The Best Way to Build a High-Converting B2B Lead List: Step-by-Step Guide

Building a B2B lead list is a core task for any sales or marketing team. Most guides focus on simple "hacks" like using basic filters or scraping a single source.

Most of these guides, though, miss the most important part of the process: effective filtering.

This guide skips the fluff and gives you an actionable framework for building B2B lead lists that convert. We'll focus on the strategy that produces high-quality, targeted prospects, moving beyond generic advice to deliver real results.

What This Guide Will Cover

• The Fundamentals of Building a B2B Lead List
• The Three Main Ways to Create a Lead List
• A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your List

🔍 Don’t Skip The Context

This article contains valuable context about building B2B lead lists, so we advise you to read the full content. However, if you're short on time, you can skip directly to our step-by-step guide by clicking here 👈🏽

The Fundamentals of Building a B2B Lead List

Before we dive into the "how," it's important to understand the basic concepts behind lead list creation. Think of this as the foundation. Getting these basics right makes the entire process smoother and more effective.

What Is a B2B Lead List?

A B2B lead list is a curated collection of data containing information about potential business customers. At its core, it includes companies that fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and the specific people within those companies who are the right contacts for your outreach.

Why Do We Say “Building”?

We use the term "building" because creating a high-quality B2B lead list is a strategic, piece-by-piece process. It's not about simply pulling random data; it's about putting the right information components together, information that supports your sales efforts.

You could also think of building a B2B lead list like constructing a house with LEGO blocks:

• Two Primary Modules:
  • Account information (company data)
  • Contact information (people data)
• Building Block Approach: Each data point is a block that must be carefully placed to create a strong foundation

Here are the essential "blocks" for each module:

Account Information (The Company)

1. Company Name
2. Website/Domain
3. Industry
4. Company Size (by employees)
5. Headquarters Location

Prospect Information (The Contact)

1. Full Name
2. Job Title
3. Verified Business Email
4. LinkedIn Profile URL
5. Seniority Level

Three Popular Ways to Build a B2B Lead List

When it comes to building a B2B lead list, many roads lead to Rome. Some are convenient highways that get you there fast but with less control, while others are slower, more intentional paths that give you a better outcome. Each has its pros and cons.

Creating a Lead List Using Account & Contact Filters (Easiest)

This is the most straightforward method. You simply use the built-in filters of a lead generation tool to find prospects.

The process is simple:

1. Choose a tool with a large contact database.
2. Navigate to the contact search function.
3. Apply filters like industry, company size, and job title to narrow down the results.
4. Export the list.

While this approach is fast, it often produces generic lists. Most B2B databases rely on LinkedIn Sales Navigator for their core data ^[1] , and Sales Navigator's own data isn't always accurate or well-categorized. This means you might find prospects who seem right on the surface but don't truly fit your ICP.

Building a Lead List With Sales Navigator + Datablist (Recommended)

This method combines the strength of Sales Navigator's data with the advanced filtering and enrichment capabilities of Datablist. You start by building an account list in Sales Navigator, scrape it safely with Datablist, and then find the right contacts within those accounts.

This approach is recommended because it gives you three key advantages:

1. Filter twice at two different stages:
   1. You filter at the account level in Sales Navigator to find the right companies.
   2. You filter again at the contact level in Datablist to find the right people within those companies.
2. Have a better list management system: Creating a dedicated account list first allows for better organization, especially for Account-Based Marketing (ABM). You can create one master account list and then generate multiple, segmented lead lists from it.
3. Always have fresh data: Instead of using data from a static, potentially outdated database, you can scrape information directly from the source (LinkedIn). This ensures your lead list is built with the most current data available.

💡 A Note on Building Lists

Datablist also allows you to build lead lists without any external tools. However, the best practice is to always start by creating a targeted account list from a source like Sales Navigator or Google Maps. In either case, filtering twice (once for accounts, once for contacts) is the key to quality.

Creating a Lead List With Sales Navigator + Browser Extension (Risky)

This is the cheapest but also the most dangerous way to build a B2B lead list. It involves using a Browser extension to scrape data directly from your Sales Navigator searches.

You only need two things:

1. A Sales Navigator subscription
2. A Sales Navigator scraper Browser extension

While it may seem cost-effective, this method puts your LinkedIn account at serious risk. LinkedIn actively detects and penalizes the use of automation extensions ^[2] , which can lead to a temporary or even permanent ban of your account. This approach should only be considered if you are willing to risk losing your LinkedIn access.

