Go to market strategy UK: a 9-step B2B plan with a 90-day timeline

This guide is for B2B companies launching sales in the UK, or scaling them, with outbound at the centre of the plan. It covers the whole sequence: who to sell to, how big that group is, how to price, which channels to use, where the data comes from, and what the first 90 days look like. It is written for UK founders and for overseas companies entering the market. Two of the steps are legal ones, consent and suppression, and they are kept short with links to the detail. This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.

The short answer

A UK go-to-market strategy for a B2B company comes down to nine steps. Define a narrow ideal customer and count it with official data. Price in pounds, ex VAT. Pick two or three channels, with phone and email doing most of the early work. Build the list from Companies House and verified contact data. Record consent where you rely on it. Screen every number against the TPS, the CTPS and your own do-not-call list before anyone dials. Run a short, multi-channel sequence. Expect a procurement step before the contract. Measure meetings, not activity, and review the plan at 30, 60 and 90 days.

The UK rewards focus. It is a dense market with most businesses in a few regions, so a small team can reach a meaningful share of a segment quickly. It also has specific rules on marketing calls and emails, and those rules shape the channel plan more than most sellers expect.

Step 1: Define your ideal customer and size the market

Start with the official counts, not a vendor's database total. The Department for Business and Trade publishes the business population estimates each year. The 2025 edition, published on 2 October 2025, estimated 5.7 million private sector businesses in the UK at the start of 2025. Most of them are very small: 4.3 million (75%) employed nobody apart from the owners, and 1.4 million (25%) had employees.

Source: Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2025, Department for Business and Trade.

The table tells you something useful before you segment at all. If you sell to companies with 250 or more staff, your whole UK private sector market is about 8,300 businesses. That is a list you can name account by account. If you sell to companies with 50 to 249 staff, it is about 38,000. If you sell to small businesses, the market is huge, but most of it has no employees and no buying process.

For a count by industry and region, use the ONS release UK business: activity, size and location. It counts businesses registered for VAT or PAYE, which removes most of the very smallest firms. The September 2026 edition counted 2.79 million VAT or PAYE registered businesses as of March 2026, broken down by industry (SIC code), region and size band. Filter its tables to your SIC codes and size bands, and that is your addressable count.

Location matters for field sales and events. The 2025 business population estimates put London (1.042 million businesses) and the South East (877,000) at the top, together 34% of the UK total. For a team based in London, a third of UK businesses are in the same or a neighbouring region.

Then write the ideal customer profile in one paragraph: industry, size band, region, the trigger that makes them buy now, and the job title that signs. If the paragraph needs more than five lines, it is too broad for a launch.

Step 2: Set your positioning and pricing

UK buyers expect plain claims they can check. Lead with what the product does and a number from a named customer, not with adjectives. Understatement reads as confidence here, and a hard close on a first call usually ends the conversation. Say what you do in one sentence, show proof, and ask for a next step.

Price in pounds sterling. Quoting in dollars or euros signals that the UK is an afterthought, and it hands the buyer the currency risk. In B2B, quote prices ex VAT and say so on the pricing page and in every proposal. The standard VAT rate is 20%, and a VAT-registered buyer reclaims it, so they compare suppliers on the net figure.

VAT registration depends on where you are based. A UK business must register once taxable turnover in the last 12 months goes over £90,000, the VAT threshold, or when it expects turnover in the next 30 days alone to go over that figure. An overseas business with no UK establishment that supplies goods or services to the UK must register regardless of turnover, according to the same gov.uk page. For many B2B services, though, the supply is treated as made where the customer belongs, and the UK business customer accounts for the VAT under the reverse charge (VAT Notice 741A, sections 5 and 6.3). Which rule applies to you depends on what you sell, so take advice from a UK tax adviser before you invoice.

Step 3: Choose your channel mix

Pick two or three channels and run them well before adding more. The table sets out where each one fits in an outbound-led UK launch.

For most launches the phone does the heavy lifting in the first 90 days. A call tells you in two minutes whether your positioning lands, which no open rate can. The practical side of running calls, from the opener to logging outcomes, is in how to cold call in the UK.

Step 4: Source and verify your data

Companies House is the starting point for any list of UK limited companies. Basic company information is free to search, and Companies House publishes a free monthly snapshot of every live company on the register. Each record carries the registered office, the SIC codes and the incorporation date, and the online record adds the officers and the filing history. Filter by SIC code and incorporation date to build the account list, then use the filed accounts to sort by size.

Companies House gives you companies and directors, not phone numbers or email addresses. For contacts you will use a data vendor, the company's own website, or both. Treat vendor data as a draft. Check that the person still works there, that the number reaches them, and whether the number is a mobile or a landline. For mobiles, run a dead number check before the list goes to the team. A dead number check (technically an HLR lookup) asks the mobile network whether a number is live, switched off or dead, so agents stop dialling numbers that cannot answer. It works on mobiles only, and TPSClear runs it alongside screening, as set out on the features page.

Record the legal form of each account at this stage. A limited company is a corporate subscriber. A sole trader is an individual subscriber, and so is a partnership anywhere in the UK outside Scotland, while a Scottish partnership is corporate. That one field decides which register applies to the number and which email rule applies to the address, as set out in sole traders and partnerships: TPS or CTPS.

