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Outbound Sales

How to Build a B2B Sales Pipeline That Converts

··Updated ·10 min read

Short answer: to build a B2B sales pipeline, start with a tight picture of who buys from you, then reach those people on LinkedIn or cold email with short messages about their world. Review the numbers every two weeks and keep what works. If you'd rather not run it yourself, a done-for-you service like Lumos starts at $397/mo and has campaigns live 48 hours after kickoff.

Here's how to build a B2B sales pipeline from scratch, the same way we set it up for clients.

What a B2B sales pipeline is

A B2B sales pipeline is every company you're working toward a deal with, sorted by how close each one is to buying. It's close to a sales funnel, but a funnel shows how a buyer moves in general, and a pipeline tracks your actual deals. It moves in stages, from the first time someone hears from you to a signed contract:

  1. Target list. People who fit your ideal customer profile and haven't heard from you yet.
  2. First touch. A connection request or a first email goes out.
  3. Reply. They write back. Some are interested, and some just want you to stop.
  4. Booked meeting. A call is on the calendar.
  5. Opportunity. After the call there's a real deal in play, with a rough dollar value.
  6. Closed. The deal is won or lost.

Outbound lead generation fills the first four stages, and your sales process handles the last two.

When founders ask us how to generate pipeline, they almost always mean more replies and more booked meetings, so that's where this guide spends most of its time.

Pipeline value is the number of open opportunities times your average deal size. We'll use it in the $1M math further down.

How to build a B2B sales pipeline in 6 steps

Step 1: Define your ideal customer tightly

"We sell to SaaS companies" describes a category, and you can't build a list from a category.

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) should be specific enough that a stranger could read it and build a target list in 30 minutes. For example:

  • Industry: B2B SaaS, specifically project management or CRM tools
  • Company size: 10-50 employees
  • Revenue: $1M-$10M a year
  • Geography: United States and Canada
  • Titles: Founder, CEO, VP of Sales, Head of Revenue
  • Signals: Uses HubSpot or Salesforce, raised a Series A or B

The ICP drives every choice after it, from the channel you pick to the first line of your message. If it's wrong, even good copy won't save the campaign.

So spend more time here than feels necessary. Look at the deals that closed fastest with the least back-and-forth, because the patterns in those deals are your ICP.

Then write down the pain points for each of your buyer personas. The founder who still closes every deal has a different problem than the VP of Sales whose reps are short on meetings, and those problems become your first lines in step 3.

Step 2: Pick one channel to start

LinkedIn and cold email are the two main outbound channels, and they suit different situations.

LinkedIn is better for trust, because people can see your profile and your mutual connections before they reply. That matters with senior buyers who get buried in cold email. The catch is volume, since one profile sends 1,000+ messages a month on our Growth plan.

Cold email wins on reach (our cold email Growth plan sends 15,000+ emails a month), which matters when your market is broad. It works best once you know your offer holds up in writing.

If you're starting from zero, we'd start with LinkedIn. The feedback loop is faster, so you'll learn what works before you pay to scale it, and then you can add cold email. We compare the two in cold email vs LinkedIn outreach.

Step 3: Write messages about them

Plenty of outbound pitches too soon. It opens with the product and the company story before the prospect has any reason to care.

Bad: "Hi [Name], I'm Erik from Lumos. We help B2B companies scale outbound with automated LinkedIn and email campaigns. Would you be open to a quick call?"

Better: "Hi [Name], saw [Company] just grew the sales team. How are you keeping their calendars full right now? A few teams your size have moved part of that to LinkedIn, and I'm happy to share what's working."

The second one opens on their situation and ends with an easy question. Nobody has to commit to a call just to reply. Use it as a template, but swap in a real detail about each prospect.

Your value proposition still matters. It belongs in the second or third message, once they've written back.

A few rules we follow:

  • Lead with them. The first line should be about their company or their role.
  • Keep it short. Connection notes stay under 300 characters, and first messages run a few sentences.
  • Write like a person. If you wouldn't say it to a colleague, cut it.
  • Ask for one thing. Pick a reply or a meeting, and leave the other for later.

