The problem
Sales-qualified leads stalled after the first call. The calls were generic because rep prep was thin and inconsistent from person to person.
Four pieces of work from my time at Open: an AI agent that prepares sales for discovery calls, messaging frameworks for eight industries, an HTML email programme that replaced plain text outreach, and the SEO and AEO framework that gave the content team a repeatable way to rank.
The original files are not mine to keep, so everything below is rebuilt from memory as a working mockup. Names, people and companies in the samples are fictional.
Qualified leads were reaching sales and not converting. Reps walked into discovery calls without knowing who they were speaking to, what stage the company was at, or what the buyer was likely to push back on. I designed an agent that does that homework automatically.
Sales-qualified leads stalled after the first call. The calls were generic because rep prep was thin and inconsistent from person to person.
Run research on the prospect and the company before the call, then turn it into a one-page brief with likely objections and replies.
Defined the research questions, the brief format and the objection library, and worked with sales to check that reps found it useful.
A discovery call lands on the calendar and the agent starts.
Career path, time in role, funding, headcount, recent hiring, news.
What the company is likely working on and what it needs now.
Delivered to the rep before the call with objections and replies.
Ask how long the daily cash update takes and who owns it. Position connected banking as removing that manual step, not replacing her process.
Lead with how access works, what is read only and what controls her team keeps. Offer a security walkthrough with her IT lead.
Tie it to the open treasury role. A tool that cuts manual cash work changes what that hire spends time on.
How many bank accounts does the team reconcile today, and how often? What does month-end close look like after the new hub opens?
Connected banking pays off differently for a hospital group than for an e-commerce brand. For each industry I wrote a problem, solution and outcome framework in the buyer's own terms, then built LinkedIn outreach on top of it.
| Industry | Buyer | Problem | Solution | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pharma | Finance Controller | Collections from distributors and hospitals arrive on different terms into different accounts. Finance pieces the picture together by hand while supplier payments wait. | Every account in one view, with incoming payments tagged by distributor and a live cash position. | Collections are visible the same day, and payments to raw material suppliers are planned against real balances. |
| Healthcare | Head of Finance | Hospitals and clinics receive patient payments and insurer settlements across branches and accounts, and settlement delays are hard to spot. | A single dashboard of all branch accounts, with settlements shown as they arrive. | Pending and received settlements are clear at a glance, and branch cash is easier to manage centrally. |
| Startups | Founder or CFO | Early teams hold money in several accounts and cards. Runway and burn live in a spreadsheet that is always a few days old. | All accounts connected, with balances and spend visible in one place. | Runway answers take seconds, and the founder spends time on the business rather than on the sheet. |
| Manufacturing | CFO or Plant Finance Lead | Plants pay vendors, buy raw material and collect from dealers through different accounts, and head office rarely sees them together. | All plant and entity accounts connected into one treasury view. | Head office sees consolidated cash daily and schedules vendor payments with confidence. |
| Logistics | Finance Head | Logistics runs on fast, small payments out and slow, large collections in. Cash sits across many accounts and shifts every day. | All accounts connected, with payouts and collections visible together. | Daily cash is clear before the day's payouts go out, and late collections get noticed early. |
| Travel | Finance or Operations Head | Travel businesses pay airlines, hotels and partners while collecting from customers, with refunds and seasonal swings on top. | Every account in one view, so inflows, supplier payments and refunds sit side by side. | Peak season cash is easier to steer, and supplier settlements go out on time. |
| E-commerce | Finance Manager | Sales settle from marketplaces and payment gateways on different cycles into different accounts, which makes reconciliation slow. | Accounts connected with settlements visible as they land. | Settlement tracking is quicker, and cash is clear before ad spend and inventory orders go out. |
| Edtech | Finance Lead | Edtech cash comes in bursts around intakes, then goes out as refunds, instructor payouts and marketing spend across several accounts. | All accounts connected so collections, refunds and payouts are visible together. | Intake season is easier to plan, and refunds and payouts are handled without surprises. |
Collections from distributors and hospitals arrive on different terms into different accounts. Finance pieces the picture together by hand while supplier payments wait.
