r/LeadGeneration

bought a list of 5,000 "verified" restaurant leads in the Southeast. ran basic validation myself.

- 31% of phone numbers disconnected

- 18% of businesses had permanently closed

- 11% were duplicate entries

- emails had a 67% bounce rate

the vendor told me data was "updated quarterly." that means a business that closed in January is still on your list in October.

the local business lead gen industry is running on vaporware and nobody talks about it because everyone's too embarrassed to admit they got taken.

is there any tool that actually pulls live data? because I'm furious and done buying historical CSVs.

We do cold emails and we have 2000 mailboxes so for that we need a lot of leads. We are looking for leads of companies using some specific technologies from BuiltWith. Location of leads will be UK and USA. DM me for more details.

It seems like a lot of industries like law, construction, etc. constantly talk crap about third party lead generation buisnesses because they don’t produce results, etc. and it just seems hard to make money as a lead generation businesses in general.

However, I was just curious to see if there’s an industry that seems to frequently use third party lead generation services, whether they’re good or bad? It seems like life insurnace is one of them.

I run a content system for B2B founders. I need someone who can consistently find and qualify the right people, not someone to blast cold messages.

Commission-only. You earn when deals close. If that's a dealbreaker, stop here.

What you'll be doing:

Finding qualified leads using a method I'll show you

Experimenting with new sources, filters, and criteria on your own

Handing off leads that are actually worth talking to

Who this is for:

You've done lead gen before and know what a good lead actually looks like

You like testing and refining, not just running the same list over and over

You're playing the long game

To apply:

2-3 lines, where have you sourced leads before, and what makes a lead qualified in your opinion.

I work at a startup and we are looking to build a list for our outbound efforts. Please reach out if you could help

Something weird is happening this week and I can’t tell if it’s just me.

I’ve been running cold outreach for almost 2 years and my setup has been pretty stable:

• same scripts
• same offer
• same sending process
• same domains

But over the last few days my deliverability completely collapsed.

My open rates went from ~35% average down to literally 3–4%.

Not “slightly worse.”
Completely dead.

What’s confusing is:

• domains are aged
• SPF/DKIM are configured
• warmup is active
• bounce rate is low
• copy hasn’t changed

Yet Gmail and Outlook suddenly feel WAY more aggressive.

At this point it almost feels like the “technical handshake” between sender and inbox providers changed overnight.

I’m starting to wonder:

• are warmup tools losing effectiveness?
• is Google flagging shared sending environments harder now?
• are Outlook tenants getting stricter?
• does infrastructure matter more than copy now?

Curious if anyone else running outbound is seeing the same thing this week.

Would love to know what actually fixed it for you:
new domains?
different infrastructure?
Workspace changes?
mailbox rotation?
completely ditching warmup?

Trying to figure out whether cold email is evolving… or quietly dying.

When I built my first business, some of our highest-converting leads came from media coverage.

A mention in the right publication did more than send traffic. It built instant credibility.

People arrived on the site already trusting the brand because they’d seen us featured in a publication they respected.

That trust translated into better conversion rates than most paid ads. For my supplement brand we were able to use, " As Seen in Men's Health" for our marketing, which was amazing - and brought in so much traffic when we shared posts on Instagram.

It also earned high-authority backlinks, which improved our rankings in Google and continued sending traffic long after the article was published.

That experience is what led me to build ContactJournalists.com

The platform brings live journalist requests and podcasts looking for guests directly to your dashboard.

Instead of cold emailing reporters, you respond to opportunities where journalists are actively looking for expert commentary, products, and founder stories.

We offer a 7-day free trial, and it’s £14 per month after that.

For lead generation agencies, consultants, and founders, PR can be a seriously underrated acquisition channel because it combines:

• Targeted traffic
• Trust and credibility
• High-authority backlinks
• Better SEO
• Stronger GEO (AI visibility)
• Warm inbound leads

Curious to hear from others here:

Have you used PR as a lead generation channel?

If so, how did it compare with paid ads, cold outreach, or SEO?

Hey Guys & Gals!

I am looking for any reccomendations on solar call centers that people have had success with or if any of you provide that offering.

We have a growing team and would like to diversify our lead generation, but with call centers most have been hit or miss, only worked in a specific market, or haven’t been able to provide any data showing their metrics.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

Thank you.

I am a salesman of a manufacturer in China, which is producing sport equipment like Pickleballs. And I am a freshman in this industry. I have been actively developing customers through the information collection platform for over a week, but I have received almost no feedback. I once tried to approach some non-branding companies that hadn't ventured into this field for collaboration, but they simply didn't respond. Then I approached some sports brands in the relevant field to try selling our products and achieving the goal of outsourcing production for them, but we still haven't received any orders. Even fewer people replied to me.

I don't send mass messages like a robot. Instead, I modify the first message I send to each brand according to its specific characteristics. Even so, I still haven't achieved much. What should I do?

