What B2B lead generation means for a small team
B2B lead generation is how a business that sells to other businesses finds people who might buy, and gets them into a first conversation. A lead is a person at a company who fits what you sell and has some reason to talk. It isn't a name on a list.
The guides on page one are written for companies with a marketing department, a team of SDRs and a budget for webinars and paid ads. They list 15 strategies because a big team can run 15 at once.
A team of 2 to 20 can't. If your reps also run demos, write proposals and look after clients, you have time for about three channels done properly. Choosing those three is most of the job.
Start with who, not how
Every channel works better when you know exactly who you're looking for. Write it down in four lines:
The companies we win: [industry, size, location, a situation they're in]
The person who feels the problem: [role]
The person who signs: [role]
The moment they start looking: [what happens that makes them need us now]
Build it from your last 10 to 20 wins, not from who you'd like to sell to. Look for what they had in common: size, industry, the trigger that made them call. An ideal customer profile explains how it differs from a buyer persona.
The last line matters most. "Companies with 20 to 100 staff" is a list. "Companies with 20 to 100 staff that just opened a second office" is a reason to call this week.
The channels, and which suit a small team
Here are the six channels most small B2B teams choose from. None is best for everyone. The right three depend on your deal size, how long buyers take to decide and what your team is good at.
| Channel | How it works | Suits you if | Time to first results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals | Clients and contacts introduce you to people like them | You have happy clients and a service people talk about | Weeks |
| Outbound | You contact companies on your list by phone, email or message | Your buyers are easy to name and your deal is worth a call | Weeks |
| Partners | Businesses selling to the same buyers pass you work | Your service sits next to someone else's (accountant and IT support, say) | Months |
| Content | Articles, guides or videos that buyers find when they search | Buyers research before they talk to anyone | Months |
| Events | Trade shows, local business groups, talks | Your buyers gather in one place | Weeks, then slow |
| A profile, posts and messages to the people you sell to | Your buyers use it for work | Weeks to months |
Referrals
For most small teams this is the cheapest channel and the one most neglected. Clients will introduce you if you ask at the right moment, which is when they've just said something good about you. Ask for one specific introduction ("Do you know anyone else who's opening a second site this year?"), not "anyone you know".
Make it a routine: every client, a referral ask within a week of a good result.
Outbound
Outbound is the channel you control. Build a list of companies that match your four lines, find the right person, and contact them with a reason that fits their situation. Outbound sales strategy covers the list, the message and the weekly numbers in detail.
It works when the message is about their situation. It fails when it's a template sent to 500 people.
Partners
A partner is a business that sells to your buyers but doesn't compete with you. A web designer and a copywriter, a payroll firm and an HR adviser. One good partner can send more work than a month of cold calls, but partnerships take months to build and most never send anything.
Start with two. Meet them, learn what their clients ask for, and send them work first.
Content
Content brings buyers who search for their problem. It's slow: expect months before an article brings enquiries. It suits you if buyers research before they talk to anyone and you can write clearly about their problems.
A small team should write about the questions buyers ask on calls, one article at a time. Skip the big "ultimate guide".
Events
Events work when your buyers gather in one place, such as a trade show, an industry association or a local business breakfast. What you get from one depends on the follow-up, since a stack of business cards is worth nothing if nobody calls them within a week.
For many B2B buyers, LinkedIn is where they are at work. What works for a small team is a clear profile, a few posts a week about what you see in your clients' businesses, and comments on your buyers' posts before you ever message them.
How to pick your three
Pick one channel for this quarter's deals, one for next quarter's and one that compounds:
- This quarter: outbound or referrals. They're the fastest.
- Next quarter: partners or events.
- Compounding: content or LinkedIn. They're slow to start and keep bringing work once they do.
If you only have time for one, make it referrals plus a small, steady amount of outbound.
Work back from the target to this week
Lead generation is a numbers job. If you don't know how many conversations a month your target needs, you'll either panic in the last week or coast in the first three.
Work backwards:
- Write down the new clients you need this quarter.
- From your own past deals, find how many first meetings it takes to win one client.
- Find how many conversations it takes to book one first meeting.
- For each channel, find how many contacts it takes to get one conversation.
Then divide the totals by the weeks left in the quarter. Use your own rates if you have them. If you don't, count for a month before you set targets, because borrowed rates from someone else's business will be wrong for yours.
The activity calculator does this sum from your own conversion rates.
Made-up example: a four-person IT support company that sells monthly contracts to offices with 20 to 100 staff.
The target: 6 new contracts this quarter, which is 13 weeks.
Their own numbers from last year: they win 1 contract from every 4 first meetings. From referrals, 1 in 2 introductions turns into a first meeting. From outbound, 1 in 5 conversations does, and it takes about 8 calls or messages to get one conversation.
So 6 contracts need 24 first meetings. They expect about 8 of those from referrals, which needs 16 introductions. The other 16 meetings come from outbound: 80 conversations, which is about 640 contacts in the quarter.
Per week, that's about 1 referral introduction and 50 outbound contacts shared across two people, or 5 a day each.
Week 1: they ask 6 clients for introductions and get 2. The two sellers make 55 outbound contacts between them, have 7 conversations and book 2 first meetings.
Week 2: they notice outbound calls to offices that just moved premises get twice as many conversations. They sort next week's list to put those first.
By week 4 they're a little behind on meetings but ahead on referral introductions. They keep the numbers and change nothing else for another month.
The weekly numbers only help if you can see them. In ActivityTracker your reps log calls in one tap, and you see who's gone quiet, read their Friday check-ins and prep each 1:1, for a team of 5 or 30.
The handoff: don't lose a lead between people
In a small team, the person who finds a lead is often not the person who runs the meeting. That handoff is where leads get dropped. The finder thinks they passed it on. The closer never saw it.
Agree three things:
- When a lead is ready to hand over, for example once they've agreed to a meeting and you know who decides. MQL and SQL explains how bigger teams draw that line.
- What goes with it: who they are, why they're talking to you now, what they said, and the next step with a date.
- Who owns it from that moment, with one name on every lead written down where the whole team can see it.
Then check it weekly. Any lead with no next step and no owner goes to the top of Monday's meeting.
What to cut
Small teams waste most of their lead generation time on things that feel busy:
- Big bought contact lists, because most of the names won't fit your four lines and cold messages to them hurt your email reputation.
- Any channel you tried only once, since one event or one month of posts tells you nothing. Commit for a quarter or don't start.
- Any channel you can't measure. If you can't say how many first meetings it brought last month, you have no way to decide whether to keep it.
- Leads that don't fit, since a meeting with a company that will never buy costs the same hour as one that will. How to qualify prospects has the questions to ask early.
- Spreading thin: five channels at a fifth of your time each gets less than two at half.
Every quarter, list your channels, the first meetings each brought and the hours it took. Cut the one with the worst meetings per hour, and put that time into the best.
What to do first
- Write your four lines from your last 10 to 20 wins.
- Count last quarter's first meetings by where they came from, so you know which channel already works.
- Pick three channels: one fast, one medium and one that compounds.
- Work back from this quarter's target to a weekly number for each channel, and put it where the team sees it every Monday.
- Agree when a lead is handed over, what goes with it and who owns it.
- Count every Friday, and change one thing at a time.
If you want the whole system on one page, the prospecting system guide sets up the daily and weekly routine behind these numbers.