Personal data on business contacts is still personal data under UK GDPR. For B2B outreach the lawful basis is usually legitimate interests. Write down your assessment, and remember that a person's right to object to direct marketing is absolute (Article 21(2) and (3)): once they object, you stop.

Step 5: Manage consent

You need consent in two common cases. The first is marketing email or text to individual subscribers (consumers, sole traders and partnerships outside Scotland), which needs prior consent or the narrow soft opt-in under PECR regulation 22. The second is any marketing call to a number on the TPS or CTPS, which is allowed only where that subscriber has told you they do not object to your calls for the time being (regulation 21(4)). There is no soft opt-in for calls, so being a past customer is not enough.

In practice, store consent as a record, not a tick: the date, the wording the person agreed to, the channel, and who captured it. If a number has no consent record, treat the call as unsolicited and screen it. The detail is in calling a TPS number with consent.

Step 6: Apply suppression lists before every dial

PECR regulation 21(1) bars unsolicited marketing calls to a number on the register, and to anyone who has told you they do not want your calls. A newly registered number is covered once it has been on the register for 28 days (regulation 21(3)). So you need three checks on every number: the TPS, the CTPS, and your own do-not-call list. Apply your own list first, so an opt-out is never overridden by a clear register result.

Screen numbers when they enter the CRM, when they change, and again within 28 days. A list screened once at launch goes stale while the team works through it. How the registers and in-house lists fit together is covered in TPS and CTPS suppression explained. If your team works in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Zoho, or connects another CRM through Zapier, TPSClear screens each number inside the CRM and writes the result on the record, and the free TPS checker covers a one-off number.

Two further rules apply to every caller, and overseas teams often miss them. Marketing calls must show a number on which you can be contacted, or must not block the caller's number from showing (regulation 21(A1)). And since 5 February 2026 the maximum penalty for breaching the calling and email rules is £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide turnover for an undertaking, whichever is higher, as set out in the Data (Use and Access) Act changes.

Step 7: Design your outbound sequence

A sequence is a fixed set of touches over a fixed period, with a clear stop. Keep the first version short, about three weeks, and change one thing at a time. The example below is a starting point for a mid-market launch, not a rule.

Every email carries your company name and a working opt-out, whoever it goes to. That is PECR regulation 23, and it applies to limited companies as well as individuals. Keep the tone plain and short. UK buyers read a three-line email; a long one tends to get archived.

Bank holidays differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so check the gov.uk list before a campaign. If your team is overseas, plan call blocks around UK working hours, and remember the UK moves between GMT and BST in March and October.

Step 8: Run the sales process

Most UK B2B deals pass through four stages after the first meeting: discovery, a proposal, procurement, and contract. Procurement is the stage overseas sellers underestimate. Mid-sized and larger buyers will usually send a supplier questionnaire covering company details, insurance, information security and data protection. If you will process their personal data, expect them to ask for a data processing agreement.

Prepare a supplier pack before the first deal reaches that stage. Include your company registration details, insurance certificates, a security summary, your privacy notice and a standard data processing agreement. A complete pack sent the same day can save weeks.

For public sector buyers, contracts are advertised on the government's Find a Tender and Contracts Finder services. That route has its own rules and timelines and is outside the scope of this guide.

Step 9: Measure what matters

Track a short chain of numbers, weekly, by segment and by rep:

• Records worked: accounts entered into a sequence.
• Usable numbers: share of records with a verified, screened, dialable number.
• Connect rate: calls where the right person answers, divided by dials.
• Conversations: connects that last long enough to state the problem.
• Meetings booked and held: the number that matters most in the first 90 days.
• Opt-outs and complaints: each one logged with the date, number and campaign.

Set your own baselines in the first month rather than borrowing benchmarks. Connect rates vary widely by sector, job title and data source, and a figure from another market tells you little about yours. Rising opt-outs on one segment usually mean the message or the list is wrong for it.

A 90-day plan

Re-screen the list on a rolling cycle throughout, not only at the start. Accounts loaded on day 20 will still be in the sequence on day 60, and a number registered in between becomes off limits 28 days after it is listed.

Common mistakes when entering the UK

• Treating B2B as exempt. Limited companies can register on the CTPS, sole traders sit on the TPS, and both registers apply to marketing calls. The full picture is in B2B CTPS rules explained.
• Copying a home-market email playbook. Email to sole traders needs consent, and every email needs an identity and an opt-out.
• Pricing in another currency or including VAT. Buyers compare net sterling prices.
• Segmenting too broadly. "UK SMEs" covers about 5.7 million businesses, three quarters of them with no staff. Pick a SIC code, a size band and a region.
• Leaving procurement until the deal is agreed. The supplier questionnaire arrives after the verbal yes, and an empty pack stalls the deal.

What to do next

Write the one-paragraph ideal customer profile this week and count it from the ONS tables. Then build 500 accounts and screen them before the first call. If you are also launching in Australia, the market and the rules differ, and they are compared in go-to-market strategy for Australia and TPS vs Do Not Call vs DNCR. For the legal question on its own, read are cold calls illegal in the UK.