How to Find Leads for a Software Company: Buyers in Public
The LinkedIn behaviours that mark a software buyer in-market this week, split by product company and development shop, a week-one plan you can run by hand, and when referrals, partners or ads beat signals.
The fastest way to find leads for a software company is to watch for people showing in public that they have the problem your software or your developers solve, and to reach them that week. On LinkedIn that is a comment under a competitor's launch post, a post asking "what are you using for X?", or a founder hiring a first engineer. Below: the signals for product companies and development shops, a week-one plan you can run by hand, and when referrals, partners or ads beat them.
Why do most lead generation tactics for software companies start too late?
The pages that rank for this query list the same tactics: define an ideal customer profile, run cold email, post content, buy ads, host webinars, offer a free trial. None of it is wrong. The problem is timing. A cold list says who could buy; it says nothing about who is buying this quarter, so most messages land on people with no open problem.
Software buyers decide early and in private. In the 2024 Buyer Experience Report, 6sense found B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before they engage a seller, that 81% already have a preferred vendor at first contact, and that buyers initiate that contact more than 80% of the time. If the first time you hear from a buyer is the demo form, you are usually the second vendor in a race the first has nearly won.
The way in is earlier. In G2's 2024 buyer behaviour survey of more than 1,900 software buyers, the stage at which buyers most often said a salesperson's contact was useful was research (34%), ahead of evaluation (23%) and discovery (21%), and only 3% said they never want to talk to sales. Research is the stage where people ask questions in public, which is what a buying signal is: a visible action that shows someone is in-market now (the buying signal lesson has the definitions). This page is about where those actions happen on LinkedIn for a software company, and what to do in the hour after you see one.
Product company or development shop: which leads are yours?
"Software company" covers two businesses with different buyers, and the ranking pages treat them as one. Decide which you are before you build a watch list. If you sell both, run the two columns as two separate searches; a message that fits one reads as spam to the other.
| Product company (SaaS, tools, platforms) | Development shop (custom builds, staff augmentation) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who buys | The person who owns the workflow your product changes: head of sales, RevOps, finance, support, engineering, depending on the category | Founders without a technical co-founder, CTOs with more roadmap than engineers, product leads at non-software companies |
| What the signal looks like | Comparing tools in public, reacting to a competitor, describing the pain your product removes | Hiring engineers, announcing an MVP or a rebuild, complaining about a vendor or a deadline |
| What the message offers | A specific reason your tool fits the job they named, and a short look | An opinion on their build, a scoping call, or one developer for a month |
| Where the cycle starts | The research stage, often months before a form is filled | The week funding, a hire or a failed project becomes public |
Where do software company leads show up on LinkedIn?
Each row is a behaviour you can see with a free LinkedIn account. The last column is the message to send, written to quote the signal rather than pitch the company. Reddit and X carry the same questions and are worth a manual search a few times a week; treat them as manual channels, because Intentsly monitors LinkedIn only.
| Signal | Where | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comments or reacts on a competitor's product post (product) | The competitor's company page and its founders' posts | The person follows the category closely enough to react; a question in the comment is an open evaluation | Reply to their comment with something useful within a day, then connect with a note that quotes it |
| Posts "what are you using for [job]?" or "[competitor] alternative?" (product) | Posts tab search for the competitor name plus "anyone using", "recommend", "alternative", "switching" | An active comparison, often with a deadline | Answer in the thread first, including where your tool is the wrong choice; message with the one reason it fits the job they named |
| Posts describing the pain your product removes (product) | Posts tab search for the problem words customers used on past sales calls, filtered to the past week | A problem acknowledged in public, vendor not yet chosen | Comment with a method they can use without you; connect; mention the product only if asked or in the second message |
| Newly follows a competitor page or engages with the category hashtag (product) | The competitor page's follower list; posts tagged with the category hashtag | Early research; weaker than a comment but fresh | Connect with no pitch and let your posts do the next step |
| Founder posts "we're hiring our first engineer" or "looking for a developer" (shop) | Posts tab search for "hiring" plus "developer", "engineer", "CTO", "technical co-founder", past week | Budget exists for the outcome and the hire has not happened; a shop can start Monday | Message the founder with the build you would scope first and offer a 20-minute scoping call, not a deck |
| Company posts several engineering jobs at once (shop) | Jobs search for engineering titles at companies in your segment; the hiring signals guide has the click path | A roadmap bigger than the team; augmentation is faster than hiring | Message the engineering lead with the one role you can fill this month and a named engineer's profile |
| Posts about a failed build, a missed launch or a vendor change (shop) | Posts tab search for "rebuild", "technical debt", "our agency", "missed the launch", past month | A current supplier is on notice | Ask what went wrong before offering anything; a second opinion earns the next call |
| Announces a new role in a buying title (both) | Posts tab search for "excited to join" or "new role" plus the title | New owners audit the stack and the suppliers in their first quarter | Congratulate, ask what they inherited, offer a comparison note or an audit instead of a demo |
One filter applies to every row: a signal older than about two weeks is cold. A founder who asked for a developer a month ago has usually hired one, and a buyer who asked "anyone using X?" has usually chosen.
