Lead Generation Playbook
The single biggest mistake new agencies make: trying to sell to anyone who'll listen. The second biggest: building a beautiful pipeline tool before they have any leads in it.
This document is the opposite. Concrete sources, concrete filters, and a CRM you can build in 20 minutes.
The qualifying filter (read this first)
A good prospect has all four of these. Skip anyone missing two or more.
| Filter | What "yes" looks like |
|---|---|
| No website, or a bad one | Google profile has no site link, or the link goes to a 2014 GoDaddy template, or it's a Facebook page. |
| They're being found | They have ≥20 reviews on Google. They're not a brand new place no one knows about. |
| They handle phone calls | Restaurant, contractor, salon, dentist, lawyer, gym, plumber, etc. NOT pure ecommerce. |
| An owner is reachable | Single-location independent or small-chain (≤5 locations). Not a franchise where decisions are made elsewhere. |
If they have all four, they're a +1 lead. Add them to outreach. If they have three, they're a maybe — try the email sequence, skip the cold call. If they have two or fewer, skip. You'll burn time and confidence.
Where leads come from (in order of ROI for a beginner)
1. Google Maps prospecting (your #1 source — 70% of new pipeline)
The play:
- Open Google Maps. Search
[business type] near [city]. - Filter results to 4.0+ stars and 20+ reviews (these are healthy businesses).
- For each result, check the listing for a website link.
- No website? Add to list. Bad website? Add to list.
What to grab:
- Business name
- Address
- Phone number
- Owner name (search the business + "owner" on Google, LinkedIn, or look at recent reviews where the owner replied)
- One specific observation (review count, hours quirk, what they post about)
Tooling:
- Google Maps + spreadsheet: free, manual, ~30/hour. Fine for week 1.
- GMB Scraper / Outscraper / Phantombuster: $30–80/mo, ~500/hour. Worth it once you've hit 100 leads manually and proven the model.
- Apollo.io / ZoomInfo: B2B databases that often have owner emails. Worth it for higher-end verticals (legal, dental, etc.).
Vertical recommendations for week 1 (high call rate, easy to find owners, reliable budgets):
- Independent restaurants (especially ethnic / specialty)
- HVAC / plumbing / electrical contractors
- Dental practices
- Med spas / aesthetic clinics
- Auto repair shops
- Local law firms (estate / family / immigration)
- Independent fitness studios
- Salon / barbershop owners (less budget, but easy to talk to)
Avoid for week 1:
- Franchises (no decision authority)
- Anything regulated heavily (financial advisors, healthcare with HIPAA needs — fine eventually, complicated up front)
- Pure SaaS / online businesses (different sales motion)
- Businesses with fewer than 10 reviews (not enough proof of life)
2. Local Facebook groups (~15% of pipeline, slow burn)
Join the local "[city] business owners" or "[city] entrepreneurs" Facebook groups. Do not pitch in them. Just show up:
- Answer questions about marketing/web/Google when they come up
- Compliment work people are doing
- Once a quarter, make ONE post: "Just shipped a new site for [client] — pretty proud of it: [link]" (with permission)
DMs from these groups close at 60-80% (they self-qualified). Volume is low (1-2 a month) but cost per lead is zero.
3. Referrals (~10% of pipeline initially, becomes #1 by year 2)
After every successful client launch, send this:
"Hey [Name] — happy you're loving the new site. One ask: if you know any other local biz owners who could use one, would you mind shooting them my number / website? I'll knock $20/month off your subscription for any referral that signs up."
Then actually follow through on the discount. The discount is cheap CAC, and word travels in tight communities.
4. Walk-by / drive-by (~5% but high conversion)
If you live somewhere with foot traffic:
- Walk a commercial street with intent.
- Note any business that has no website link visible in their window/door.
- That night, look them up, build a quick demo, walk in tomorrow with the "I built this for you" pitch.
This converts at ~30%+ when done right because they can see you're local and serious.