Running a mid-size moving company out of Chicago handling both local and long distance. Been in the business for about four years and lead generation is still the part I feel least confident about.

For the first couple of years we relied almost entirely on referrals and Google. That still works but it is inconsistent and hard to scale. I have been experimenting with a few different lead providers over the past six months and the results have been all over the place.

Main issues I keep running into:

• A lot of leads come in with no firm move date and never convert
• Shared leads mean you are racing three other companies to the same phone call
• The cost per booked job ends up much higher than the cost per lead suggests

Specifically curious if anyone has found a lead type or source that converts better than average. Local moving leads versus long distance seems like it would matter a lot but I am not sure which direction to go deeper on.

Questions for other operators:

1. What lead sources are working for you in 2025?
2. Have you found exclusive leads to be worth the premium?
3. Is anyone having real success with inbound content or SEO instead of buying leads?

Happy to share more about what I have tested if it helps the conversation.

We’re starting a lead generation agency focused on US realtors.

Right now we’re doing outreach through Facebook DMs and email. We’ve received a few replies, but haven’t landed our first client yet.

For those who’ve worked with real estate lead generation or agencies:

How did you get your first client?

What outreach channels worked best?

Did you offer free trials, pay-per-lead, or discounted pricing initially?

Any advice on building trust with realtors when you have no case studies?

Would appreciate any suggestions or lessons learned.

Hi All,

I get all of texts from businesses like "We're a tree company doing some work in your neighborhood, would you like us to swing by and give you a free estimate". Can anyone help point me to a good service for that? Bascially a mass texting service for homeowner numbers in your city that you can text? Would appreciate any insight!

8+ years running a marketing agency. 600+ clients served. Ask me anything.

I started my agency while working a 9–5, eventually scaled it into a multi six-figure business, and now help others launch and grow agencies of their own.

Over the years, I’ve worked with startups, local businesses, founders, and service providers at different stages of growth.

Happy to answer questions about:

• Getting clients

• Pricing and packaging offers

• Lead generation

• Building and scaling an agency

• Freelancing

• Choosing a niche

• Sales calls and closing

• Retainers

• Content strategy

• Systems and operations

• Transitioning from employment into entrepreneurship

Or anything else you’d like to know 👌

Hey I’m looking to get investors and wholesalers contacts anyone know from where can i get them?

So I am an English tutor and I have decided to learn how to generate leads through Meta ADS, I have made a couple of videos, edited them and ran a campaign. It has been 4 days so far, I have spent 52$, got 12 leads, but no one is answering, only one person has answered, but I am still trying to close him. People are leaving me on read when they literally left their contact. Whatsapp is even worse, 5/5 people haven’t even read my message. I feel frustrated and even start to think about literally calling those people asking if they got my message and if they are still curious.
I would be super grateful if you could advise me on this topic as I am just starting….

Basically I need phone numbers of business owners and their company's website. I will be targeting the US market. So I need advice which platforms and which methods should I use for lead generation. I need leads for medium sized businesses. Looking forward for your advice.

Hi,

I’m owner of a small solo run financial business , Dalet Financial. I mainly do bookkeeping, fractional CFO, and FP&A services. I am looking into lead generation services as networking/sales is not my speciality or something I am good at in any capacity. Does anyone have experience if this works? Could point me in the right direction.

Edit: *lead in title

Thanks.

Think I finally got the gist of how people find who to reach out to before a conference and it's not just connections.

After our last event I spent a stupid amount of time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Read a bunch of stuff online and read about Pullalist, tried it before our last conference I just generated the list a couple weeks out, picked maybe 30 names that fit what we sell and sent normal outreach. Nothing much just emails and LinkedIn. Got like 10 meetings on the calendar before I even left for the airport. For context the last conference I went to cold I came back with one decent conversation and a stack of business cards.

So yeah I basically spent years walking into these events blind, scanning random badges and hoping I'd run into the right people, when I could've just looked at who was going from the get go. Whether with a tool the event hashtag on LinkedIn, people posting that they're going the sponsor list or even just texting a few people in the industry. The info is THERE, I just never thought to go out and look for it.

1. Your data is killing deliverability before youve even started. Most people buy a list or scrape LinkedIn and blast it. Unverified contacts destroy your sender reputation fast. Clean data is the unsexy thing nobody talks about but it's the foundation everything else sits on.

2. Sequences arent the issue, bad targeting is. Most bad outreach isn't bad because of the copy, it's bad because the list is wrong. Nail the ICP first, then write the sequence.

3. The first reply isnt the winner, the followup system is. Most leads that eventually convert don't reply to the first email. The agencies that win are the ones with a structured follow-up that doesn't feel like harassment.

4. Looking legit is super important. Gmail address and a free Wix site kills conversions before the prospect has read a word of your email. First impressions in B2B are made before the call.

Happy to do a sort of AMA if any of this is useful. Can go deeper on data, sequences, CRM setup, or anything else outreach-related.