How to Generate B2B Leads in 2025: The Modern Sales Playbook

So your sales team is working hard to reach the sales targets, and it’s just… not working out?

Chances are, most of their valuable time is spent on manual tasks such as data entry, keeping the CRMs clean and organized, and prospecting across email and LinkedIn. All of which could easily be automated.

Add here the fact that the data they are collecting might be of low quality, and you’ve got a team that is spending hours on pitching to the wrong leads or people who no longer work for the companies you’re targeting.

These are just some of the factors killing your sales efforts. Other factors such as poorly enriched CRMs and the use of disconnected tools just keep on adding more fuel to the fire.

Let’s take a look at each problem in detail and identify a solution for each one.

Table of Contents

1. Problem #1: Spending Too Much Time on Manual Data Tasks
2. Problem #2: Low-Quality Sales Data and Poorly Enriched CRMs
3. Problem #3: Prospecting Across Email and LinkedIn Is Slow and Manual
4. Problem #4: Using Too Many Disconnected Tools for Data Enrichment and Outreach
5. How Genesy Drives 4x Sales Pipeline with Zero Extra Headcount
6. FAQ

Problem #1: Spending Too Much Time on Manual Data Tasks

32% of sales reps spend 1-2 hours per day on data entry, according to a HubSpot study. Instead of closing deals and nurturing warm prospects, your sales team wastes time on lead data entry, prospect data enrichment, CRM updates, and so on. How will they be able to hit all sales goals on time if they’re wasting so much time on administrative and manual work?

Example: Imagine you have a team of 6 FTE sales representatives who are also gathering the data manually. It takes a full-time SDR a total of 10 hours per week of non-revenue generating work to gather and enter data manually into their CRM or sales tool.

If each SDR on a team of 6 spends an average of 2 hours per day on manual data tasks, that means that your team spends, on average, 12 hours per day on manual tasks that could easily be automated. That is about 240 hours per month in total.

If all SDRs are paid, on average, 20 euros per hour, with a team of 6 FTE, your company is throwing about 5K euros down the drain every month only for manual data gathering and entering.

What does this do to your team:

• cause frustrations
• waste their time
• slow your pipeline progression
• put them at a disadvantage when trying to reach their sales targets

Solution Using a smart sales tool that can automate manual tasks and keep your CRM up to date. One of the tools that can help you generate B2B leads effortlessly is Genesy.

The goal is for your sales team to focus on high-value tasks while tools like Genesy can work in the background and help your team create highly targeted lead lists that are laser-focused on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), from their work title to their work location.

For example, you can prompt Genesy to enrich all the lead lists with their full names, industries, emails, phone numbers, and so on and let it do its thing while you focus on other, more valuable tasks.

You also need to make sure the collected data is up to date. Instead of doing it manually, you can use AI to your advantage. Genesy, for instance, can help keep your data updated and flag duplicate entries and irrelevant leads.

Problem #2: Low-Quality Sales Data and Poorly Enriched CRMs

We cannot stress enough how much of a disadvantage you may be if you’re working with low-quality sales data and poorly enriched CRMs. If you’re currently using a sales tool that offers you data that is either incomplete or inaccurate, your team will have two choices to make:

1. Launching sales campaigns blindly with the available data leads to your team being unable to qualify their leads or personalize their approach properly. Inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete data makes it difficult for your team to identify qualified prospects. That leads to SDRs wasting time on prospects who will probably never buy your solution because they are not targeting the ICP.
2. Or, do the heavy lifting and make sure the data is complete and accurate (which brings us back to problem nr 1: wasting time on manual tasks)

Example: You generate a list of 1000 potential leads. After you launch the campaign, you find out that about 30-40% of all your emails bounce back. This can lead to more frustration and waste your sales team’s valuable time. On top of this, many emails might bounce back because they could already be in your system, just saved under a different, outdated email. So your team might be wasting time sending proposals to people who no longer work at X company or sending a different proposal to a company you already work with, compromising your ongoing partnership.

Solution Doubling down on lead list generation is not the solution. Having more low-quality sales data to sift through will create confusion and waste more time. The solution is to focus on shorter lists of high-quality leads matching your ICP.

When using AI to your advantage, you can easily filter out unwanted leads or segment them better so all your next personalization steps are not wasted.

Genesy can do that for you in a matter of minutes. It helps qualify all the leads so they all meet your set criteria. Then, it verifies their emails, phone numbers, current job positions, and more.

This ensures your sales efforts are focused on the right prospects from the start, which leads to high conversion rates and a much better ROI on all your sales efforts.

Problem #3: Prospecting Across Email and LinkedIn Is Slow and Manual

2025 is already here, and many sales teams are still relying on manual prospecting methods, from stalking LinkedIn profiles to get some sort of context on each lead to manually crafting emails.

