Flying back from VMWorld as I write this… a San Francisco spectacle of nerd-dom, logo-wear, and shiny objects both technical and female. I’m feeling pretty confident this show elevated our brand among partners, prospects, and customers, and that it will generate more than enough near-term pipeline to justify the big investment we made in it.

The reason it all worked was good execution – before, during and after – by the team of 17 Acitfians we flew out for the festivities. I thought I’d take a few moments to share a few thoughts on the strategy that worked for us, in hope of helping you do the same down the road.

Choose wisely.

First off, you gotta pick the right show.

There are no shortage of shows out there, since the business model for one is pretty straightforward. Convince enough people someplace is the place to be, and in time it becomes the place to be.

But which people? In evaluating show options you need to think about who you’re trying to connect with. Are you trying to engage potential customers,  partners, investors, industry glitterati, or all of the above? Most b-to-b products have more than one person involved in the buying process… Which of your buyers is going to be out in force at the show you’re looking at? Will it be the C-level approvers, front-line techies, business unit sponsors? No show is equally good at hitting all three of those sub-targets, for example, and it’s important to remember that the source of value in a trade show is always the people who attend, more than the companies they represent.

Invest as little as possible on presence.

The right show will be costly, and rightly so. But you shouldn’t focus on maximizing your investment in the check you write to the organizer. Ask yourself: what’s the minimum investment I can make in the show itself to get above the threshold of credible presence, given my target? Find ways to cut corners here… A smaller booth, some creative credential-sharing, sacrificing a few of the nice-to-haves in your floor presence to focus your resources elsewhere.

One place to splurge is in making sure you have access to a closed meeting space as close to the show floor as possible. This “privacy suite” is where business will really get done at your show, and most people don’t realize it’s the most important real estate you’ll pay for.

Invest as much as possible on activation.

Attending a trade show doesn’t create value. It creates the potential to create value, and the steps necessary to realize that potential I like to call “activation.”

Activation needs to start weeks before the event itself. Having identified what you’re trying to accomplish and whom you hope to engage, you need to get really focused on pre-show outreach to pack your calendar with the one-on-one meetings that are always the real driver of value at these things. Meet someone for breakfast, every day. Figure out the booth duty schedule for the team, then cram the balance of the time in your host city with as many meetings as you can handle while staying sharp. Schedule lunches, cocktails, dinner, after- parties. Be an animal.

Where you can, create a public event that let’s you “own a night.” Do what to need to do to throw a party people will talk about, as we did with the storage vendor vFlipCup Tournament, from which the above image is taken. Knowing our measly 10×10 booth would have all the impact of a fart in a hurricane if we went it alone, we decided to hold a competition among the people with whom we compete. Everyone was a great sport about it, but the trash talk before, during, and after the event generated over 350,000 mpressions across a twitter audience of over 100,000 people in 24 hours. And while we only made the final four of our 16 teams, I can promise you we won.

Prepare the team.

Speaking of booth duty… It’s absolutely critical that you figure out what message and/or gimmick is going to attract passers by and convert them to your cause, then DRILL that simple message  into every touch point of your trade show presence. The single most important place to do that is in the team that’s going to be working the show floor.

Script everything, and make everyone learn the script. Having done so, empower people to riff on the themes of that script, depending on who they’re talking to, their own personality, and other particulars of time and place. But make sure everyone stays “on message,” so that every touch point with your target audience reinforces the others.

Be present.

Finally, accept that you’re going to be out of touch for a few days. You can catch up on email when you get home. You’ll have spent a lot of time and money to be at this particular time and place, surrounded by people whose understanding and goodwill is worth a lot of money.

Next week’s PowerPoint will keep. And you can write that BostInno piece on the plane.

So choose wisely, spend deliberately, prepare, execute, and then just get out there and hit it hard. Remember, good business is personal, and nowhere more so than in the business fantasyland of a Big Time Tech Trade Show.