How to find local business leads by city and industry

Short answer: The most reliable way to find local business leads is to pick one city and one industry, list the businesses there from public sources (maps and their own websites), keep only the ones that fit your offer, and send each one a short message written for them. A good B2B lead has a business name, industry, location, website and at least one way to reach it — email or phone.

What makes a good local business lead?

A lead is a potential customer you can actually contact. For local B2B prospecting, a usable lead record has five things:

1. Business name and industry — the basis of any personal message.
2. Location — city and neighbourhood, decisive if you sell a local service.
3. Website — tells you what they do and what they are missing. A business with no website is a direct opportunity if you sell web design.
4. A contact channel — a company email address (info@, hello@) and/or a phone number.
5. A "why now" signal — newly opened, an outdated site, no online booking, missing opening hours, poor reviews.

With those five, you can open with "I couldn't find online booking on your clinic's site" instead of "I'd like to introduce our company". That difference is most of your reply rate.

Where to find businesses by city and industry

Whatever you use, two rules hold: use public, business-owned contact details, and narrow the list to the businesses your offer actually fits.

Step by step: from 100 leads to booked calls

1. Say your offer in one sentence. "We set up QR menus and online ordering for restaurants."
2. Choose the target. One city plus one industry: "boutique hotels in Lisbon".
3. Build the list. Around 100 businesses with name, website, email and phone.
4. Clean it. Remove closed businesses, wrong categories and personal addresses.
5. Write one message per business. Their name, one thing you noticed, one question.
6. Pick the channel. Email where there is an address; a personal phone call or message where there is only a number.
7. Send at a safe pace. A few dozen a day from a warmed-up mailbox, not hundreds at once.
8. Sort the replies. Interested / later / not interested. Never write again to anyone who says no.
9. Follow up once. A short reminder three to five days later to those who did not reply.

Cold email reply rates are usually in the low single digits and swing widely with targeting and personalisation, so a handful of positive replies from 100 personal messages is a realistic start.

Prospecting in another country

The same method works abroad, with three additions:

• Write in the recipient's language. A German business answers a German message far more often than an English one.
• Check the local rules first. The US (CAN-SPAM) and UK (PECR, for corporate addresses) allow B2B email with an opt-out; Germany generally requires prior consent even for business recipients. Our German guide covers what is allowed in Germany.
• Send in their working hours. A message that lands at 9:30 local time gets read.

How Quasar does this

In Quasar you type a country, a city and a line of business. Quasar finds real businesses from OpenStreetMap and, where needed, Google Places, collects the public contact details from their websites, and shows everything in one table — up to 500 businesses per search. It then writes a separate message for each business, in the language of its country, based on your offer. You can send to everyone with an email address from your own Gmail account at a safe, human pace, and open WhatsApp with the message ready for businesses that only list a phone number.

Before you send, read our guide to Gmail and Outlook sending limits and bulk sender rules and our cold email templates.