An image showing a busy trade show floor

 The Hidden Cost of Manual Data Entry

Is Your Trade Show ROI Worth It?

You’ve spent weeks planning for it. The booth is perfect, the demos went flawlessly, and your team is exhausted but exhilarated. You’ve just returned from a major trade show, armed with a stack of business cards—your company’s future leads.

But a question looms: what’s the true cost of that stack?

For many sales teams, the real work doesn’t begin at the event; it begins when they get back to the office. The average salesperson collects around 40 business cards per day at a trade show. And with it taking an estimated 7 minutes to manually enter just one card into a CRM and set up a proper follow-up task, that work quickly adds up.

For a three-day trade show, that’s a staggering 14.1 hours per salesperson spent solely on data entry.

This isn’t just lost time; it’s a hidden cost that eats away at your event’s return on investment (ROI). Consider these factors:

  • The Cost of Lost Time: Those 14 hours could be spent on high-value tasks—nurturing warm leads, personalizing emails, and scheduling calls. Every minute spent on manual data entry is a minute not spent building relationships and closing deals.
  • The Cost of Inaccuracy: Manual entry is a breeding ground for errors. A simple typo in a contact’s email or phone number can mean the difference between a new customer and a missed opportunity.
  • The Cost of Delay: The longer it takes to follow up, the colder a lead gets. While you’re manually inputting data, your competitor is already reaching out to the same people. A timely, personal follow-up is one of the most critical factors in converting a lead, and delays can kill your momentum.

Your trade show investment goes far beyond the cost of the booth space and travel. It includes the post-event labor that, for many companies, is a black hole of inefficiency. The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

This problem is precisely why we built ExpoWizard. By eliminating the manual data entry, we empower you to protect your event ROI and ensure that every conversation at a trade show translates into a valuable, actionable lead.