10 lead generation strategies for the next era of sales

The core process behind how to generate leads is still the same: Attract potential customers, keep them interested, and move them towards a sales conversation.

Today, though, customers expect more value and more attention before they take the next step. Add into the mix teams that are already stretched for time, and you can see why the route from interest to action isn’t as simple as it once was.

But that doesn’t mean the old playbook is out the window. The best teams today are discovering innovative ways to elevate lead generation to the modern age, from connected data and rapid personalisation to AI agents that free up time for teams to do their best work.

In this guide, we’ll explore today’s top lead-gen challenges and walk you through 10 B2B strategies built for modern sales and marketing success.

• Why lead generation feels harder in 2026
• 10 lead generation strategies for the agentic era of selling
• The true lead-gen advantage is consistency
• FAQs

Lead generation has become more demanding. Previously, we might have captured some details, launched a nurture journey, and waited patiently for the right time to propose a call.

Now, customers want more from the window between lead capture and sales conversation. According to our Seventh State of Sales Report , 69% of sales reps say delivering measurable ROI matters more now than it did last year, 67% say that personalisation is more important, and 57% say that customers take longer to decide than they used to.

Teams are ready to take on that challenge. Just recently, at our 2026 Agentforce World Tour in Sydney, we shone the spotlight on the inspiring marketers, sales teams, and Trailblazers raising the bar for personalised and authentic customer experiences. You can watch the full event on Salesforce+.

So, what’s the problem? In short, there isn’t enough time to deliver those experiences at scale. Sales reps currently spend 60% of the average workweek on non-selling tasks like manual data entry and 18% on prospecting. Meeting evolving expectations is achievable, but preparing for that goal saps time that should be spent in front of customers. It’s a catch-22.

Marketing teams are feeling that pressure too. In our 10th State of Marketing report , 85% said customer expectations are higher than ever, 69% said that customer acquisition is now harder, and 64% said that changing behaviours make it difficult to keep up.

The classic lead-gen principles are still relevant, but with buyers demanding more and teams trying to piece together those moments by hand, it’s time for a modern-day refresh.

The new lead-gen benchmarks are smart execution, personalised journeys, faster response times, as well as finding enough time to piece it all together without death-by-manual-admin.

That sounds like a big ask. But with connected data, a focus on inbound interest, and a customer-centric approach to the marketing and sales funnel, it is achievable. One secret weapon is smartly-deployed artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, top marketers now use AI agents for tasks like personalisation to reclaim eight hours a week and boost ROI by 20%.

We’ll talk more about how agentic AI can help with your lead-gen efforts throughout these strategies, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, let’s look at 10 B2B strategies that will teach you how to generate leads consistently in the modern era of sales and marketing.

Each of the strategies follows a logical order, from creating your foundation and building awareness to focusing on lead acquisition, nurturing, and retention. Think of them as your pathway to success across the entire sales cycle. Let’s take it from the top.

Lead generation that aligns with modern customer expectations is all about context. Teams need to see what a lead has clicked on, downloaded, asked about, or visited across channels. That’s why the first goal is connected data that spans across teams and tools.

In Australia, only 60% of marketing teams say they have full access to sales data, 59% to service, and 55% to commerce. Closing this gap is the first step toward spotting intent sooner and responding to every lead with more context attached.

A strong place to start is with a unified customer data platform like Data 360, built into Agentforce Marketing and Agentforce Sales. Our platform will connect your customer context into a single view. Teams can then use this to understand what buyers are engaging with, where they are in the journey, and how to tailor each interaction based on what they might want next.

Connected data also gives AI agents the context they need to handle complex, multi-step workflows. In sales, this could involve lead qualification and pipeline management. For marketing, think campaign creation, email nurturing, and personalised recommendations.

This tackles the problem from two sides. Data puts customer signals within reach, while agents automate the busy work in the background. It means more context, more time to act on it, and a more robust foundation for every strategy that comes next.

To learn more, see our guide to creating a data foundation for customers and agentic AI.

Cold outreach is still impactful, but it’s getting harder to do well. Buyers want better timing, more authenticity, and some sense that you understand who they are before you reach out.

To solve this, replace the ‘wide net’ approach to cold outreach lead-gen with a more considered strategy. Tactics include:

• Refining lists around an ideal customer profile: Focus on the prospects that resemble your best customers. Quality over quantity.
• Having a reason to reach out: Have they visited your site, read your content, or posted on LinkedIn? A clear reason can make cold calling easier to justify.
• Warming the path first: Engage with their posts, follow up after an event, or chat with them about a mutual contact to make the first pitch less abrupt.
• Starting small: Not every cold call or email outreach needs to push for a meeting. Start by providing something valuable to build trust.

