What to say in your debrief
A ninety-second speaking template that reliably turns into clean contacts and dated follow-ups — names out loud, one commitment per person, said as "I need to…".
For field reps & aes · 2 min read · Updated July 10, 2026
The debrief turns speech into records, which means the shape of what you say determines the quality of what you get. This is the shape. Read it twice and you’ll never need it again.
The script
Say the sections in this order; the italics are the knobs you fill in:
Debrief for {the show}, day {n}.
{Full name} from {company} — {their role}. {One sentence of context: what they care about, what they’re evaluating, what they said that mattered.} I need to {the commitment} by {when}.
{Next person} from {company} — {context}. I need to {commitment}.
{…repeat per person…}
General notes: {anything about the event itself — traffic, competitor presence, what resonated in the pitch.}
A real one sounds like this:
“Debrief for the spring logistics show, day two. Sarah Chen from Meridian Freight — VP of Operations, they’re mid-evaluation replacing their tracking stack this quarter, she lit up at the reporting demo and complained twice about her current vendor’s exports. I need to send her pricing by Friday. Tom — didn’t catch the surname — from a Rotterdam logistics company, runs a six-person ops team, skeptical but asked good questions. I need to book a demo for his team in the next two weeks. Priya Nair from Coastline — existing customer, happy, mentioned their Hamburg office is hiring an ops lead — worth an intro later. General notes: the booth QR did real work after 3pm, and two prospects mentioned seeing the competitor’s new pricing.”
Ninety seconds. That recording becomes three contact records, two dated follow-ups, and a note — after thirty seconds of review.
The five rules that make it parse cleanly
- Names and companies out loud, together. “Sarah Chen from Meridian Freight” matches or creates the right contact. “That VP from the morning” creates a mystery.
- One commitment per person, phrased as “I need to… by…”. Spoken deadlines become due dates. Vague intent (“should probably follow up sometime”) becomes vague rows — say a day.
- Partial names are fine — flag them. “Tom, didn’t catch the surname, Rotterdam logistics company” is enough to create a findable contact you’ll complete later. Silence about Tom is how Tom disappears.
- Context before commitment. One sentence of why they matter is what makes the eventual follow-up email specific instead of generic — it lands in the note, next to the person.
- Don’t narrate the whole day. The debrief is people and promises, not a diary. Booth stats and vibes go in one “general notes” sentence at the end.
When to record
The best debrief windows, in order: the taxi leaving the venue, the airport gate, the hotel room before the dinner. The worst window is “tomorrow” — by which the decay math says half your context is gone. Pair it with the wrap-up: wrap-up qualifies what you captured; the debrief catches what you never did.