How to find leads for a software company by hand: a week-one plan
This plan takes about an hour a day and a free LinkedIn account. It is built for one person, so the numbers are small on purpose. The example company is hypothetical.
- Day 1: write the signal list. Product company: name three competitors, five phrases customers use for the problem, and the two or three titles that buy. Development shop: name the three build types you want (an MVP, a mobile app, a data pipeline), the phrases founders use when they need one, and the stage of company you can serve. Example (hypothetical): Northwind Studio builds MVPs for seed-stage fintech; its phrases are "looking for a developer", "need a technical co-founder" and "MVP in 8 weeks".
- Day 1: save the searches. In LinkedIn's Posts tab, search each competitor name in quotes plus one of "anyone using", "alternative", "switching to", or each hiring phrase plus "developer". Set the date filter to the past week and save each search. Follow each competitor's page, or for a shop the accelerators and investors whose founders you serve, so their posts land in your feed.
- Day 2: build the watch list. Open each competitor's three most recent posts, or the ten newest hiring posts, and list every person whose title matches a buying title plus anyone who asked a question. Record name, company, post, quote and date in a sheet. The competitor engager tracking method covers the product side in detail.
- Days 2 to 5: act within a day. Reply in the thread first, then send a connection note that quotes what they wrote and asks one question. No link, no deck, no case-study attachment. Keep to 15 connection requests and 15 messages a day; a restricted account ends the plan. The message templates for buying signals give one opener per signal.
- Days 3 to 5: answer the open questions. For every "anyone using X?" or "who should I hire?" post, write the answer you would give a friend, including where your company is the wrong choice. Message the poster afterwards with the one reason it might fit the job they described.
- Day 5: score the week. Count signals found, messages sent, replies and calls booked. Replies under one in ten means the message is pitching; rewrite it to lead with their quote. Signals under ten a week means widen the phrases or add a competitor, an accelerator or a job title.
- Day 6: ask every conversation for names. Everyone who takes a call, buyer or not, knows two people with the same problem. For a development shop this is the referral loop that most of your competitors rely on without running the steps above.
Expect week one to produce conversations rather than contracts. Software buying cycles are long: the 6sense report linked above puts the average B2B buying group at 11 people. The point of the week is a repeatable loop: watch, quote, reply, book.
How does Intentsly do this for you?
The manual plan breaks at scale: the searches must be re-run daily, competitor threads grow faster than one person can read, and with sending capped the bottleneck is finding the right fifteen people, not messaging them. Intentsly runs the finding and the first conversations, on LinkedIn only.
| Signal from the table above | What Intentsly does |
|---|---|
| Comments and reactions on competitor and industry-leader posts | Post engagement monitoring: people who like, comment or share posts from the competitors and leaders you name |
| "Anyone using X?", pain-point posts, "looking for a developer" posts | Keyword post monitoring for the pain points, tools and topics you set |
| New competitor page followers and engagers | Competitor page follower and engager tracking |
| Hashtag engagement in your category | Hashtag engagement monitoring |
| Deciding who is a buyer | Scoring against your ideal customer profile, so the list arrives prioritised |
| Finding the email for a follow-up | Enrichment with verified emails, and export of leads and signals |
| Replying, holding the conversation, booking | The AI SDR sends LinkedIn connection requests and messages, holds the conversation, and sends your Cal.com or Google Calendar link so the buyer books the meeting; HubSpot is the native CRM integration |
If you want the first step done for you, the LinkedIn signals feature watches the competitor posts and keyword searches from the plan above and hands you the list already scored. The limits are the same as the manual plan, stated plainly: up to 2 LinkedIn accounts per plan, a maximum of 30 messages and 30 connection requests per account per day, and Intentsly recommends 15. Monitoring and outreach run in English, Romanian, German and Dutch. The AI SDR sends LinkedIn messages only; it does not send email, and Intentsly does not watch job boards, so the engineering-jobs row above stays a manual check.
