I imported a list of contacts that we got from our badge scanner. Before I imported the contacts.csv I added a couple columns for hubspot owner and “X Tradeshow 2017” which was a single checkbox to indicate that we met them at this trade show.
I believe for the vast majority of contacts hubspot will automatically link a contact to a company based on the domain name in the email address. So I would think you wouldn’t have to create all those companies manually.
As far as the deals go as our sales people continue to work the leads they met at the tradeshow they will manually create deals for those contacts that mature into opportunities. Not that tedious in my opinion as, for us at least, very few contacts will actually turn into an oppurtuniity.