Workflow Starters

Automations for finding new customers

This is the most-built category of automation there is. Across n8n’s public template library, lead generation accounts for more copied workflows than any other use, and the single most-copied one is a scraper that turns Google Maps listings into a spreadsheet.

It is popular because it works and because the alternative is a person with forty browser tabs. What almost none of those guides mention is that the Maps Platform terms cap caching at thirty days and forbid bulk downloads, which a permanent spreadsheet is. So the first build here uses Companies House instead: free, official, and meant to be queried.

4 starters in finding new customers

01

A local prospect list you are allowed to keep

An afternoon
Starts when
An area and a trade you set, run on demand or monthly
It does
Pulls every registered company in that area and trade from Companies House, with address, status and incorporation date, and writes one row each.
Connects
Companies House API, Google Sheets, n8n
Why it pays
Building a local prospect list by hand is hours of work, which is why the map-scraper version of this is the most-copied workflow in n8n’s library. This is the same list from the one UK source whose data you may store, keep and act on.
Its limit
Companies House knows who exists and what they registered as. It does not hold a phone number, a website or an email address, and the registered office is often the accountant’s. Contact details are the next build.
Read the build guide
02

The prospect list that enriches and scores itself

A day
Starts when
A new row landing in your prospect sheet
It does
Fills in company size, sector and website details, then scores the row against criteria you write in plain English.
Connects
Google Sheets, an enrichment API, OpenAI, n8n
Why it pays
A raw scrape is mostly noise. Scoring is what turns two hundred rows into the fifteen worth a person’s time, and doing it with a written rule means you can argue with the rule later.
Its limit
A model scoring a company from its website is guessing from thin evidence. Treat the score as a sort order, never as a decision.
Read the build guide
03

The hiring-signal watcher

An afternoon
Starts when
New job listings appearing for companies or roles you care about
It does
Flags businesses that have started hiring, with the role and the date, into a sheet or a Slack channel.
Connects
A job board or careers page, Google Sheets, Slack, n8n
Why it pays
Hiring is the most reliable public sign that a business is growing and has budget. It is the difference between a list of companies and a list of companies with something happening.
Its limit
It tells you something changed. Whether that change means they need you is a judgement no trigger can make.
Read the build guide
04

The review-signal watcher

A day
Starts when
New public reviews for businesses on your list
It does
Pulls recent reviews, summarises the recurring complaint, and flags businesses whose reviews suggest the problem you fix.
Connects
A reviews site, OpenAI, Google Sheets, n8n
Why it pays
It finds businesses with a problem rather than businesses with a postcode, which is a far better reason to get in touch and a far better opening line.
Its limit
Reviews are a biased sample and summarising them can flatten a real complaint into a generic one. Read the reviews before you use them in a conversation.
Read the build guide

What these deliberately do not do

A list is not a pipeline. None of these write to anybody, and that is deliberate twice over: sending cold email to a scraped list is where UK businesses get themselves into trouble, and a first message that reads as a mail merge performs worse than not sending it. Under PECR you may email a company address with an opt-out, but sole traders and most partnerships count as individuals and need consent first, and UK GDPR still applies to a named person’s work address however public it was.

The same line runs through the whole library, and the hub explains where we draw it. Anything a customer reads as a reply from you is work rather than tooling, which is why we run it as a service instead of shipping it as a template.

Other categories

Paperwork that files itself

4 starters

Getting found online

4 starters

Knowing when something breaks

4 starters

Questions about automating finding new customers

Is it legal to scrape business listings for leads in the UK?

Collecting publicly listed business details is generally lawful, and what you do next is where the rules bite. Under PECR you can send marketing email to a company address provided every message carries an opt-out. Sole traders and most partnerships are treated as individuals and need consent first. UK GDPR applies throughout to anything identifying a named person, including a work email address, so you need a lawful basis, a record of where the data came from, and a way to delete it on request.

What is the most popular lead generation automation?

Scraping business listings from a map search into a spreadsheet, by a wide margin. In n8n’s public template library the three most-viewed versions of that workflow have been viewed more than 275,000 times between them, which is more than any other lead-generation pattern and more than most categories of automation entirely.

Should the outreach be automated too?

No, and this is the step where most people undo the value of the list. A scraped list plus a mail merge produces the messages everyone deletes, and in the UK it also carries real compliance risk with sole traders and partnerships. Use automation to decide who is worth contacting; have a person write the first message.

The next step

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