What does this look like in practice?
We ran the method on our own product. Launching an AI sales platform into a market full of outreach tools with bigger budgets, we pointed our own intent signals at founders complaining about cold outreach burnout and let the AI SDR handle replies and booking. The result was 14 qualified demos in 14 days with zero manual outreach, and a reply rate 4x our previous cold campaigns. Most of those leads came from signals caught in real time: the message landed while the person was still describing the problem. The write-up is on the case studies page.
That run was a product company selling to founders. A development shop running the same loop watches hiring and rebuild posts instead of competitor threads, and the message offers a scoping call instead of a demo; the mechanism is the same.
Other ways to find leads for a software company, and when they beat signals
Signals are the fastest route to conversations, not the only one. Three alternatives earn their place, and the B2B SaaS version of this page goes deeper on the product-company side.
Referrals and partners beat signals when you are a development shop with fewer than ten past clients, or a product with a natural implementation partner. In the same G2 survey, 69% of software buyers said service providers and implementers are a factor in their purchase, and 38% start considering them during the research stage. For a shop, that means the SaaS vendors your clients already use are a lead source: become the implementer they recommend. For a product, it means the agencies that set up your category for clients. The ceiling is low and slow, so add the signal plan from week two.
Review sites and directories beat signals when buyers in your category search before they post. Product companies get found on review sites; development shops on agency directories. Both reward a steady flow of reviews and punish a profile that has not changed in a year. They produce leads who already have a shortlist, so expect price comparison rather than discovery.
Paid ads beat signals when you already know which message converts and need volume this quarter. Until then, ads pay to learn what a week of signal conversations teaches for free: the problem phrases in the buyers' own words. Buying a lead list is the one method signals replace outright; a list says who could buy, not who is buying this month.
The next step is to see what the signals look like for your category. Try the AI shows matching buyers for your product or service with no account, the quickest test of whether your buyers talk in public at all. If they do, the week-one plan is waiting, and the Buying Signal Playbook lists the 12 signals worth chasing and the 8 to ignore.
FAQ
What is the best way to get leads for a software company with no marketing budget?
Watch, do not broadcast. Save LinkedIn Posts searches for competitor names plus "anyone using", or for hiring phrases plus "developer" if you are a shop, check them daily, and reply in the thread before you message. A free account and an hour a day cover week one. A reply inside a day beats a polished campaign a week later.
How do I get clients for a software development company?
Follow the hiring signal. A founder posting for their first engineer, or a company opening several engineering roles at once, has budget and a deadline and no team yet. Offer a scoping call or one named developer for a month, not a portfolio. Pair that with implementation partnerships with the SaaS vendors your clients already use.
Is cold email still worth it for software sales?
Yes, as the second touch rather than the first. Email the people who accepted a connection and went quiet, and the hiring managers at companies that posted a job your product assists. The same message on both channels on the same day reads as a sequence, and sequences get ignored. Lead on LinkedIn where the signal was, then follow by email.
How do I find leads on LinkedIn for a software product?
Three searches, run daily: your competitors' names with "alternative" or "anyone using", the problem phrases your customers used on sales calls, and your competitors' most recent posts for commenters with a buying title. Record each person with the quote and the date, act within a day, and treat anything older than two weeks as cold.
How long does it take to find leads this way?
Week one by hand should produce replies and a few calls rather than contracts. In our own run, with the method automated, we booked 14 qualified demos in 14 days. Software buying cycles are long and involve several people, so count signals, replies and calls weekly; once the loop books calls every week, revenue follows the cycle length of your category.
Should a software company buy a lead list?
Only as a lookup table, never as a campaign. A purchased list tells you who fits your profile; it cannot tell you who has the problem this month, so reply rates stay low and the account that sends the volume gets restricted. Use a list to check company size or find an email after a signal, not to decide who to message.
