Lead generation for an IT company is the work that brings in enquiries from businesses with a specific technology project: an ERP to roll out, a network to secure, a piece of software to build. Those enquiries almost always start from the name of the software: on 11 November 2026, "partner" searches for seven products added up to 1,060 a month in Italy and to 1,560 a month in the UK (Odoo, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce and HubSpot alone), while "lead generation for IT companies" got 20 searches a month in the UK.
And on 34 organic results for four of those searches in Italy, 21 were pages owned by the software vendor: partner directories, partner programmes, reseller lists.
Winning clients as a software house looks like a website problem.
It only partly is.
A business choosing an Odoo partner or a Microsoft partner starts from the vendor's official list, and only then opens the websites of the names it finds there.
The mistakes we see most often:
- a partner profile opened years ago, with no industries and no references
- a single "Services" page where the technology only appears in the logos
- one "Contact us" form that treats a 40-user migration and a job application the same way
- campaigns judged on forms filled in rather than contracts signed
The case we use to explain the last point is not an IT company, it is a LED wall manufacturer. Macropix has received 2,906 enquiries from Google Ads since 2018. In 2024 each enquiry cost €94; in 2025, after cutting conversions down to a single signal (the completed form), it fell to €39.44 across 328 enquiries.
What does a LED wall maker have to do with IT?
The cycle is the same: few enquiries, large contracts, months between first contact and signature. Where leads are few, a dirty signal costs more.
In this guide:
- how buyers search for an IT supplier, with volumes for Italy and the UK
- who owns page one for "partner + software" searches (a check on 4 Italian searches)
- search channels in the right order: vendor directory, technology pages, Google Business Profile, Google Ads
- the form and the first reply, where leads get lost
- what ChatGPT cited when we asked it for an Odoo partner and an IT support firm
Let's start.
What a lead is for an IT company (a project with software, users and a deadline)
For an IT company, a lead is an enquiry that carries at least three facts: which technology, for how many people, and by when. "We would like information about your services" is not a lead yet: it is a contact to qualify.
The deadline matters more than the budget.
End of support for an old system, a security audit, a new office opening: people with a date write to decide, not to browse.
We covered B2B lead generation in general (what it is, what a lead costs, how to qualify it) in our guide to B2B lead generation. Here we stay on IT companies and software houses, and on search channels only.
How buyers search for an IT supplier (the software name, not "software house")
People looking for an IT supplier on Google type the technology or the service, almost never the supplier category. Average monthly Google Ads volumes, measured with DataForSEO on 11 November 2026:
| Search | Italy (Italian query) | UK | UK avg CPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft partner | 320 | 880 | $16.77 |
| Odoo partner | 390 | 110 | $18.30 |
| SAP partner | 90 | 140 | $19.56 |
| Salesforce partner | 90 | 260 | $13.74 |
| HubSpot partner | 50 | 170 | $34.84 |
| Sage partner | not measured | 1,000 | $68.06 |
| lead generation for IT companies | 10 ("lead generation it") | 20 | not available |
| IT lead generation | not measured | 10 | not available |
Three things stand out.
"Partner + software" searches dwarf everything else. In Italy they beat the seven service searches we measured (app development, bespoke software, IT support for businesses and so on: 800 a month in total).
In the UK the clicks are dearer: "HubSpot partner" averages $34.84 a click, "Sage partner" $68.06, with a seasonal peak of 2,400 searches in March 2026.
Nobody searches for "lead generation" for an IT company, and hardly anyone searches for the supplier category. It is the same reason SEO for IT companies starts from the technology, not from "systems integrator". Even buyers redoing their website often choose between a web agency and a software house without knowing where one stops and the other starts.
And if your software house resells nobody's software?
Then your searches are the service ones: app development, bespoke software, support, security. Small volumes, expensive clicks and a different page one: we come back to it in the channels section.
The vendor's directory is your page one (21 results out of 34)
For "partner + software" searches, Google's first page belongs mostly to the software vendor. On 11 November 2026 we read the mobile results for four of these searches in Italy.
| Search (Italy) | Organic results | Vendor pages | Partner websites | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| partner odoo | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 (Odoo Italy association) |
| partner microsoft | 6 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
| partner sap | 10 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| rivenditore zucchetti (Zucchetti reseller) | 9 | 4 | 0 | 5 (namesakes and directories) |
| Total | 34 | 21 | 7 | 6 |
The detail that matters sits in the Odoo row.