5. Cold email at scale (~5% but low quality unless filtered well)
Cold email is high-volume but low-trust. Use it for second-tier markets you're not driving to:
- Buy/scrape a list of 1,000 businesses with the qualification filter
- Run them through the email sequence in
02-email-sequence.md - Expect: 5% reply, 1% positive, 0.3% close
- 1,000 sends → ~3 closes → $7K MRR over a year if they all stay
This works only if you have email-warmup infrastructure and a registered sending domain. Skip it until you have your first 5 clients from sources 1-4.
The CRM (build this in 20 minutes)
You don't need Salesforce. You need a single sheet with these columns:
| Field | Type | Required at | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Name | text | Lead-add | |
| Owner First | text | Lead-add | Use "Hi there" if unknown — it's worse than a name but better than nothing |
| Phone | text | Lead-add | |
| text | Lead-add | If you have it | |
| City | text | Lead-add | |
| Vertical | dropdown | Lead-add | restaurant / hvac / etc. |
| Why qualified | text | Lead-add | One sentence — "no website, 364 reviews" |
| Stage | dropdown | Always | Cold → Contacted → Engaged → Demo Sent → Discovery Booked → Proposed → Won → Lost → DNC |
| Next action | text | Always | "Call back Thurs 11am" |
| Next action date | date | Always | |
| Last action | text | After every touch | "Voicemail + SMS sent demo link" |
| Last action date | date | After every touch | |
| Tier they want | dropdown | After discovery | Starter / Growth / Pro / unknown |
| Notes | long text | As you go | Personal stuff: kid's name, pain points, weird quirks |
Tools that work:
- Notion (free, perfect for solo) — make a database with the columns above. Use views to filter "Next action ≤ today."
- Google Sheets (free, a bit more friction) — same columns, sort by Next action date.
- Pipedrive ($25/mo, more polished) — good once you have 100+ active leads.
- Folk ($25/mo, prettier) — if you want fancier email tracking.
Start with Notion. Upgrade only when it slows you down.
The daily routine (if you can give this 2 hours/day)
90 minutes of dialing + sequencing:
- Open the CRM, sort by "next action ≤ today"
- Knock through every entry: call, leave voicemail, send SMS or email, log it
- For every "Lost" or "DNC" you mark, add 5 new leads to the top of the funnel
30 minutes of new lead gen:
- Maps prospecting in a new neighborhood / vertical
- Add 10–20 new qualified leads to the CRM
If you do this 5 days a week, you'll have 100+ active conversations within 30 days and your first paying client within 60.
What to track weekly
Keep a single weekly tally:
Week of [date]
- Dials: 42
- Connects: 11
- Demos sent: 7
- Discovery calls booked: 2
- Closed: 0
- New MRR: $0
- Active pipeline value (sum of probability-weighted stages): $1,580/mo
After 6 weeks of this, you'll see the patterns: which day of week converts, which vertical responds, which subject line gets replies. That's when you scale.
When to stop dialing and start delegating
You can run this solo to ~30 active clients ($6K MRR if all on Growth). Past that:
- Hire a part-time SDR (Setter) at $20/hr + $50/booked-call to do the dialing for you.
- Move yourself to the discovery call only.
- Once you're at 50 clients, hire a part-time builder (junior dev or trained ops person) to handle onboarding under your QA.
Your time becomes more valuable than $50/hr cold-calling. Recognize when that flips.
A note on TCPA, do-not-call, and B2B exemptions
- Calling business landlines for B2B purposes is largely exempt from the federal Do Not Call registry.
- Cell phones are dicier — automated dialers (auto-dialers, pre-recorded messages) targeting cells require express written consent under TCPA. Manual calls to cell phones for B2B are generally OK in most states, but a few states have stricter rules (notably Florida's "Mini-TCPA," and Washington and Oklahoma have similar laws).
- SMS to cell phones absolutely requires express written consent in most states for marketing.
- Do not buy lists that include consumer cell phones tagged for marketing — you're inheriting their consent (or lack thereof).
The simple rule: call business numbers with a human voice, log every call, honor "do not call" requests immediately and permanently. SMS only after they've responded to email or call. If you scale, talk to an attorney in your state.
This is not legal advice. When in doubt, don't.