Why Google Maps is a good source of B2B clients
If you sell to shops, practices, agencies, clinics, restaurants, hotels or tradespeople, nearly all your future clients are on Google Maps. Their listing is often maintained by the owner, because it brings them customers. That means fresher information than many bought databases.
- Name and category, so you know immediately whether the business fits your target.
- Address and area, to work one neighbourhood or city at a time.
- Phone and website, when the business has added them.
- Rating and reviews, which say a lot about its situation and needs.
- Opening hours, useful to know when to call or visit.
What you won’t find: the decision-maker’s name and, most of the time, an email address. You’ll get those from the company’s website, its social profiles or LinkedIn.
The method, step by step
- 11. Define who you want to reach
Before opening the map, write one sentence describing the type of business and the problem you solve for it. “Dental practices in Sousse without a website” is a target. “SMBs” is not. The sharper the sentence, the sharper your searches and messages.
- 22. Pick the categories
Google files every listing under a primary category (“Dentist”, “Real estate agency”, “Gym”…). Search with those terms, then with synonyms and variants (“dental clinic”, “orthodontist”): many businesses only show up under one of them. Think about language too: in bilingual markets, a search in French and one in Arabic don’t always return the same listings.
- 33. Split the area
In practice, a single search only returns a limited list. For a large city, split it by district or suburb (“dentist La Marsa”, “dentist Ariana”…) instead of searching “dentist Tunis”. You’ll cover far more businesses.
- 44. Open and read each listing
Name and rating aren’t enough. Open the listing, look at the website, photos, latest reviews and owner replies. Two minutes of reading tells you whether the business is active and whether it has the problem you solve.
- 55. Qualify
For each business, note why it is (or isn’t) a good prospect, using simple criteria: rating, review count, website, opening hours. Details in the next section.
- 66. Record and enrich
Put the prospects you keep in a spreadsheet or CRM with the source, the date and your angle. Add the email found on the website or the owner’s LinkedIn profile.
How to read a Google Maps listing
| Listing element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Category | Whether the business is in your target, and how it describes itself. |
| Average rating | Customer satisfaction. A low rating can point to a need (service, reputation, operations). |
| Number of reviews | Visibility and activity. Few reviews = a young business or a weak online presence. |
| Website | Digital maturity. Missing, dated or slow: an opening for a web agency. |
| Phone | The most direct channel for small businesses. |
| Opening hours | When to reach them. Missing or wrong hours point to a neglected listing. |
| Photos and replies to reviews | Whether the owner looks after their online presence, and their tone. |
| “Own this business?” link | The listing hasn’t been claimed: the owner probably doesn’t manage it. |
Qualifying a prospect: rating, reviews, website, hours
A good prospect has the problem you solve and the means to pay for a fix. No single signal on a listing proves anything, but together they let you sort quickly.
- No website: an obvious target for a web agency, and often for booking or ordering software. Check Facebook and Instagram first; some businesses live only there.
- Many reviews but a low average: a business with volume and a satisfaction problem. A good angle for consulting, training, reputation management or customer-service tools.
- Very few reviews: a young business or a weak online presence. Angle: visibility, local marketing, review collection.
- Recent reviews with no reply: the owner is short on time. Angle: outsourcing, automation.
- Long hours, several locations: a bigger operation, probably a budget, sometimes a slower decision.
- Permanently closed or no recent activity: skip.
By hand or with a tool?
To test a target, the manual way is enough: a few dozen listings and a spreadsheet will quickly show whether the angle works. Once you prospect several cities or categories every week, copy-pasting becomes the bottleneck.
| By hand | With a tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Immediate, free | Account sign-up, sometimes paid |
| Volume | Limited by your time | Hundreds of listings in a few searches |
| Data | Whatever you copy | Structured fields (phone, website, rating, hours…) |
| Extra contact details | Manual digging on the website and socials | Often collected automatically |
| Quality of reading | Excellent: you read every listing | Needs a manual review of your best prospects |
With Yalors’ Google Maps search, you enter an activity and an area and get businesses with phone, website, emails, social profiles, rating and opening hours, plus filters (rating, open now…). Emails and phones come from the public listing, the business’s own website and its social profiles. One search credit equals 20 results, and the free plan includes 20 credits a month (see pricing). Keep reviewing your best prospects by hand: a tool speeds up collection, not judgement.
Organising your leads so nothing slips
- One list per segment (for example “Dentists Sousse – no website”) rather than one big catch-all list: your messages will be sharper.
- A status per prospect: to contact, contacted, replied, meeting, client, not interested.
- Tags for the angle (“no website”, “low rating”, “few reviews”).
- A note on what you noticed in the listing: that’s your opening line.
- No duplicates: the same business can show up in several searches; dedupe by phone or website.
In Yalors, leads go into lists with notes, tags and statuses, and export to CSV if you’d rather use your own CRM.
The first contact: what to say and on which channel
Your first message has to prove you actually looked at the business. That’s where reading the listing pays off: mention one concrete detail, offer one simple thing, ask for little.
- Phone: direct and effective with small businesses, as long as you call in quiet hours (not during a restaurant’s service).
- Email: right when you found an address on the website; short, personal, ending with a question.
- LinkedIn: useful for larger organisations where the decision-maker isn’t at the front desk.
- WhatsApp: very common in North Africa and the Middle East, but best kept for follow-up after a first exchange; see our WhatsApp prospecting guide.
Example email: “Hi, I came across your practice on Google Maps: 140 reviews, almost all glowing, but no website to book an appointment. We build sites with online booking for practices like yours. Is that on your list this year?” More examples in our cold message templates.
The most common mistakes
- Searching too broadly (“companies Tunis”) and ending up with a list you can’t personalise.
- Reading only the rating without opening the listing.
- Sending the same message to 300 businesses from different categories.
- Forgetting follow-ups: many replies come on the second or third message.
- Not writing down why a prospect was kept, and having to re-read everything when it’s time to write.
Next step: a multichannel sequence that combines email, LinkedIn and WhatsApp saves you from following up with every prospect by hand.