Divide the fully loaded show cost by the number of qualified conversations. Fully loaded means booth space, build and refresh, freight and shipping, travel, hotels, meals, giveaways, and the loaded cost of every staff hour spent on the floor and in transit. A qualified conversation should meet a written bar: it lasted more than five minutes, you learned a specific application or problem, you know the person’s role in a buying decision, and there is a named next step. In a worked example of a $48,000 show with 34 qualified conversations, the cost is $1,412 per conversation, against $44 per scanned badge from the same spreadsheet.