Lead Generation Companies in Dubai: 9 Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Why do these questions matter more in Dubai than elsewhere?

Because in the UAE, most lead generation involves a phone call, and phone marketing is regulated line by line. Cabinet Resolution No. 56 of 2024 applies to "all companies licensed in the State, including those located in free zones, that market products or services through telemarketing" (Art. 3(1)), and Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2024 attaches a fine to almost every clause.

The rules are enforced. Khaleej Times has reported Dh3.8 million in total fines imposed on violating telemarketers, and a separate round in which 159 companies were fined Dh50,000 each. When a supplier cuts a corner, the call still went out on behalf of your brand, so the questions below are as much about protecting your licence as about getting good leads.

A disclosure before the list: MAJ Leads is one of the companies you may be comparing. We build outbound voice agents that call and qualify leads (the mechanism is in our guide to how AI lead generation works in Dubai), and we do not sell contact lists. Ask us the same nine questions.

1. Where does the contact data come from, and can you prove it?

This is the question that sorts suppliers fastest. Article 4(12) of Resolution 56 requires a company to disclose the source of consumer phone numbers and data when asked, and Table 1 of Resolution 57 fines a failure to do so at AED 25,000 for a first violation. Article 6(4) bars disclosing or trading consumer personal data without consent, which carries AED 50,000 for a first violation and AED 150,000 for a third. The UAE Personal Data Protection Law adds a general rule that personal data is not processed without the owner's consent outside a list of exceptions.

A good answer names the channel: inbound enquiries from your own ads and forms, a portal feed, your CRM backlog, or a list with a documented consent trail. A vague answer ("our proprietary database") is the red flag, because if a consumer complains, the question of where the number came from lands on whoever made the call.

2. Whose licence and whose phone numbers will the calls go out under?

Article 4(1) requires prior approval from the competent authority to practise phone marketing. Article 4(3) requires local numbers issued by a UAE-licensed telecom operator and registered under the company's commercial licence, and Article 4(13) bars using numbers the company does not own or register. The first-violation fines are AED 75,000 for operating without approval and AED 25,000 for calling from unregistered numbers.

Ask the supplier to put in writing which entity holds the approval, which numbers will appear on your prospects' screens, and whose name those numbers are registered under. If the answer involves overseas numbers or a personal SIM, stop there.

3. How is every number screened against the DNCR, and when?

Article 4(5) prohibits marketing calls to numbers on the Do Not Call Registry, and it is one of the most expensive rows in the penalty table: AED 50,000, 75,000 and 150,000 for a first, second and third violation. Screening once at list-purchase time is not enough, because consumers keep registering. Ask whether numbers are checked before every campaign or before every dial, and whether a number that fails the check is blocked by the system or only flagged for a person to notice. Our complete guide to the UAE DNCR covers the registry itself.

4. What hours will you call, and how often will you retry?

Article 5(3) permits marketing calls only from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. Article 5(5) caps callbacks to a consumer who did not answer or ended the call at once a day and twice a week, and Article 5(4) bars calling back someone who rejected the offer on the first call. Each carries a first-violation fine of AED 10,000.

The strong answer is that the dialler refuses to place a call outside the window, rather than a promise that agents will be careful. Across 1,094 timestamped outbound dials on our own UAE production campaign, 0 were placed before 09:00, 0 at or after 18:00, and 0 on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, because the scheduler would not allow it. Ask any supplier for the same breakdown from their call logs.

5. Are calls recorded, and do I get the recordings?

Article 4(7) requires marketing calls to be recorded and the consumer to be told about the recording when the call begins. That makes recordings a compliance requirement, and it also makes them your best quality check. Ask whether you get access to every recording and transcript, or only to a summary spreadsheet. A supplier who cannot show you the calls is asking you to trust the numbers without the evidence.

6. What exactly counts as a "lead" on the invoice?

Two suppliers can both charge "per lead" and mean completely different things: a contact record, a connected call, a person who said "send me details", or a meeting on your calendar. Get the definition in the contract, including what happens to leads that turn out to be wrong numbers, duplicates or people outside your target area. We argue for pricing against booked meetings rather than raw contacts in cost per booked lead, not cost per lead.

7. How quickly is a new lead called after it arrives?

If the supplier is working your inbound enquiries, response time decides most of the outcome. In our 1,097-dial benchmark, first-attempt calls connected 53.7% of the time and second attempts 31.9%. Combined with the Article 5(5) retry cap, the first call is the one that matters. Ask for the median time from lead arrival to first dial, measured from their logs, and what happens to a lead that arrives at 8 pm.

8. What conversion rate do you report, and out of what?

Every conversion rate has a denominator, and suppliers pick the flattering one. The same campaign can be described three ways. From our own benchmark (one UAE production campaign, 2 June to 12 July 2026, mixed cold and warm traffic):

None of these is wrong, but only one is comparable to another supplier's figure if you know which it is. Ask for the full funnel, dials to connects to conversations to meetings, with definitions. The methodology behind our numbers is in the UAE AI cold-call benchmark.

9. Who owns the leads, the recordings and the CRM record when we stop?

Ask three things. Are the leads generated for you exclusive, or can the same contacts be sold to a competitor? Does every lead, transcript and outcome land in your CRM as it happens, or does it live in the supplier's system? And what do you keep when the contract ends? If the answer is "a CSV export on request", you are renting your pipeline. A lead management system that writes into your CRM keeps the record with you from day one.

What do good answers and red flags look like side by side?

Where does an AI voice agent fit in this decision?

Most of the nine questions are about control: who dials, when, from which number, and where the record ends up. An outbound voice agent running under your own licence and numbers answers several of them by construction, because the scheduler enforces the window, the DNCR screen runs before each dial, every call is recorded with the disclosure at the start, and the transcript lands in your CRM. It does not answer question one for you. If you have nobody to call, you still need a sourcing channel.

If your leads already arrive and simply wait too long for a call, see how our AI lead generation service in Dubai works, or browse the full list of MAJ Leads services.