Building A B2B Lead List: The Step-By-Step

As I explained before, building a lead list consists of two stages, and so will our workflow. These stages are:

1. Scraping accounts (companies) from Sales Navigator (no account risks)
2. Finding people within those companies (using Datablist)

Let’s dive in 🏊🏽

Note before we begin: Don’t blame us for false positives, blame LinkedIn & the people who don’t fill their information properly. That’s why we always filter.

Creating The Account List

When creating an account list the goal should always be quality over quantity

Here’s what you need to follow this guide:

• A Sales Navigator account
• A Datablist account (Starter plan or higher)
• An API key for Claude, Gemini, or another LLM

First, go to Sales Navigator and configure an account search there

Then copy the search URL and open Datablist

Here’s a guide that shows you how to use the Sales Navigator filter to find accounts 👈🏽

🔍 For Your Account Safety Use Only Firmographics

Sales Navigator has two account filter types: left (Firmographics) and right (account-specific).

Since Datablist doesn't connect to your account when it scrapes the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it only works with search URLs that include only firmographics, as it can't access your personal account data. Not supported filters include:

1. Job opportunities
2. Recent activities
3. Connection
4. Companies and CRM
5. Saved accounts
6. Account lists

Now, go to the Datablist app and do the following:

1. Create a New collection
2. Click on See all sources and choose the LinkedIn Search Scraper
3. Paste the Sales Navigator search URL in the first field
4. Configure a limit if you want to
5. Click on Continue to start scraping

If you look at the data you just scraped, you’ll notice that there are some incomplete records. This is normal, and not all data points are important. In the following steps, we’ll focus on getting the foundational data points that allow us to filter the irrelevant accounts out.

Here’s what we're gonna do next:

1. Get the domains of the companies
2. Scrape their websites
3. Configure an AI prompt that lets you know if the company matches your targeting or not

Getting The Domains

1. Click on the ⚡️ Enrich button located in the top menu of the Datablist app

   

2. Go to URLs & choose Find Company domains from Company names

3. Map the company name column as Input property

   

4. Run the enrichment

Here are more detailed instructions on how to find domains from company names 👈🏽

Now that we've got the website domains of those companies, we have two paths to go:

Path 1 - Content-Based Matching

Extract website text and let AI compare it against your target criteria, such as keywords or context, to find matching companies.

• Benefits: Low cost, high accuracy
• Downsides: Limits you to criteria that can be read from the home or about us page since the website scraper doesn’t run through the entire site, only key pages.

Path 2 - AI-Enabled Research

You can run Datablist’s AI Agent to do custom research on each company and choose whatever criteria you want, even those not available on the website

• Benefits: High accuracy, high flexibility
• Downsides: Can multiply costs by several times, requires good prompting

I recommend path 1, here’s why: Most companies qualify their accounts based on these criteria

• Company size
• Industry vertical
• Target market
• Services offered

If these criteria are sufficient for you, the home and about page would be enough to qualify/disqualify, since the list you scraped should contain only companies of the right size

Executing Path 1: Scraping The Websites

1. Click Enrich in the top menu of the Datablist app
2. Go to URLs and choose the Smart Scraper
3. Map the domains as an Input property and run it

Executing Path 1: Using AI To Qualify/Disqualify Accounts

1. Click Enrich in the top menu of the Datablist app again
2. Go to AI and choose “Ask Claude” or the LLM of your choice
3. Write a prompt explaining your situation, the goal, and filtering criteria

Here’s a guide on how to write a prompt to analyze & classify data 👈🏽

🔍 Start Simple, Scale as Needed

In this article, I've focused on covering the foundations that will get you started quickly. Should you require guidance with more sophisticated filtering criteria, prompting, or workflow assistance, you can talk to me here 👈🏽

Building The Prospect List

So now that we have our account list, the next step will be to find the right people/prospects working at those companies. To do this, we’ll:

1. Create a prospect list
2. Filter the prospects for ICP fit
3. Get their contact information

🔑 Filter First, Enrich Later

Do not make the mistake of getting emails and phone numbers first and filtering the prospects later, since this leads only to wasted resources

First Step to Get Started With Your Prospect List

1. Go to Datablist app and create a New Collection

2. Open the Waterfall People Search

3. Link this Collection with the one where you stored your accounts

   

4. Configure your search using Datablist’s filters

   

5. Run the search by clicking on Continue

   

Next Step: Filtering Unwanted Prospects

Similar to filtering unqualified accounts, there are simple and more sophisticated ways to filter prospects. These can vary and depend on your ICP, but one thing you always want to do is to filter based on the correct job titles, since all databases give you false positives, no matter if you use exclusion filters or not (blame LinkedIn, not us)

To get started with filtering prospects

1. Click Enrich in Datablist’s top menu
2. Go to AI and choose “Ask Claude” or the LLM of your choice
3. Write a prompt explaining your situation, the goal, and filtering criteria

More ways to filter

1. Filtering based on work history

   With Datablist, you can also scrape the prospect's LinkedIn profile and get up to 10 past work experiences to have more data to filter on.

