B2B lead generation

B2B lead generation is lead generation where the buyer is a business rather than a consumer, which means fewer buyers, longer sales cycles, larger deals, and a decision made by a named person with a job title.

The differences from consumer lead generation aren't cosmetic. A consumer brand might have ten million potential buyers and a $40 purchase. A B2B company selling to contract manufacturers might have 4,000 potential buyers in the country and a $60,000 contract. That changes everything about how you find them.

With ten million buyers, you optimize for volume and cost per lead. With 4,000, volume-led tactics fail, because the search volume for what you sell is tiny and most of it comes from students and competitors. What works is knowing which of the 4,000 have a reason to buy this quarter, and reaching them by name.

An example

A freight brokerage wants shippers. There are perhaps 30,000 companies in the US that ship enough freight to matter to it, and maybe 400 of them will change brokers this quarter. A B2B lead generation program that works finds the 400, usually because they just opened a warehouse or went into bid season, and emails them. One that doesn't work emails all 30,000 with the same message and books meetings with the ones who were fine.

The numbers that matter

Qualified pipeline from the program, cost per booked meeting, and cost per closed deal. Traffic and form fills are proxies, and in a market of 4,000 buyers they're bad ones.

Related terms

Lead generation · Ideal customer profile (ICP) · Outbound prospecting · Buying signal

If you want this run for you, see our lead generation agency, or 26 B2B industries.