How to get customers in 2026: 6 B2B channels compared

To get customers for a B2B product in 2026, match the channel to how your buyers buy: buying signals and outbound when the sale needs a conversation, product-led growth and inbound when buyers can try and buy alone, partners and marketplaces when someone else already owns the relationship. Buyers do most of the work without you: 61 percent of B2B buyers prefer a buying experience with no sales rep, and 51 percent of B2B software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google (Gartner, 2025, G2, 2026).

This guide is for companies that sell a product to other businesses: SaaS, software and tech startups. Many of the top search results for "how to get customers" are general small-business guides; this page answers for B2B. All prices were checked on 22 October 2026 and are the US list prices, before tax. Revexa builds Leo, which serves one of the channels below.

Why customers are now the hard part

AI now writes a real share of new code, and most developers who use AI coding tools use them every day. Our reading: writing software is no longer the slow part of a B2B company, so the hard part has moved to finding the people who will pay. The evidence on the code side:

• In Alphabet's third-quarter 2024 earnings remarks (29 October 2024), CEO Sundar Pichai said AI generates "more than a quarter of all new code at Google", which engineers then review (Google).
• In Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey, 73 percent of those who use AI coding assistants or coding agents use them daily, and 55 percent of the 10,926 daily AI users who answered the follow-up question use AI at least two hours a day (Stack Overflow).
• Developers on GitHub merged 43.2 million pull requests a month on average in 2025, up 23 percent (GitHub Octoverse, 28 October 2025).

What we infer, without a study to prove it: the same buyers now hear from more products, and many of those products come from teams where nobody's job is to sell. Code is cheap now. Customers are not.

How to get customers: six channels compared by cost and speed

In our assessment, for a product that needs a conversation, buying signals and outbound bring the first customers fastest. Inbound and product-led growth are slower to start and cheaper per customer once they work. Ordered by time to first customers, fastest first. The times, the costs without a source and the fit columns are our assessment, not a study; the prices come from the sources under the table.

Sources: LinkedIn Sales Navigator plans, LinkedIn ads budget minimums. Agent prices sit side by side in our guide to finding B2B customers.

Buying signals and outbound

When your product needs a conversation, the fastest route to customers is to contact the companies whose need just surfaced, through the person responsible for it. Timing beats volume, because buyers decide when to talk.

In 6sense's 2025 study of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers, first contact with a seller came 61 percent of the way through the buying journey, earlier than 69 percent the year before, and 6sense concludes that SDR outreach "plays a minimal role in influencing" when that first contact happens (6sense). Translation: a sequence does not create the need. A signal tells you the need just appeared.

Signals that matter for a software product:

• Hiring in the team your product serves. A company posting three customer support jobs is a prospect for a support tool.
• New funding. New money usually means new tools and new hires.
• A new executive who owns your problem. A new VP of Engineering reviews the stack in the first months.
• A competitor's tool on their website. They already buy the category.
• Engagement with posts about your problem, on your LinkedIn page or a competitor's.

Fictional example: a team-scheduling SaaS sees that a 120-person logistics company posted four dispatcher jobs and named a new head of operations in the same month. One short message to that head of operations about rostering a growing team beats a thousand emails to "operations managers in logistics."

Outbound is not the enemy. Cold lists are. Our inbound vs outbound guide covers how to mix the two.

Paid advertising

Ads buy attention in days, but they only turn into customers when buyers already look for what you sell. Search ads capture people typing your category; LinkedIn ads reach job titles. LinkedIn's minimum daily budget is $10 for any ad format, and a lifetime budget on a new campaign must be at least $100 (LinkedIn). Measure ads on pipeline and customers, not clicks, and compare the result with your other channels using customer acquisition cost.

Communities

Communities bring early customers for the cost of your time, as long as you help more than you pitch. Find where your buyers talk shop: Slack and Discord groups for their role, subreddits, forums around the tools they use, meetups. Answer questions in public, share what you learned building the product, and mention it only when it truly answers the question. Read each community's rules on promotion first; a ban costs more than silence.

Partners and marketplaces

Partners put you in front of buyers who already trust someone else. Three kinds work for B2B software:

• Integration marketplaces of the platforms your buyers live in, such as the HubSpot App Marketplace, Salesforce AppExchange or AWS Marketplace.
• Agencies and consultancies that implement tools for your buyers and want something to recommend.
• Products that sit next to yours, for co-marketing and referrals.

Expect months: listings get reviewed, partners need training, and nobody recommends a product without customers. Check each marketplace's own listing rules and fees before you build.

Product-led growth

Product-led growth means buyers try and buy without talking to you, and it works when they get value in minutes. That fits how many buyers want to buy: 61 percent of the 632 B2B buyers Gartner surveyed in August and September 2024 prefer an overall rep-free buying experience. The same release notes that for tasks like deciding whether a product fits their needs, "buyers prefer to seek seller input" (Gartner press release "Gartner Sales Survey Finds 61% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Buying Experience", 25 June 2025).

