What if my buyers aren't published anywhere?

They usually are, one aisle over from where you first looked. If maps only gave you competitors, try the job boards your customers post on. If tickets didn't surface them, try hiring boards. The buyer leaves a trace somewhere public.

Can I automate the sourcing?

The search, mostly. The judgement of which shelf to walk to is the part worth doing well. Pick the channel that matches your buyer first, then let the tooling grind the list and pull the real addresses.

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Last updated 16 June 2026 · 6 min read

Where Your Leads Actually Live

TL;DR

Cold outreach usually fails before the first email, at sourcing. The trap is searching for businesses like yours, which finds competitors, not customers. The rule: name who pays you, name where those buyers get published, then search there. For a tradie that's job boards. For B2B it's who's hiring. Different business, different shelf.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Open a maps search. Type your own category. Hit go.

Now you have a list of your competitors.

That is the default, and it is backwards.

A lead is not a business like yours. It is a business that would pay you.

The one rule

Name who pays you. Name where those buyers get published. Then go there.

That is the whole method. Everything below is just the rule worked through different businesses.

The shelf is different for everyone. A plumber and a SaaS founder do not shop in the same aisle.

Trades and local services

A tradie's leads are the people posting jobs.

So look where jobs get posted. hipages, Airtasker, ServiceSeeking, Oneflare, local Facebook groups.

And the partners who hand work down the chain. Builders need subbies. Real estate agents and strata managers need maintenance. Architects refer.

Bigger jobs live on council and government tender boards.

B2B, agencies, freelancers

Your leads are companies with budget and the exact problem you solve.

The strongest signal is hiring. A company advertising the role you do, or the role you replace, has both the budget and the need already.

The next signal is money. Recently raised or just launched means there is spend to deploy.

Then directories and communities. G2, Clutch, industry association member lists, conference sponsor and exhibitor lists.

Wholesale and product brands

Your leads are the retailers who would stock you.

Look at competitors' store locators. Category marketplaces. Trade-show exhibitor lists.

Every shop already carrying something like yours is a shop that could carry yours.

Services and professionals

Accountants, lawyers, bookkeepers, consultants. Your leads are businesses in your niche and your postcode.

New business registers. Chambers of commerce. Industry associations. Local directories.

A business that just registered needs the thing you sell sooner than one that has had it for years.

Then get a real address, or skip

Sourcing finds the business. It rarely hands you the email.

So go to their real site and read the published address. Found it, use it. Not there, leave it blank and move on.

Never guess. A guessed address bounces, and a bounce is worse than a missing lead.

Sourcing is the front of one loop

Finding leads is the start of the growth loop, not a standalone chore.

The list you build here should flow straight into outreach, and the replies should flow back to tell you which channel actually paid.

That only happens when sourcing and outreach are one centralised function, not two tools you copy between.

Keep them apart and you relearn which channel works every quarter. Keep them together and the loop remembers for you.

Questions

What if my buyers aren't published anywhere?: They usually are, one aisle over from where you first looked. If maps only gave you competitors, try the job boards your customers post on. If tickets didn't surface them, try hiring boards. The buyer leaves a trace somewhere public.
Can I automate the sourcing?: The search, mostly. The judgement of which shelf to walk to is the part worth doing well. Pick the channel that matches your buyer first, then let the tooling grind the list and pull the real addresses.

Sources

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