When one searches for a company within search engines, you'll find some results which appear are still listed on directories. I own directories and still have businesses submitting to them.
That is good you are doing businesses using directories, but submitting site to many directories is just waste of time. And can you please provide any screen shot, where directory results are on top of the list?
You try some auto approval directories with unique title description, works best.. waiting to approval makes me boring.
As long as the site is a long established domain and provide seo pages with do-follow backlinks, directory is one of the great places to have our web presence.
The above is the correct attitude to take towards any advertising, but by all means check each website - whatever type of site it is...... - how many members has it got or how much traffic it gets. The only directories that work today are Niche specific, The businesses listing can then target their entries towards one specific group of customers and the user knows that the companies listed in the directory are actually interested in providing services into that industry/sector. Such sites of this quality will charge, and its highly unlikely you will ever get in without paying a fee. I'd say with much authority, that the old style general b2b dir sector died in 2006 - its so over now and those old school directories got replaced with superior traffic options like: booking, niche directories and search sites, also know as Vertical Search or Vortals (vertical portal).
Your not thinking correctly - what about the directory's own traffic?? Mine alone gets 100k of visitors per year. You are wrong - mine gets 277,039 page requests per year and has over 1000 clients.