7 sales-qualified meetings per month for a B2B fintech selling embedded payments
How we turned a quiet LinkedIn presence into a steady stream of CFO and Head of Payments conversations — without paid ads, without email.
A 35-person fintech selling embedded payment rails to SaaS platforms had a strong product but no consistent outbound motion. Their founders ran sporadic LinkedIn DMs themselves. We took over the channel end-to-end and built a repeatable outbound pipeline.
THE CHALLENGE
What we walked into
- Founders were the only outbound source — inconsistent and time-expensive (~3 hrs/day each).
- Long sales cycle (3–6 months) meant they needed conversations with finance + product leaders simultaneously.
- Generic 'pitch on connection' tactics had burned the company's brand on LinkedIn — reply rates under 1.5%.
- Niche ICP: vertical SaaS platforms (€5M–€50M ARR) in payroll, property, healthcare and logistics.
THE ICP
Exactly who we targeted
Job titles
Industries
Geographies
Company size
50–500 employees, €5M–€50M ARR
THE APPROACH
How we ran the motion
ICP rebuild + account list
We rebuilt the ICP from scratch by interviewing their 8 best customers. Mapped 1,400 target accounts in DACH/UK that ran vertical SaaS and were likely to monetize payments. Pulled 3 buyer personas per account on average — 4,100 verified contacts total.
3 LinkedIn profiles, all founder-style
We ran outbound from the CEO, the Head of Partnerships, and a senior BDR profile. Each profile was rebuilt: banner, headline, featured posts and a 'what we do for X' founder-letter post pinned to top.
Soft-touch sequence, no pitch on connect
Connection requests with zero pitch. 48h after acceptance, a context message referencing the prospect's product or recent funding. Follow-ups spaced 4 / 7 / 12 days, each one adding a specific insight (benchmark, integration angle, regulatory note).
Voice notes for warm replies
Any positive reply was followed up by a 25–40 second voice note from the founder profile within the same business day. This single change took our reply-to-call conversion from 28% to 51%.
Weekly content tied to outreach
Two posts per week from the CEO profile — one teardown of a vertical SaaS payments problem, one carousel. Engagers were enriched and folded back into the outreach list the following week.
TRIGGER SIGNALS
What we waited for before reaching out
Every account had to fire at least one of these signals in the last 90 days before it entered the sequence. Trigger-based timing is the single biggest driver of reply rate.
Series A / B funding announcement
Crunchbase + LinkedIn news
Budget freed for monetization & finance hires
New Head of Payments / Monetization hire
LinkedIn job-change alerts
Mandate to launch embedded payments in first 90 days
Public roadmap mention of payments
Changelog, X, LinkedIn posts
Active build phase — open to vendor input
Partnership page change (new PSP / acquirer)
Visualping site monitoring
Stack in flux — replaceability window
CFO recently posted about take rates / unit economics
LinkedIn post-listening (Clay)
Top-of-mind topic — warm hook for first DM
THE FUNNEL
Numbers at each step of the motion
Monthly steady-state. Numbers rounded; conversion rates measured over 6+ months.
Target accounts (DACH + UK)
Vertical SaaS, €5M–€50M ARR
1,400
Buyer contacts identified
~3 personas / account, verified
4,100
Connection requests sent / month
3 profiles · 85/wk each
1,020
Connections accepted
326 (32%)
Conversations started
188 (58% of accepted)
Positive replies
31 (9.4%)
Calls booked / month
11
Sales-qualified (SQL)
After qualifier — disqual rate 36%
7
CAMPAIGN MECHANICS
What the engine looked like
Profiles running outbound
3 (CEO, Partnerships, BDR)
Connection requests / week / profile
85
Active sequence steps
1 connect + 3 follow-ups + voice note
Personalization level
Manual line on every first message
Tools
Sales Navigator, HeyReach, Clay enrichment, Notion CRM
TIMELINE
From kickoff to steady state
Week 1–2
ICP rebuild, customer interviews, account scoring
Week 2–3
Profile optimization, copy, sequence build, list QA
Week 4
Soft launch — 1 profile, 40 connects/day
Week 5
First 3 SQLs booked. Ramp to 3 profiles.
Week 6–24
Steady state: 6–9 SQLs/month, weekly optimisation
Engagement length: Ongoing — 8 months at time of writing
THE RESULTS
Numbers that held month after month
SQLs booked
over 6 months
SQLs / month
average steady state
Acceptance rate
on connection requests
Positive reply rate
of accepted connections
Pipeline generated
first 6 months
ROI
vs. retainer cost
"We went from 'me sending DMs at 11pm' to a calendar that actually fills itself. The compounding part is what surprised me — by month four the inbound from our LinkedIn posts was matching the outbound volume."
CEO
B2B Fintech · 35 employees · Berlin
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