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B2B lead generation

B2B lead generation is finding businesses that fit your customer profile and collecting a verified way to contact them. It splits into inbound, where buyers find you, and outbound, where you find them.

Inbound means publishing something a buyer searches for and capturing their details when they arrive. It compounds, and it is slow. Outbound means identifying the businesses you want and reaching out cold. It starts working the week you start and stops the week you stop.

Most companies need both, but the order matters. Outbound is the only one that produces pipeline on a schedule you control, which is why a team with no customers should usually start there and let inbound build underneath it.

The mechanical part of outbound — finding the businesses, finding their addresses, checking those addresses are real — is the part that eats the week and the part software removes. Choosing who to target and what to say cannot be outsourced to software, and is where campaigns are actually won or lost.

Goes deeper: B2B Lead Generation: A Practical Guide

Related terms

Lead
A lead is a business that might buy from you, together with a way to reach it. Without a working contact method it is not a lead, it is a name.
Prospecting
Prospecting is finding businesses that match your customer profile and gathering enough about each one to send a message worth reading. It is the step before outreach, not part of it.
Outbound sales
Outbound sales is contacting businesses that have not asked to hear from you. It is the only acquisition channel whose volume you control directly, which is also why it is the easiest to do badly.
Ideal customer profile
An ideal customer profile is a written description of the kind of company you sell to best — industry, size, location, situation — specific enough to look at a business and say yes or no in a second.
Cold email
A cold email is a message to a business that has had no prior contact with you. It is lawful in most B2B contexts under specific conditions, and it works only when the list is right and the message is specific.