What it takes: self-serve signup, a trial or free plan, onboarding that reaches the first result fast, and prices on the website. It is the wrong channel when setup needs an integration, a data migration or a security review; then pair the trial with a person. Signups are signals too: a trial from a company that fits your profile deserves a personal note the same day.

Inbound: content, search, AI answers and reviews

Inbound is the slowest channel to start and often the cheapest per customer once it runs. Where buyers research is changing fast. In G2's March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers and decision makers, 71 percent relied on AI chatbots at some point in their research (G2, 15 April 2026). G2 runs a software review site, so it has a stake in how buyers research software; the figures are from its own survey.

What to publish: one page per question your buyers ask (pricing, comparisons, "how do I"), real prices, honest "wrong choice if" sections and customer reviews. In our observation, not a study, AI assistants tend to quote pages that answer the exact question.

Which channel fits your product

Your price and your buyer's process decide the mix. Our assessment:

Patience matters for large contracts: the average buying cycle in 6sense's 2025 study was 10.1 months (6sense).

How to get more customers once you have some

Your current customers tell you who to find next:

1. Write down what your ten best customers share: industry, size, business model, the role that bought and what happened just before they signed. Our ideal customer profile guide has a template.
2. Watch for that trigger in companies you do not sell to yet.
3. Expand inside accounts. Usage data shows which teams are ready for more seats or a higher plan.
4. Ask for reviews and introductions after a customer hits a milestone in your product.
5. Revive lost deals and churned customers when something changes at their company.
6. Measure cost per customer by channel, and cut what does not pay back.

Fictional example: an invoicing tool for agencies notices that its best accounts upgraded within a month of hiring a finance lead. It stops chasing every agency and starts watching for that hire.

Where to find customers

B2B buyers leave public traces of a need. Look there before you buy any list:

For tools that cover these sources, see the best B2B lead generation tools of 2026. If you are the founder and the only seller, our founder-led outbound guide turns this into a weekly routine.

Doing it with Leo

Leo by Revexa is an AI GTM agent that finds the B2B companies ready to buy and starts the conversations that turn them into customers, by email and LinkedIn. By default you approve every message before it is sent.

Leo works in the buying signals and outbound channel. Starting from your website, it works out who your product is for, then tracks hiring, funding, headcount growth, new executives in the buying role, competitors' tools on a company's website, job ads and LinkedIn engagement. It checks each company's business model, picks the right person and writes a LinkedIn message or email in your voice, in the lead's own language when your site has that language. Drafts wait for your yes in the portal, Slack or iMessage, unless you turn on autonomous mode for a channel. Replies get handled, meetings get booked, and every deal teaches it something. Connected to HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Upsales or Close, Leo leaves customers and open deals alone and can log positive replies and meetings back to the CRM. No cold messages go to leads in Germany (UWG §7).

Is it 10x? Only against hiring an SDR. Our cost per meeting calculation finds the agent route 12 to 23 times cheaper per held meeting than a hired SDR in the US, but only 3 to 5 times cheaper than a well-run tool stack, and it assumes every route books the same number of meetings.

The plan is the same everywhere, priced in local currency: $99 a month in the US and the rest of the world, €89 in Europe and 999 SEK in Sweden, before VAT or sales tax, with a 7-day free trial and no lock-in (pricing).

Leo does not run trials, buy ads, identify website visitors or make calls, and it is no database of contacts to download. Revexa, started in Sweden in 2026, has not yet published customer results. Pick something else if your product closes without a conversation, if most of your buyers sit in Germany, or if you want case studies before a trial.

Related: Customer acquisition strategies, How to generate leads, How to get your first customers, Lead generation for SaaS and How to get clients for a software development company.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get customers for a B2B software product?

Pick channels by how your buyers buy. If a sale needs a conversation, reach companies showing a buying signal; if buyers can try alone, build a trial and inbound content; if they live inside a platform, list on its marketplace.

How do I find customers for my SaaS?

Find the companies whose situation just changed in a way your product fixes: they hire for the role you help, raise money, name a new leader or run a competitor's tool. Then message whoever is responsible for that problem, and mention the change.

How do I get more customers?

Learn from your ten best customers, watch for the trigger they had in common, expand inside current accounts, ask happy customers for reviews and introductions, and revive lost deals when something changes. Then cut the channels that cost more than they return.

Where can I find customers?

In job ads, funding announcements, company websites, LinkedIn engagement, review sites, AI assistants' answers, integration marketplaces and your own signups and CRM. Each shows a need or a buyer comparing options, which a bought list does not.

How do I get new customers without a sales team?

Let the product sell where it can (trial, prices on the site, fast onboarding) and keep conversations for buyers who show a signal. Software can watch signals and draft messages, so a founder can review them in a few hours a week (our estimate) instead of prospecting all day.

Which channel gets B2B customers fastest?

In our assessment, for a product sold through a conversation, buying signals and outbound usually bring the first customers within weeks. Paid ads can be fast when buyers already search for your category. Inbound and product-led growth take months to start but get cheaper over time.