One of the five odoo.com results is the profile of a Gold partner, UNITIVA, hosted on Odoo's own site. The directory profile ranks by itself, on the strength of the vendor's domain.
For the Zucchetti reseller search, no partner website made the organic results. Partners only appeared on the map: two business profiles out of four in the local pack, and four partners named with their address in the AI Overview.
So the website doesn't matter?
It matters next. Whoever finds your name in the directory opens your site to check references and industries: the directory brings the visit, the website decides whether it becomes an enquiry.
Some vendors pass leads directly through the profile. Microsoft says so in its Partner Center documentation: once the business profile is published, "you'll start to receive sales leads through the Referrals feature", and partners need to respond within the required time frames to keep receiving them.
What to put in a partner profile, on any directory:
- industries and client size you actually work with
- named references, where the programme allows them and the client has agreed
- cities and regions served, because buyers filter by area
- consultant certifications, which many directories turn into the partner tier
- a link to a specific page of your site, not the home page
Zucchetti's Top Partner ERP list, for example, filters by area (North, Centre, South) and by product. A partner without a product and an area is invisible in that list. For Odoo there is also the Odoo Italy association list, which shows up on the same page one.
Does your partner profile bring you enquiries, or leave them to the vendor?
On 34 results for four "partner + software" searches, 21 were vendor pages. Let's look together at the searches for your technology, what buyers see in the directory and what reaches you today from your site and your campaigns.
Book a strategy callSearch channels in the right order for an IT company (directory first, website second)
For an IT company the order is: profile in the vendor's directory, one page per technology and service, Google Business Profile, Google Ads on searches that contain the software name. If you resell no product, skip the first step and start from the pages.
1. The partner profile, kept up to date like a web page
It is the result buyers find first, as the table shows. Update it with every new reference, not once a year when the vendor contract renews.
2. One page per technology and service (SEO)
Visitors arriving from a directory look for confirmation: Odoo for manufacturers, a migration from one ERP to another, Microsoft 365 for professional firms. Every mix of technology and industry deserves its own page, with a case, timings and the module names.
We measured how these sites are built in our article on the website for IT companies: of 29 software house home pages we read in Italy, 16 had no contact form.
For bespoke developers these pages are everything. The generic search is small and contested, so write by industry and by problem (the ERP for a metal workshop, the booking app for a group of clinics), not for the word "bespoke".
3. Google Business Profile, where you are a reseller
For the Zucchetti reseller search, the map was the only place partners appeared. A profile makes sense for firms with a location that meets the Google Business Profile guidelines, and the name must be the real one: the guidelines do not allow unnecessary information in the business name and warn that it can lead to suspension.
"Microsoft partner" belongs in the description and services, not in the name, unless it is part of the company's real name. How to work the map when the searcher is a business rather than a consumer is in our guide to B2B local SEO.
4. Google Ads on searches with the software name
In Italy "partner + software" searches cost between $4.95 and $12.97 a click, less than bespoke ERP searches ($21.52). But "partner microsoft" also includes people who want to become partners: the same page one carried Partner Center pages and "become a partner". You need negative keywords such as become, login and center, or the clicks go to competitors researching the programme.
Campaigns, budgets and Google's rule on tech support for consumers are in our guide to Google Ads for IT companies.
5. Comparison sites, if you sell your own software
For subscription products, comparison sites play the directory's role: "capterra" alone gets 880 searches a month in Italy. For service firms they matter less. We cover subscription products separately in lead generation for startups and SaaS.
The form and the first reply (where a visit becomes a call)
An IT company's form should ask for the three facts of a lead: technology, number of users, deadline. With those three answers sales knows whether to call today or in three months.
The fields we use as a starting point:
- which software you use today: a menu with none, spreadsheets, an ERP, other
- how many people will use it, in bands
- by when: under three months, three to six, later, not sure
- one free text field for the rest
And two exits kept apart from the sales form: a careers page for job applications and an address for people selling services. At IT companies they often outnumber clients, and if they land in the same form they distort every count.