Every account in one view, with incoming payments tagged by distributor and a live cash position.
Collections are visible the same day, and payments to raw material suppliers are planned against real balances.
Outreach used to be text-only. I introduced an HTML format with a fixed structure: open with a question from the buyer's world, show life with and without connected banking, then close on one call to action. Subject lines and CTAs were A/B tested. Ten-plus personalised campaigns ran this way across six industries.
| Without connected banking | With connected banking |
|---|---|
| Balances checked bank by bank | One live view of every account |
| Distributor receipts matched by hand | Receipts tagged to the distributor |
| Supplier payments planned on old numbers | Payments planned on today's cash |
Every account in one view, with incoming payments tagged by distributor and a live cash position. Collections are visible the same day, and payments to raw material suppliers are planned against real balances.
Book a 20-minute walkthroughSample email, fictional recipient.
| Test | Button wording and what the click leads to |
|---|---|
| Variant A | '“Book a 20-minute walkthrough”' |
| Variant B | '“See it with your own accounts”' |
| Measured | Click rate and replies per send |
Open had no SEO process, no content guidelines and no plan for answer engines. I built one framework that covers how an article is planned, written, linked and refreshed, so each piece can rank in Google and be easy for AI answers to quote.
Articles were written without keyword research, a standard outline or a link plan. Nothing told writers what a good answer looked like.
A nine-step process, an article template, two content tracks and a refresh routine for older posts.
More impressions from buyers who are already looking for a solution, and more of those readers moving to a lead magnet or a demo.
| Step | Stage | What I did | SEO effect | AEO effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Pick the intent | Chose topics by what the buyer is trying to do: learn, compare or decide. Grouped them under Open Money, Connected Banking and Open Finance. | Topic clusters instead of one-off posts | Clear subject focus per page |
| 02 | Study the results page | Read the top ranking articles for each query and noted their structure, depth and what they leave out. | A gap list to beat them on | Shows which answers already get lifted |
| 03 | Choose long tail keywords | Picked specific, lower competition queries with a primary keyword, supporting terms and the questions buyers ask. | Faster to rank than head terms | Matches how people phrase questions to AI tools |
| 04 | Outline and headline | Wrote the headline around the main keyword and turned each section heading into a real question. | Clean heading hierarchy | Each section maps to one question |
| 05 | Answer first | Put a short, direct answer straight under each question heading, then the detail. | Better fit for featured snippets | Self-contained passages that are easy to quote |
| 06 | Write without fluff | Set writing rules: no filler openings, plain definitions, tables for comparisons, and product team insight for credibility. | Stronger depth and trust signals | Clear, factual sentences |
| 07 | Link internally | Linked each article up to its pillar page, across to related posts and down to the relevant product page, using descriptive anchor text. | Passes authority and aids crawling | Builds topical connections |
| 08 | End with FAQs | Closed with four to six real questions that point to the next article or action, marked up with FAQ schema. | Captures extra long tail queries | Ready-made question and answer pairs |
| 09 | Place the lead magnet | Added a form for a checklist, template or comparison sheet in the middle of the article, matched to what the reader came for. | Lifts engagement and conversions | Turns cited traffic into leads |
Articles for finance teams who are actively comparing ways to manage money and banking. Sample titles:
Comparison articles for buyers close to choosing. Each one uses the same criteria table so readers can scan and AI answers can quote it.
| Criteria | Gateway A | Gateway B |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | [ fill per article ] | [ fill per article ] |
| Settlement time | [ fill per article ] | [ fill per article ] |
| Best suited for | [ fill per article ] | [ fill per article ] |
| What I saw | What I changed |
|---|---|
| Many impressions, ranking on page two | Rewrote headings as questions, added direct answers and more internal links |
| Many impressions, few clicks | Rewrote the title and meta description to match the search intent |
| Out of date facts or product details | Updated the content and added a visible last updated date |
| Traffic but no leads | Added a lead magnet and a clearer next step |
| No FAQ or question coverage | Added an FAQ block with schema |
| Two posts on the same topic | Merged them into one stronger article and redirected the old link |