2. Filtering based on custom research

   You can use Datablist's AI Agent to research public information about prospects beyond social media - like news mentions, published papers, or conference appearances - and filter based on that.

Note: The more you filter, the smaller your lead list will be, so choose the criteria wisely.

Last step: Enriching Qualified Prospects

Once you’ve nailed your targeting, the only thing remaining is to get the emails + phone numbers of the prospects you want to target. Datablist can help with this by providing the following:

1. Waterfall Email Finder
2. Waterfall Mobile Phone Enrichment

These two enrichments maximize your chance of finding valid contact information by checking multiple providers and only stopping when it finds a match, improving both coverage and accuracy. The one does it for emails, the other for mobile phone numbers.

Other Enrichments That Might Be Relevant:

1. Doing custom research at scale

   Find a datapoint that's relevant to your offer and messaging, one you would search for if you had unlimited time, since the AI Agent of Datablist searches for literally anything you tell it to.

   Remember: Having more data is always better than having less data.

   

2. Scraping case studies

   This is an AI agent template configured by the Datablist team to help you find case studies you could potentially mention in your outreach.

   

3. Cleaning company names

   While not directly an enrichment, cleaning company names is also very important, especially if you want to avoid the embarrassment of writing “Microsoft Inc” instead of “Microsoft”

   

4. Getting technographic data

   If you can benefit from understanding what technology a company is using, you can run the technographics enrichment to get insights into what technologies a company is using on its website. This can also be used to filter accounts based on technologies.

   

The Bottom Line: Stop Buying, Start Building

Your lead list is probably the most important thing you can invest in today. You can have the best script, copy, deliverability, and offer, but if all your efforts target the wrong audience, you'll not close any deals.

You can compare building a high-quality B2B lead list with planning a town gathering in the 1800s; filtering is everything. A successful event required careful, multi-layered preparation.

Here’s what that means:

1. You'd first need to identify the right families to invite (this is your account-level filtering). You wouldn't invite everyone, just those who fit the occasion.
2. Next, you would decide which specific household members should attend (this is your contact-level filtering). Not everyone in the family is the decision-maker.
3. Finally, you'd deliver personalized invitations that resonate with each person (this is your data enrichment to enable relevant messaging).

With that being said, stop buying generic, outdated lead lists. Start building your own. The control, accuracy, and ultimately, the conversion rates are significantly higher.

Frequently Asked Questions About Building B2B Lead Lists

What Is the Best Tool to Build a B2B Lead List?

The best tool is one that offers flexibility and prioritizes data quality. A platform like Datablist is ideal because it allows you to combine the fresh data from sources like LinkedIn Sales Navigator with powerful, multi-step filtering and enrichment capabilities.

What Data Do I Need to Build a B2B Lead List?

At a minimum, you need key account data (company name, website, industry, size) and contact data (full name, job title, verified email, LinkedIn URL). The specific data points depend on your outreach strategy.

What Is the Most Important Thing When Building B2B Lead Lists?

Filtering. Hands down, the most important thing is effective filtering at both the account and contact levels. By carefully excluding non-ICP prospects, you increase your response rates, improve your closing ratio, and invest your resources more efficiently.

What Is the Most Important Data Point to Have in a B2B Lead List?

This depends entirely on your outreach strategy. If you focus on cold email, a verified business email is crucial. For cold calling, a direct mobile number is the most valuable. If your sales process is highly personalized, a LinkedIn URL for research is key.

Is It Better to Buy a B2B Lead List or Build One Yourself?

Building a B2B lead list yourself is always better. Purchased lists are often outdated, inaccurate, and used by countless other companies. Building your own list ensures the data is fresh, relevant to your ICP, and exclusive to you.

How Often Should I Update My B2B Lead List?

You should continuously maintain and refresh your B2B lead list. People change jobs, and companies evolve. A good practice is to verify and update your active prospect lists at least once per quarter to ensure data accuracy.

Is It Safe to Scrape LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

It can be risky if you use the wrong tools. Chrome extensions that automate your personal account activity can get you banned. However, cloud-based tools like Datablist's Sales Navigator Scraper are safe because they don't use your account's cookies or credentials^[3] .

Citations

[1] All major databases scrape LinkedIn and then enrich the data further, but their foundation rests on LinkedIn

[2] LinkedIn's User Agreement section 8.2.2 explicitly prohibits the use of browser plugins and extensions

[3] Datablist's approach to scraping LinkedIn Sales Navigator without putting user accounts at risk