driven. A program is live in under 30 days, with first site-visit meetings landing in weeks 3 to 4, which means a steady flow of organizations genuinely choosing future venues while competitors wait for RFPs. The earlier you read the rotation, the more bookings you win before the shortlist is set.
And it compounds. Conventions and trade shows recur on multi-year cycles, a wowed show rebooks and refers, and planners talk, a great experience travels fast through a tight community of association and exhibition professionals. The organizations you reach this cycle become the bookings next cycle and the referrals after that. A center that prospects on data fills its calendar with shows being planned before the RFP, bookings competitors never see.
Three things make convention centers ideal for a real outbound program: a single show stacks exhibit halls, meeting rooms, and hundreds of thousands of room nights into an enormous deal, the buyer is identifiable by firmographic and event-planning signals, including your own website traffic, before the RFP, and shows recur on long cycles with a tight referral community. Win a convention and you're not making one sale, you're starting a relationship and a rebooking. The only hard part is reaching the planner first. That's the one thing we do.
A convention stacks exhibit halls, meeting rooms, and hundreds of thousands of room nights into one enormous booking, and recurring shows rebook on multi-year cycles. So a site-visit meeting that becomes a show isn't one sale; it's a booking plus a rebooking for years. Outbound that fills your calendar pays back many times over.
A planner researching your property on your meetings and events pages is your warmest lead, and they almost never fill out a form. We de-anonymize and score that traffic, identify the organization and the planner, and reach out while their interest is live, so your team gets the call before a competitor's RFP.
An inbound RFP means you're one of ten properties competing on price. Reach the planner while the event is still being planned and you shape the program, build the relationship, and win the site visit before the shortlist exists. Timing, getting there first, is the whole game.
Straight answers to what operators ask before they start a program. New to the model? Start with the full guide: what outsourced appointment setting is and what it should cost.
Most centers win on inbound RFPs, repeat shows, and the local CVB, fine, but by the time an RFP lands you're one of several venues competing on price. The edge is reaching the planner earlier, by combining firmographic fit with the signals that precede a booking: an association's annual-convention rotation, a trade show outgrowing its current hall, a new executive director or show organizer, a planner already researching your venue. Outsourced appointment setting does that systematically: using firmographic and intent data to find organizations with a convention in planning, reaching the decision-maker first, and booking qualified site-visit meetings with your sales team.
It is paying a specialized team to find, contact, qualify, and book site-visit meetings with the association and trade-show planners who choose the host city and venue, so your sales team spends time with real prospects instead of cold prospecting. The provider supplies the people, the data, and the technology; you supply the venue and the experience that wins the booking.
Expect $5,000-$15,000 per month for a serious program. Alleyoop runs $5,250/mo for one dedicated Playmaker to $14,750/mo for three, on six-month terms with data and technology included. Because a single convention, exhibit hall, meeting space, and hundreds of thousands of room nights driving millions in regional impact, is an enormous, often recurring booking, one won show usually covers the program many times over.
Now, and then continuously. Major conventions and trade shows are booked one to five-plus years ahead, on long rotating cycles, so there's always a show choosing a future host city. A program is live in under 30 days with first site-visit meetings in weeks 3-4, and running always-on means you reach the planner while future dates are still open, instead of receiving an RFP after the shortlist is already set.
Most centers need both. Your sales team gives the site visits and closes the bookings; they rarely have time to mine data and cold-prospect show organizers. Outsourcing the top of the funnel, identifying organizations with a convention in planning and booking the meeting with the right decision-maker, lets your team do what it does best, while a specialist fills the calendar at a fraction of the cost of another full-time hire.
We combine firmographic data with intent, using ZoomInfo and premium sources. Fit: associations, trade-show organizers, and enterprises whose events need the exhibit space, meeting rooms, and room-block capacity your destination offers. Signals: an association's host-city rotation, a show outgrowing its current venue, a new executive director or show organizer, and the planners already researching your venue online. Then we pinpoint the decision-maker and qualify program fit and timing before booking, so a site-visit meeting is a real opportunity, not a curiosity.
Lead generation usually means an RFP that's already gone out to several venues, or a list of names you still have to chase. Appointment setting goes further: a real person finds the organizations choosing a future convention venue, identifies the planner and executive who decide, qualifies program fit and timing, and books a confirmed site-visit meeting on your calendar. You get a genuine opportunity in front of your sales team before the RFP, not a recycled list.
The U.S. events market is roughly $466 billion and in-person convention demand is at record highs, and every convention and trade show is choosing a future host city right now, long before the RFP. The organizations that would fill your halls are out there, and some are researching your venue today. The centers that win reach the planner first, while competitors wait for the RFP and compete on price. We'll have qualified site-visit meetings on your calendar in weeks. Let's fill the calendar before the shortlist.
The assist is ours. The win is yours.