How Sego Finance Built an Acquisition Channel It Owns

In April 2024, Sego Finance came to us with a goal: reach financial decision-makers at mid-size companies. Here's how we did it:

So we built a GTM system on the most direct channel available: cold email, straight to the people who decide on financing.

It produced 800+ qualified leads and 292 meetings with CFOs and finance leaders.

Sego offers alternative financing to Spanish SMEs: faster and more flexible than a bank.

Their starting point is the default in alternative finance: acquisition runs on channels the platform doesn't fully own.

Brokers and introducers bring deals, but keep the client relationship. Embedded partnerships bring reach, but take months to sign and move at the partner's pace. Inbound brings the companies that already know where to look.

Cold email is different: direct to the decision-maker, with Sego owning the relationship from the first message.

Here's how we built it, step by step.

1.) Segmentation

On paper, every SME with invoices is a prospect. We narrowed to mid-size and large companies with a recurring need for working capital, in sectors where long payment terms leave a permanent gap between invoicing and collection.

Not companies that might need financing once. Companies that live with the need every month.

2.) Message

A financing offer in a cold inbox meets skepticism twice. Once for being a cold email. Once for being alternative finance.

So the message didn't lead with the product. It named the pain first: credit that takes months, rigid conditions, banks that judge the company by its own balance sheet, not by the invoices it holds. Then the alternative, in plain terms.

3.) Iteration

The first campaigns are for reading as much as for booking. Positive replies showed which pain landed in each sector; negative replies with a reason showed where targeting or wording was off.

Scripts were adjusted sector by sector, and the segments that responded best led the next cycle.

4.) The result

The first qualified leads arrived within a couple of weeks. And the 292 meetings put Sego in conversations with CFOs and finance leaders at mid-size and large companies.

In the words of Silvia Morgano, who led the project at Sego:

"We worked with Joan on a B2B client-acquisition project that exceeded our expectations. His approach was key to generating real opportunities and strengthening our presence in the market."

One honest note to close. This system ran on cold email alone. Today we'd combine it with a content layer: key people in the executive team publishing about alternative financing, in front of the same market the emails reach.

Cold email opens conversations one by one. Content builds trust across the whole sector, and a durable position in it. And it's the one growth asset a platform fully owns.