Real engagement · Synchrony Financial · custom lead-gen

A cold LinkedIn pitch became a $200K enterprise financial services engagement.

A custom enterprise lead-generation engagement with Synchrony Financial — won via a cold LinkedIn message to an SVP — built around a specific market gap: motorcycle dealerships had no quality third-party content channel to generate qualified financing leads. The build closed the gap. The relationship persisted for six years and counting.

$200K

Custom enterprise lead-gen engagement, sourced from a cold LinkedIn message

Named client engagement, published with the consent of the client. Specific lead volumes and revenue attribution aggregated for confidentiality; deal size and engagement structure reflect actual terms.

The starting situation

A market gap the incumbent saw before anyone else

Company: Synchrony Financial — one of the largest consumer financing platforms in the U.S., with deep relationships across powersports, electronics, retail, and specialty verticals.

The opportunity: Motorcycle dealerships represented a meaningful slice of Synchrony's powersports lending business. But dealerships didn't have an effective third-party content channel for generating qualified financing leads — the path from "consumer researching a motorcycle" to "consumer pre-qualified for dealership financing" was leaky and inconsistent.

The pitch (cold LinkedIn message to an SVP): Build a high-quality third-party content site for motorcycle financing that captures consumer research intent, qualifies leads at the content-engagement level, and routes pre-qualified financing prospects directly to dealerships. The SVP took the meeting. The engagement was contracted at $200K for a custom build.

What we built

The lead-generation infrastructure

Third-party content destination. A dedicated content site for motorcycle financing research — buyer guides, vehicle comparisons, financing education, dealership-locator functionality. Built to rank for consumer-intent search terms and convert content visitors to qualified financing inquiries.
Lead qualification layer. Progressive profiling, intent signals, and qualification logic that separated tire-kickers from genuine financing-ready prospects before passing them to dealership partners.
Dealership routing infrastructure. Geographic routing logic that delivered pre-qualified leads to the closest participating dealership, with attribution loop back to Synchrony.
Reporting and attribution. Lead volume, lead quality, dealership conversion, and revenue attribution dashboards giving Synchrony executive visibility into the program's performance.
Ongoing optimization. The content destination wasn't a one-time build — it required continuous content production, SEO maintenance, conversion-rate iteration, and dealership-feedback integration. Most of the long-tail value came from year 2-6 operating discipline.

What we'd tell you about this pattern

What worked, and why the engagement persisted six years

What worked on the pitch

The specific market gap insight. The pitch wasn't "we do digital marketing" or "we build websites." It was "motorcycle dealerships don't have a way to generate qualified financing leads from third-party content, here's exactly what that looks like and what it would do for your powersports business." Specific insight + specific solution. The SVP took the meeting because the pitch wasn't generic.
Cold outreach calibrated to the recipient. A senior executive at a major financial institution doesn't respond to spammy LinkedIn pitches. They respond to specific business-problem framings from someone who has clearly done their homework on the company's vertical positioning. The hit rate on these messages is low; the win rate when they land is high.
Confidence to ask for an enterprise-scale engagement on the first conversation. Most agencies pitch a $5K-$15K starter project hoping it grows. The Synchrony pitch went in at $200K because that was the actual scope of the business problem. Easier to negotiate down than up.

What worked on the relationship

Treating the engagement as a long-term operating relationship, not a project. The build was year one. Years 2-6 were the operating discipline that made the program durable — content production, optimization, dealership coordination, and ongoing relationship investment.
Personal relationship beyond the business relationship. The SVP and Bill have been playing tennis together for six years. Enterprise B2B engagements that last beyond the contract are almost always anchored by relationships that have human dimension outside the contract.

If you're a financial services company evaluating fractional / project-based marketing engagements

This pattern — custom enterprise lead-generation engagement structured as an ongoing operating relationship rather than a fixed-scope project — fits financial services and fintech companies that have specific vertical or partner-channel gaps where consumer or partner acquisition isn't operating at the scale or quality the business model requires.

For broader context on fractional CMO engagements in fintech: Fractional CMO for fintech.