But what about time? Currently, 47% of sales reps say they lack the bandwidth for cold outreach, and interestingly, 47% also say it’s one of the worst parts of their job.

One solution to consider is agentic AI. Agentforce Sales can uncover qualified prospects across channels based on real-time signals, enrich them with context from multiple sources, and prioritise the best opportunities. From there, sales reps can log onto Slack or their CRM software each morning with a context-rich list of prospects ready to review.

Agents can even help with next steps by drafting messaging based on what’s most likely to resonate. All of this reduces the manual drag around cold outreach, so reps can spend more time making the first contact count.

Outbound sales don’t have to be your only route into sales lead generation. Many buyers today prefer to find answers on their own. Making yourself visible where buyers are looking can surface high-intent leads organically. Here are some content marketing tactics that work well:

• Deliver consistent content that’s genuinely valuable to your audience. Go the extra mile to show your expertise and answer the questions buyers are already asking.
• Invest in search engine optimisation (SEO) and keyword research to show up in search results when buyers ask relevant questions related to your product or service.
• Build a presence on the channels your buyers use. That could be LinkedIn, communities, webinars, or even in-person networking events.
• Use paid advertising toput your message in front of high-intent audiences faster and rapidly increase visibility for your most important offers or pages.

In addition, buyers are now turning to AI-driven search experiences, like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews , to find direct answers. These tools develop responses by pulling information from clear, relevant web content. Handily, they also provide a link to any site they reference. That’s a big opportunity if you can become that trusted source.

The key is to make sure your content is informative, structured so AI models can process it, and grounded in proof points. Aim for clear headings, clearer answers, and direct language. The less fluff, the easier it is for the AI model to find the key information and pass it on.

Marketing AI tools like Agentforce Marketing Engagement can make this process easier by helping you create personalised, on-brand content at scale grounded in your business data.

Improving your digital presence is a good start, but visibility doesn’t win prizes. The next job is giving potential buyers something useful enough to make the next step worthwhile.

One way to achieve this is with a lead magnet that encourages the potential buyer to provide their details in exchange for a resource, such as:

• Stat reports of research-backed guides that provide first-party insights about a market, industry, or challenge they’re trying to solve
• Calculators or estimators that help buyers work out pricing and ROI using their own numbers
• Assessments or benchmarks that let buyers see how their current approach stacks up against industry peers or current best practices
• Checklists or templates that act as guides for the user to reach a certain goal or prepare for a new implementation
• Product walkthroughs or free trials that let the buyer weigh up options and test out products for themselves

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you’re solving a real problem the buyer may be experiencing, but not providing so much value that they have no reason to go any further. This will give them an incentive to download the guide, but leave room for the next conversation.

If all goes well, you’ll now have a stream of relevant leads ready for outreach from reps.

Now that we’ve covered getting leads, the next strategies are about acting on that interest.

One method that aligns well with modern customer expectations is shrinking the gap between first signal and first outreach to capitalise on the opportunity while interest is at its peak. Here are a few tips:

• Have clear criteria to separate immediate opportunities from early interest. Not every lead needs a rep straight away, but they do need contact, even if it’s small.
• Make the first follow-up easy for reps to action. You don’t need a grand gesture. A fast, useful next step will go a long way, and it only takes five minutes to prepare.
• Set a response-time target for every inbound source. For instance, how quickly should teams trigger the next step after a customer fills a form?

Of course, this brings us back to the capacity problem. Sixty-nine per cent of marketers admit they struggle to respond promptly to customer inquiries. When teams lack the time to handle every inbound lead, the lower-priority opportunities tend to slip through the cracks.

This is one area where AI agents can help maintain the balance. For instance, with a platform like Agentforce Sales, an agent can flag, qualify, and prioritise inbound interest as soon as it appears. From there, it will route the best opportunities to the right rep, recommend the next step, and even draft up outreach content.

Thirty-four per cent of sellers with AI agents use them for prospecting, and of those that do, 92% say they’re beneficial to the process. When you can automate that, you open the door to real-time responsiveness that, when handled manually, can feel out of reach.

Lead capture used to be linear. Get a customer to fill a form, get the data, and follow up later.

Now, buyers want the journey to feel more connected and authentic. They like to ask questions, get useful answers, see the proof, and have authentic interactions. And they expect businesses to be flexible enough for those discussions.