Example: A sales rep has a personal goal to connect with 50-100 prospects each week. Let’s say they are targeting C-level in the tech industry, where you must pass through some steps to send a connection request (such as knowing their work email or asking a personal question before contacting them). All these manual activities take time. All the hours spent researching the right profiles and trying to sift through their posts to craft a personalized outreach email or LinkedIn message take time. By the time the week is almost over, they might have been able to connect with only 20% of their target list and get almost no responses- making it harder to continue the follow-up.

Solution We first suggest taking advantage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator itself. This built-in feature on LinkedIn can help you find and create lead lists based on your preferred criteria and the filters you select, from team size to job title.

Then, you can pick one of the data-extracting tools available, such as Simplescrap or Captain Data. There’s an abundance of tools you can use further to refine your strategy and campaigns such as:

• Using AI tools to analyze LinkedIn profiles and get a breakdown of your prospects’ personalities.
• Using engagement tools like Octopus CRM and Lempod to engage with LinkedIn profiles of your prospects by using either bots or real people to send connection request, messages, invites, and build a healthy rapport with them.
• Use tools like Genesy, which can fully automate everything from extracting LinkedIn data and creating lists to sending LinkedIn connection requests automatically. It also automates outreach campaigns across email and LinkedIn and keeps the conversation going with your prospective leads using smart AI sales agents.

Problem #4: Using Too Many Disconnected Tools for Data Enrichment and Outreach

It might very well be that you’re using a sales tool for lead enrichment, another tool for qualifying your leads, another tool to launch outreach campaigns, and so on. Since not many sales tools offer an all-in-one solution, many sales teams are forced to use as many tools as possible to get what they want: Generate more qualified B2B leads. However, this leads to a lot of inefficiencies, creates data silos, and makes it harder for your team to keep track of all the data and have a simple workflow that works.

Example: Your team uses Clay to scrape leads and enrich their CMS. Then, they use Apollo to launch outreach campaigns. There is a high chance that these tools or any other combination of tools don’t work as smoothly as planned, leading to more frustrations for everyone involved. When multiple tools are used, your team will inevitably have to deal with:

• A lack of integration and synchronization among the tools
• A fragmented view of prospects (which can impact decision-making and operational efficiency)
• Duplicated data or low data quality, prone to errors
• Duplicated efforts to clean the data and synchronize the tools
• Time spent on additional administrative tasks when managing multiple platforms The lack of a centralized solution also complicates the measurement of results and the creation of reports. Not to mention that, more often than not, your sales team might end up spending more time troubleshooting the errors and fixing the issues instead of nurturing the leads and launching more campaigns.

Solution Using a separate tool for each of your needs will defeat the purpose of generating more B2B leads efficiently. That’s why we recommend picking all-in-one tools that combine all the features you need into one platform.

How Genesy Drives 4x Sales Pipeline with Zero Extra Headcount

Need more revenue? You need to hire more salespeople, right?

Well, not exactly.

This might have been the case a decade ago. Now? It’s a whole new game.

The most efficient sales teams aren’t hiring more SDRs and AEs—they are scaling smarter using better tools, like Genesy.

Here’s how:

• Better Lead Quality: With Genesy you can take advantage of its AI features to generate hyper-targeted lead lists enriched with real-time, accurate contact data.
• Increased Outreach: Genesy automates multi-channel campaigns via email and LinkedIn, boosting reach without added effort.

Bonus points:

• It keeps your CRM spotless with automated, recurring updates.
• It leverages AI SDRs to manage the grunt work and scale your pipeline without scaling your team.

The result? More conversions, higher-quality leads, and 4x the pipeline—all with the team you already have.

Ready to scale smarter? Request a free demo with our Genesy team.

FAQ

What is your favorite way to generate B2B leads?

One of the most effective methods to generate B2B leads is to use a smart AI tool that can automate most of your sales efforts. Genesy can help you create targeted lead lists and automate outreach campaigns leveraging AI. It saves your team time, ensures they work with high-quality prospect data, and helps them scale their campaigns effortlessly.

What are B2B lead generation examples?

If you’ve invested in inbound marketing, your B2B leads will come organically from your content marketing efforts, from social media to your blog and publications. Other examples include hosting webinars or using AI tools like Genesy to automate all your outreach campaigns.

Where do B2B leads come from?

There is no specific channel to which we can attribute all B2B leads. These types of leads can come from various channels, such as your social media efforts, hosting webinars, referrals, active outreach by your sales team, and so on.

How do you generate B2B leads organically?

Organic B2B lead generation relies heavily on creating helpful and valuable content based on experts in their specific fields. This content can be optimized for SEO or focused on thought leadership content that can also be used for sales enablement. Other methods include social media engagement or sending out newsletters.