Notes for owners · Business growth
How to generate B2B leads
B2B leads come from a named list of companies and the two people inside each one. Reach them by search, direct outreach and a phone call, then qualify before sales ever sees them.
The GullySales team · Updated 15 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
B2B leads come from a named list, not from a traffic target. Write down the companies that could buy what you sell, and find the two people inside each who matter. Reach them three ways: a page that answers the question they type, a direct approach by email, and a phone call. Then qualify before anything reaches sales, because a wasted visit costs a day. If your market is four hundred companies, stop buying awareness. Build the list and work it.
Start with the universe, not with the campaign
The first question is not which channel. It is how many companies in India could place this order.
If the answer is in the thousands, marketing can generate demand and the work looks like campaigns. If the answer is a few hundred, advertising is the wrong instrument, and a list worked by a person is the whole plan. Most Indian manufacturers and industrial service firms are in the second case and spend as though they were in the first.
Write the description tightly. Not "engineering companies", but "pharmaceutical and food plants in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu with their own maintenance team who buy stainless steel piping". Then name the roles: the person who writes the specification, the person who negotiates, and the person who signs. In a lot of Indian companies those are three people and only one of them will speak to you first.
The buyer who types a part number at eleven at night
There is a particular kind of search that decides industrial business. A purchase engineer with a drawing in front of him types something like "IS 2062 E250 plate supplier Bengaluru" or a bearing number, late, after the plant has shut. He is not browsing. He wants a company that clearly handles that exact thing, with a grade table, a photograph of the material, a phone number and a name.
Most supplier websites cannot be found for that search, because they have one page called Products with eight bullet points. A page per grade, per process, per capacity, written in the words on the drawing, is the single highest-return piece of B2B marketing work there is. It costs nothing to run and it produces enquiries from people who already know what they need.
The same principle covers the other search your buyer makes, which is your company name after a colleague mentions you. What they find decides whether the call happens.
Four routes, and what each one is for
| Route | Who it reaches | The first sign it is working |
|---|---|---|
| Specific product and process pages | The buyer who already knows the term and is searching now | Enquiries that quote a grade, a size or a quantity |
| A built list worked by call and visit | The companies you chose, whether or not they are looking | Conversations held, plants visited, vendor forms received |
| Email and LinkedIn to named people | Designations that read messages, in larger companies | Replies, and meetings that were not requested by you |
| Marketplaces and tenders | Buyers who shop by comparison, including government | Orders, not enquiries, measured against the subscription cost |
Two routes run properly beat four run occasionally. Choose by where your last twenty orders actually came from, which is a question most sales meetings have never asked out loud.
Qualify before it reaches the sales team
An enquiry is not a lead. Passing everything to sales is how a good salesperson ends up quoting for a student project and a trader fishing for prices.
Four questions settle it, asked on the first call by whoever answers the phone. Is this their problem to solve, or are they collecting quotations for someone else. Is there a date by which it has to be done. Has money been set aside, or is there an approved capital line. And who signs the purchase order.
If three of the four are clear, it goes to sales the same day with the answers attached. If not, it goes into a nurture list and gets a call in a month. Write the four questions on a card and keep it at the reception desk, because in many SMEs the first contact with a buyer is with whoever picked up.
What does not work
Buying a database of fifty thousand contacts. The contacts are stale, the designations are wrong, and sending to them damages your email domain.
Running awareness advertising to a market of three hundred companies. You are paying to show a banner to people who are not in your universe.
Attending an exhibition and doing nothing for three weeks afterwards. The cost of the stall is mostly in the follow-up that never happens. For example, a fabrication firm spends an illustrative ₹3 lakh on a stall at a machine tool exhibition, collects 180 cards, and calls forty of them. The other 140 were paid for and thrown away.
And generic outreach. A message that says you provide quality solutions at competitive prices is deleted by exactly the person you wanted.
What to do next
Take your last twenty orders and write down, for each, how that customer first came to you. Then count how many of your current marketing activities appear in that list. Most owners find one route produced almost everything and gets the least attention. Start there. Build the named list for that route. If you would like the list and the qualification questions worked out with your sales team, book the free audit.