According to our State of Marketing Report, 83% of marketers say customers increasingly expect two-way conversations when they interact with a business. What does that mean? Essentially, ‘do not reply’ is dead. It’s now all about live interactions.

In practice, this means giving leads a way to engage, respond, and keep the conversation moving. A few ideas:

• Add the option to reply to your digital marketing campaigns through direct mail or SMS, then use this to start genuine conversations.
• Replace do-not-reply ‘thank-you’ messages with something that encourages the lead to re-engage, like next steps or an invitation to reply for more support.
• Unify customer data so you can connect your channels into a continuous journey. Now, every new interaction builds on what the lead has already done.
• Put conversational options on conversion pages so leads can ask in live chat or follow a guided flow to get answers to questions without leaving the page.

AI agents can amplify this strategy by engaging and connecting with prospects 24/7. With Agentforce Marketing, an AI agent could welcome inbound website traffic, answer queries, and send personalised offers based on your unified customer data. It can then follow up later over email or SMS while keeping the context from earlier in mind.

Once your leads have a way to respond, the next challenge is making each of those interactions feel personal. This means:

• Tailoring follow-ups to what they’ve already said or shown interest in
• Carrying useful context across channels and teams to keep the journey connected
• Changing your messaging based on what the lead will most likely care about

The challenge is that 78% of marketers say they need more personalised content than they can produce, and 50% feel they don’t know their customers well enough to get started.

This is why a connected data foundation is so vital. When you have shared customer context, you can see what leads are engaging with in real time and tailor every interaction.

From there, you can also introduce AI agents that can create audience segments based on prompts, draft up personalised outreach for every prospect, carry context between reps, and power personalised recommendations, all based on your live customer context. See how Siemens uses this capability to personalise follow-up on 100% of leads 24 hours a day.

Now that your follow-up strategy is nailed down, start thinking about how you deliver value. Buyers want more ROI and education before they buy, and many take longer to decide.

This means that waiting until a sales call to play your hand is often too late. Instead, deliver value from day one and throughout the marketing funnel. This could mean:

• At the start of the journey, sending guides, checklists, explainers, and advice that resonate with buyer pain points and discuss possible solutions
• As interest grows, using lead nurturing content to answer questions before the buyer has to ask them, whether that’s pricing, ROI, or organisational fit
• Closer to a decision, bringing in proof points, like customer stories, product walkthroughs, or practical examples, that show what the customer could achieve

Essentially, the goal is to act less like a salesperson and more like a trusted advisor who’s empowering them to make the best possible choice for their business, not yours.

Connected data is a must for this approach. The more clearly you can see what a lead is engaging with, the easier it is to deliver the right value in the moment. AI agents can also help by surfacing predictive insights to help teams guide buyers to the next step in real time.

You’ve done everything right up to this point. A lead has engaged with your brand, responded to messages, and asked dozens of questions. They’re finally ready for the big conversation. Imagine what happens if they reach a sales rep and all of that context is forgotten. You’re back to square one.

When you pass a lead to sales, that handoff should carry the story forward and give reps the full context required to pick up the conversation. You could achieve this by:

• Keeping the sales pipeline up to date as the lead moves forward
• Passing over signals, like pages visited and questions asked
• Defining the key engagement signals that showed the lead was ready for a sale
• Giving reps a short brief on potential friction areas and talking points

A strong data foundation that spans teams will make this process much easier to manage because sales and marketing are working from the same context.

AI agents can also help carry this context forward. With Agentforce Sales, agents can continually enrich accounts with context from multiple sources and keep pipelines current in the background. Then, when the sales rep is ready to make the move, they can provide a quick brief and some talking points and answer any questions before the call.

Don’t drop your customer after the sale. A happy customer who has a continued relationship with you and your company is likely to buy again. They’re also more likely to give referrals, and few things boost your credibility more than a real customer recommending your brand.

Here are some ways to keep the momentum going post-purchase:

• Hold frequent customer care calls to nurture the relationship, answer product questions, and gather feedback.
• Ask for referrals when you’ve recently shown value, such as after a successful onboarding or when the customer is seeing measurable ROI from their purchase.
• Make spreading the word easy with a simple referral route, like a quick form, shareable resource, or short intro template.
• Try out referral programs, but keep them simple. The goal is to make becoming an advocate feel like a natural step rather than a transaction.

It’s all about showing that you’re willing to show up even when you aren’t actively trying to make a sale. This builds customer loyalty and will often lead to new lead opportunities over time.