Step 4: Set up your B2B sales infrastructure

Your B2B sales infrastructure is the technical setup that decides whether your messages reach anyone. Skip it and your emails land in spam, or your LinkedIn account gets restricted before the pipeline gets going.

For cold email:

  • Separate sending domains. Never send cold email from your main domain. Buy 3-5 secondary domains and set up mailboxes on each.
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These records tell inbox providers you're a real sender.
  • Warmup. New mailboxes need two to three weeks of slow sending, starting at 10-20 emails a day.
  • Weekly inbox placement tests, so you know your emails reach the main inbox.

For LinkedIn:

  • A profile that works like a landing page, because prospects check it before they reply.
  • Respect the limits. LinkedIn caps connection requests per day and per week, and going over gets the account flagged.
  • A dedicated residential proxy if you automate any of it, so odd logins don't flag the account.
  • An account with history, since brand-new or dormant profiles get more scrutiny.

You'll also need a system for replies. Ours sorts each one into five buckets (interested, objection, not a fit, out of office, open question), and each bucket gets handled differently.

Step 5: Launch small and measure

Don't send to your whole list on day one. Start with 100-200 prospects for the first two weeks and track four metrics:

  • Acceptance rate (LinkedIn): how many connection requests get accepted
  • Reply rate: how many people write back
  • Positive reply rate: how many of those replies show real interest
  • Meeting rate: the conversion rate from reply to booked call

For LinkedIn, aim for about a 25% reply rate, which is what our own ROI calculator plans around.

Then test one thing at a time, so every result is measurable. Try the opening line, the ask, the gap between follow-ups (3 days versus 5) and how long the sequence runs. On email, test subject lines too.

Two extra percentage points of reply rate on 1,000 messages is 20 more conversations a month, or 60 over a quarter.

Step 6: Review every two weeks

We review every client account every two weeks. That rhythm is what makes a few good weeks repeatable, and four questions drive each review:

  • What's working? Put more volume behind the campaigns and audiences that book meetings.
  • What isn't? Don't give a weak sequence another week to prove itself.
  • What changed? Markets move, and a message that worked in January can fade by March.
  • What's next? Agree on the next steps, and keep two or three new versions ready to test.

Build it yourself or hire a B2B sales pipeline service

You can run all six steps yourself. Plenty of founders do, and it's the cheapest route in cash.

It makes sense when someone on your team has hours each week for it and enjoys writing and testing. You'll also learn your market in detail, which pays off even if you hand the work off later.

The cost is mostly time, since someone has to build lists, write copy, watch the setup and sort replies every week. If you'd hire a rep instead, our ROI calculator assumes $70,000 a year in salary plus $500 a month in tools (there's more in in-house sales vs outsourcing, and in our SDR replacement playbook).

A service makes sense when founder time is the bottleneck, or when you want campaigns live this week. Here's what Lumos charges:

  • LinkedIn Growth, $397/mo: 1 LinkedIn profile and 1,000+ messages a month
  • LinkedIn Scale, $697/mo: 2 profiles and 2,000+ messages a month, plus hot lead handoff, calendar scheduling, profile optimization and CRM integration
  • LinkedIn Enterprise, $1,097/mo: 4+ profiles and 4,000+ messages a month
  • Cold email Growth, $1,097/mo: 15,000+ emails a month, with domain and mailbox setup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, weekly inbox placement tests, lead sourcing and copy included

Every LinkedIn plan also includes a dedicated account manager and residential proxies, with unlimited campaigns and A/B tests.

All plans are month-to-month with no setup fees, and campaigns go live 48 hours after the kickoff call. So the choice comes down to what your hours are worth and how soon you need meetings.

What it takes to build a $1M pipeline

These are the planning numbers from the ROI calculator on our pricing page, where you can plug in your own deal size and close rate. They're assumptions and they aren't a promise, since your real numbers depend on your offer and your market.

