Free tool · for exhibitors
Trade Show Lead Planner
How many leads can your booth realistically bring home, what is holding that number down, and what should you do about it?
Two minutes, with numbers you already have from the organizer and your own team. Every default comes from a published source, and you can change all of them.
Your show
Example numbers. Replace them with yours.From the organizer's exhibitor prospectus.
Check the attendee profile by job title. Default 16%. Source
10 × 20 is 200 sq ft.
Space, build, travel, shipping, promotion.
Your lead goal
About 126 leads
Between 95 and 158, from a cautious to a busy pace at the booth.
Your team is the limit
About 538 of your buyers would stop, but 3 on duty can hold about 252 conversations. Add people before you add anything that draws a crowd.
Staffing
3 days × 2 shifts of 3.5 hours, 3 on duty.
To meet everyone who would stop: 7 on duty.
6 people a day in shifts, or fewer working back to back.
What to do about it
- Add a person per shift, or another shift. Each staffer adds about 84 conversations over the show.
- Open every conversation with two qualifying questions from your sales team, so the booth spends its time on buyers.
- Book follow-up meetings instead of holding long conversations at the booth.
- Hold anything that draws a crowd until the team can meet the people who already stop. A crowd you cannot talk to is wasted.
After the show
Fill this in the week after, for your report.
- Leads: goal 126, actual ___
- Qualified leads handed to sales: ___
- Meetings booked at or after the show: ___
- Cost per lead: budget ÷ actual leads = ___ (your plan: $476)
- Every lead contacted within two working days: yes / no
Share it
The link rebuilds this plan with your numbers. It holds no names.
Want a second pair of eyes on it?
Send the plan to Neta's team. It arrives with your numbers, so the reply starts from your show.
How the numbers work
Exhibitors have planned booths with the same chain since the 1980s. Start with the attendees, keep only the share who buy what you sell, then the share of those who stop at your booth. Separately, work out how many conversations your team can hold: people on duty, times show hours, times conversations per hour. You meet whichever number is smaller. The share of those conversations held with someone who has buying influence is your lead goal.
The planner shows each step, so you can see which one limits you. That matters more than the total, because the fix is different for each.
How many people should staff a trade show booth?
Divide the visitors you expect by the conversations one person can hold over the show. Consultants who train booth staff use three, four or five conversations per person per hour, from cautious to busy. The floor caps it: about one person per 50 square feet of open booth space, so a 10 by 10 booth holds two.
Shifts of four hours or less keep the team sharp. Seven open hours a day means two shifts.
What is a realistic lead goal for a trade show?
One you can trace back to numbers the organizer published and to your own staffing, rather than last year's figure plus ten percent. If you exhibited at the same show last year, compare: the planner shows your goal next to last year's leads.
Cost per lead puts the goal in money. EXHIBITOR Magazine's 2019 survey put the average at $165 a lead; a figure far above that is worth questioning before you book the space.
Where the numbers come from
Each default, its source and how strong it is. Left out on purpose: the often quoted “80% of leads are never followed up”, which has no primary source, and any figure for how much entertainment raises booth traffic, since no credible one exists.
- Attendees who buy what you sell: 16%Chapman, Exhibit Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 1987), as cited in the Journal of Small Business Strategy · book, as cited
- Interested attendees who visit a booth: 27.6% (range 5.6% to 62.8%)Dekimpe, Gopalakrishna, Lilien et al., Generalizing About Trade Show Effectiveness, Journal of Marketing, 1997 (221 US shows) · research study
- Conversations per staffer per hour: 3, 4 or 5Competitive Edge exhibitor workbook, 2019 · consultant's figure
- Staff per booth floor: 1 per 50 sq ftCompetitive Edge, How to Right-Size Your Exhibit · consultant's figure
- Visitors with buying influence: 50%Chapman, Exhibit Marketing (1987), as cited in the Journal of Small Business Strategy · book, as cited
- Average cost per trade-show lead: $165EXHIBITOR Magazine sales lead survey, in Budget Basics, November 2019 · industry survey
- Space as a share of the exhibit budget: 32% (CEIR 2026: 40.5%)EXHIBITOR Magazine Economic Outlook Survey, 2019 · industry survey
- What visitors remember about a booth: A demo, 49%CEIR, Key Factors Affecting Exhibit Recall (2010), summarized by UFI · research study
Questions exhibitors ask
Estimate the leads (attendees × share who are your buyers × share who stop, capped by what your team can talk to), then multiply by your close rate and average deal. Compare that with the full cost of exhibiting, which is usually about three times the space rental. The planner does this when you enter a deal size and close rate.
16% of attendees as your buyers is from Chapman's Exhibit Marketing (1987). 27.6% of them stopping is the average across 221 US shows in a 1997 Journal of Marketing study. Three to five conversations per staffer per hour is a consultant's figure, not a study. Each source is linked under the planner. Use the show's own audited attendee profile when you have it.
You will often read that 80% are not. We could not find a primary source for that number, so the planner does not use it. The safe rule stands anyway: contact every lead within two working days, while they still remember the booth.
No. The numbers stay in your browser and in the link you choose to share. Only if you send the plan to Neta's team does it reach anyone.