How fast should the first reply be?
As fast as you can, and for some channels it is a written rule: Microsoft ties new referrals to replies within the required time frames. If enquiries arrive and then get lost, the checks to run are in our article on the website that doesn't generate leads.
What a lead costs an IT company (and why you count it to the contract)
A Google Ads lead costs the CPC of the search divided by the share of visits that become enquiries. With a $16.77 click ("Microsoft partner" in the UK) and one enquiry every 20 visits (an example to do the maths, not an industry average), you get about $335 per lead.
Sounds a lot.
Now run it the other way: first contract value times the share of deals you close. With a £15,000 project and one deal closed in five (again, an example), each enquiry is worth £3,000 in revenue. The ceiling is high, and the problem is rarely the cost per click: it is the leads that never reach sales.
To count all the way to the contract you need three things:
- a single conversion signal, the completed form, as in the Macropix case: from €94 to €39.44 per enquiry without raising the budget
- a long conversion window: Google Ads sets it at 30 days and lets you extend it to 90 (Google Ads Help)
- contracts sent back from your CRM with enhanced conversions for leads, so campaigns learn from who signs, not from who fills in a form
No CRM yet? Here is our comparison of lead generation tools.
IT lead generation and AI answers (ChatGPT read the Odoo directory and the business profiles)
When a business asks ChatGPT for an IT supplier, the answer is built on three sources: vendor or association directories, Google business profiles and suppliers' service pages. We saw it in two tests on 11 November 2026, with ChatGPT and web search switched on (via DataForSEO), both in Italian and for Italian cities.
Test 1, an Odoo partner for a 40-person manufacturer in Bologna. ChatGPT named four firms and cited two pages of the Odoo Italy association plus the partner register on odoo.com, from which it took the tier and references of three more Gold partners. For all four it showed a card with address and phone number.
Test 2, IT support and security for a 20-seat practice in Verona. Three firms named, cited through the "support" and "managed services" pages of their own sites, each with its local card; two had reviews (6 and 15).
Partner profile, business profile and service page are the same three assets that work on Google. They don't guarantee a mention, but without them there is nothing to cite.
In the first test ChatGPT also asked what kind of production the company ran and which areas it wanted to manage: the question splits into sub-questions (that is query fan-out), and the firm with a page for each one wins. How we work on this is on our page about visibility in AI answers; for businesses with premises there is also our guide to local AI visibility.
Lead generation for IT companies: FAQs
It depends on how much that software is searched: "Microsoft partner" gets 880 searches a month in the UK, "Odoo partner" 110. Requirements and fees differ by programme and must be read on the vendor's official page; the directory brings leads only if the profile is complete and current.
With pages by industry and by problem, not by the word "bespoke". In Italy "app development" gets 260 searches a month and "bespoke software development" 70, with clicks between $12.81 and $14.53: small, contested volumes that you win with specific cases.
No, unless it is part of your real company name. Google Business Profile guidelines do not allow unnecessary information in the name and can suspend the profile; the partner status goes in the description and services.
It depends on the search: on 11 November 2026 UK average CPCs for partner searches ran from $13.74 (Salesforce partner) to $68.06 (Sage partner). The number to watch is cost per contract, with a conversion window of up to 90 days.
Yes. The directory brings the visit, but buyers open your site to check industries, cases and the form; in our ChatGPT tests suppliers' service pages were among the cited sources.
It depends on who keeps profiles, pages and the CRM up to date. If someone in the company does it every month, you can start in-house; if you hire an agency, ask for results measured on contracts, not forms.
Lead generation for IT companies, in short (and the profile to open today)
Buyers search for the software, not the software house.
On "partner + software" searches page one belongs to the vendor: 21 results out of 34 in Italy.
The directory brings the visit, the website turns it into an enquiry.
For resellers the map is the only spot on page one, under the real name.
The form asks for software, users and deadline.
Cost is counted on the contract, not on the form.
One last thing hardly anyone does: open your vendor's directory today, filter by your region and your industry, and see where you appear. It is a page one of Google you can edit in an afternoon, without waiting for the algorithm.
If you want to do it with us, starting from the searches for your technology, see how we approach lead generation.
Speak soon!