We'll assume:

  • Average deal size: $5,000 (the calculator's default)
  • LinkedIn reply rate: 25%
  • Replies that become booked meetings: 7%
  • Close rate on meetings: 10% (the calculator's default)
  • Opportunities: each booked meeting counts as one opportunity worth one average deal (our simplification)

Working backward from $1M:

  1. Meetings needed. $1,000,000 in pipeline divided by $5,000 per deal is 200 meetings.
  2. Replies needed. If 7% of replies become meetings, 200 meetings takes about 2,857 replies.
  3. Messages needed. At a 25% reply rate, 2,857 replies takes about 11,430 messages.
  4. Time. At 2,000 messages a month (our Scale plan), that's a little under six months. At 4,000 a month (Enterprise), it's just under three.
  5. Closed revenue. At a 10% close rate, those 200 meetings turn into 20 deals. That's $100,000 in revenue from a $1M pipeline.

Deal size moves this math a lot. At a $20,000 average deal you'd only need 50 meetings. That's about 714 replies from roughly 2,857 messages, or about six weeks at 2,000 messages a month.

Real results from two clients

FireVibe

FireVibe is a web design agency for solopreneurs and small businesses up to $1M in revenue. They'd never done digital outreach, and networking plus referrals brought in an uneven 3-10 leads a month.

We built their first LinkedIn outreach system from scratch and refined the messaging every two weeks based on what prospects said back.

  • 37.9% reply rate (201 replies from 530 messages)
  • 20 meetings booked in month one, from a single LinkedIn profile
  • 5 new clients closed within two months
  • Ready to scale from 1 LinkedIn account to 4

Sig2 Labs

Sig2 Labs makes a location-based communication platform for field service teams, including construction and property management. Cold email had given them unpredictable results, strong some weeks and silent others.

We moved them to LinkedIn with conversational messaging and a dashboard they could check any time. When the data showed better engagement from operational leaders than from business owners, we shifted the targeting.

Since launch they've held a 28-30% reply rate and a 30% connection acceptance rate, with about 12 quality engagements a week. Kai Brunner, Sig2's co-founder and CEO, put it this way: "Lumos creates this predictable cadence. We went from sporadic outcomes to knowing exactly what to expect each week."

You can see more client stories on our results page.

Common questions about building a pipeline

How long does it take to build a B2B sales pipeline?

If you do it yourself, LinkedIn can start as soon as your profile and list are ready, but cold email needs two to three weeks of mailbox warmup first. With Lumos, campaigns go live 48 hours after kickoff. How fast meetings follow depends on your market, though Talent Ascension Group had 5 calls on the calendar within two weeks of changing its approach mid-campaign. After that, closing takes as long as your usual sales cycle.

What's a good reply rate on LinkedIn?

Our campaigns average 28%+, and we plan around 25%, which is the number our ROI calculator uses. Some client campaigns have run well above it (FireVibe hit 37.9% and UNUM hit 36.5% across 2,132 messages), while Sig2 Labs has held 28-30%. Your own rate depends on your offer and how sharp your ICP is.

How many meetings should I expect?

It depends on your volume and your offer, and we don't guarantee a specific number. Using the calculator's planning numbers, 1,000 messages gives about 250 replies and 17 or 18 meetings. FireVibe booked 20 in its first month from a single profile.

Do I need both LinkedIn and cold email?

Not at first, because one channel keeps things simple and shows you what your market responds to. Once your messaging works, a second channel gives prospects another way to reply (UNUM ran coordinated campaigns on both). There's a full breakdown in cold email vs LinkedIn outreach.

What does a B2B sales pipeline service cost?

Lumos starts at $397/mo for LinkedIn and $1,097/mo for cold email, month-to-month with no setup fees. An in-house SDR costs $70K+ a year in salary before tools, which we break down in in-house sales vs outsourcing.

Start building your pipeline

If you want to see how other companies built theirs, read our client results. If you'd like someone to run it for you, our pricing shows every plan and what's in it.

Or book a free consultation and we'll map out what a pipeline could look like for your business.