B2B Lead Generation
Lead GenerationThe process of identifying and attracting potential business customers (leads) who may be interested in your company's products or services. Unlike B2C, B2B lead generation focuses on selling to other businesses.
Master the terminology of B2B sales, lead generation, and marketing with our comprehensive glossary.
B2B lead generation has a small vocabulary that hides a lot of disagreement. A lead is any company or person who might buy. A prospect is a lead you have checked against your Ideal Customer Profile and kept. An Ideal Customer Profile is a written description of the kind of company that has the problem you solve. Firmographic data describes a company (size, industry, location); technographic data describes the software it uses; intent data describes what it has been researching. A fit score is a judgement of how closely one company matches what you sell.
Last reviewed October 9, 2026 · Leads10
The process of identifying and attracting potential business customers (leads) who may be interested in your company's products or services. Unlike B2C, B2B lead generation focuses on selling to other businesses.
A detailed description of the type of company that would benefit most from your product or service. ICPs include characteristics like industry, company size, revenue, pain points, and technology stack.
A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data. Unlike ICP (which describes companies), buyer personas describe the individuals within those companies who make purchasing decisions.
A methodology for ranking prospects based on their perceived value to your organization. Lead scores help sales teams prioritize which leads to focus on based on fit and engagement.
A numerical rating (typically 0-100) that indicates how well a prospect matches your Ideal Customer Profile. Higher fit scores suggest the prospect is more likely to become a customer.
The process of extracting business intelligence from a company's website and online presence. This includes identifying industry, company size, products/services, and potential pain points.
A potential customer who has been identified as fitting your target market criteria but has not yet been qualified or contacted. Prospects are the output of lead generation activities.
A lead that has been deemed more likely to become a customer based on marketing engagement criteria. MQLs typically show interest through actions like downloading content or visiting key pages.
A prospective customer who has been researched and vetted by both marketing and sales teams and is ready for direct sales engagement. SQLs meet specific qualification criteria.
A sales strategy where representatives proactively reach out to potential customers who haven't expressed prior interest. This includes cold calling, cold emailing, and LinkedIn outreach.
A marketing strategy that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. Instead of pushing products, inbound marketing pulls customers in through SEO, content marketing, and social media.
A B2B marketing strategy that focuses resources on a set of target accounts. ABM treats individual accounts as markets of one, creating personalized campaigns for each target company.
A sales team member responsible for outbound prospecting and qualifying leads. SDRs focus on the top of the funnel, booking meetings for Account Executives to close.
The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses. CAC is calculated by dividing total acquisition costs by the number of new customers acquired.
The percentage of leads that complete a desired action, such as becoming a customer. Conversion rates are tracked at each stage of the sales funnel to identify bottlenecks.
A visual representation of the customer journey from initial awareness to final purchase. The funnel narrows at each stage as prospects are qualified or disqualified.
A specific problem or challenge that a prospect experiences which your product or service can solve. Identifying pain points is crucial for effective B2B sales messaging.
Contacting potential customers who have no prior relationship with your company. This includes cold calls, cold emails, and social selling on platforms like LinkedIn.
The person within a target company who has the authority to approve purchases. In B2B sales, identifying and reaching decision makers is critical for closing deals.
Using artificial intelligence to automate and enhance the process of finding and qualifying potential customers. AI prospecting can analyze vast amounts of data to identify ideal prospects.
Now that you know the terminology, start generating real leads with AI-powered prospecting.
Start Free TrialLast reviewed October 9, 2026 · Leads10
You enter your company website address. Leads10 analyzes the business and builds an Ideal Customer Profile before you choose how many prospect companies to identify. No step asks you to guess filter settings.
When verification finishes, Leads10 automatically opens Review Analysis and Prospects, your saved results page. Each company includes its name, industry, website, company LinkedIn page, fit score, and a written match reason. You can search by company name, industry, website, or match reason; filter and sort the list; and export selected companies to CSV.
A fit score is a number from 70 to 100 that says how closely one company's situation matches what you sell. It is a judgement about fit, not a prediction that the company will buy. Companies scoring below 70 are not returned at all, so every company on your list has already cleared a bar.
The score always arrives with a written match reason, so you can read the reasoning and disagree with it. A score with no explanation is impossible to check; that is why every score here comes with one.
Pain-point matching means checking whether a company appears to have the specific problem you solve before it goes on your list — instead of accepting it because its industry label and headcount fit a filter. It is the step that decides whether the rest of your outreach has any chance.
Filtering by industry and job title tells you a company exists and someone there has a plausible title. It does not tell you that the company needs what you sell. Two companies can share an industry, a size and a country and have completely different problems, so a list built from filters alone contains a large share of companies that were never going to buy — no matter how good the email is.
The matching here works in the other direction. It starts from your own website to establish what you sell, then reads each candidate company's public site for evidence of the matching pain point, and writes down the reason. You can read that reason and reject it, which is the point.
A Leads10 match reason gives you company-specific context you can check and adapt into a relevant subject line, email opening, LinkedIn message, call plan, or account brief. It explains how the prospect's apparent pain point connects to what you sell, instead of leaving you with only a company name and broad industry label.
For example, a generic opening such as ‘Can we help with your operations?’ can become a specific starting point such as ‘Your public site describes expansion across several service regions; our platform helps teams coordinate that kind of multi-location operation.’ The fictional example shows the method, not a claim that Leads10 knows private facts or guarantees a reply.
Leads10 does not write or send outreach and does not provide a named person's contact details. Review the match reason, confirm the evidence on the company website, use the suggested decision-maker roles to decide whom to research, and use the company LinkedIn page to continue that research.
No. Leads10 returns companies, not individual people's contact details. You get the company name, its website, its company LinkedIn page, the pain point it appears to have, the match reason and the fit score. You do not get a named person's email address, direct dial or mobile number.
That is deliberate, and it is where Leads10 sits in a normal stack: pair it with a contact database such as Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism or Lusha to find the right people at the companies it identifies. Leads10 decides which companies are worth contacting; those tools tell you who to contact there.