How to create content that gets the Finance Director to agree to buy

We’ve all been there: your best prospect has been engaged for months. The head of operations loves what you do. The commercial director is sold. And then, just when you think you’ve clinched the deal, a figure you have barely spoken to decides whether the whole thing is a goer.

The Finance Director.

In most B2B buying journeys, the FD is not overly involved. They don’t attend demos, read your case studies, or engage with your nurture emails. But they hold enormous power at two critical moments: when budgets are set at the start of the financial year, and when spend is formally approved at the point of purchase. If you miss either moment, that deal that looked certain can quietly start to look dicey.

Most B2B content is built entirely for the people at the heart of the buying process, not the person who controls the money at either end. This article looks at how to create content that works for the FD, even when they are never going to read your blog.

Understand where the FD sits in the buying journey

Before you can create content that works for the Finance Director, you need to be honest about their role. They are not a buyer in the conventional sense. They are a gatekeeper who appears at the edges of the process, until your proposal ends up being discussed.

The two moments that matter

Budget setting

This is when the FD allocates resource across the business. If your product is not in the budget it will be hard to get it approved later. The people you’re selling to will need to make a case for unplanned expenditure (a much harder conversation). You can, of course, help them by asking when budgets are set and devise a business case for any future project.

Final approval

By this point, the FD may have seen very little of your content or sales process. They are being asked to sign off on a recommendation from someone else in the business. Their instinct is to scrutinise, reduce, or delay (ugh).

Ironically, you’re not trying to take the FD on a journey. You are trying to make sure they receive the right information at the right moment, in a format they will actually engage with.

‘Finance departments often operate on quarterly cycles, making the lag time between marketing engagement and revenue recognition a crucial consideration.’ Marketers Index, 2026

This is the core challenge. The FD thinks in financial cycles but most marketing content is written for people who think in problems and solutions.

So, what should you do?

Speak the FD’s language, not your own

The most common mistake in B2B content is writing for the person who understands your product, not the person who controls the budget. That’s fine – you don’t want to spend too much effort creating content for someone who is not your main contact. But you do need to help bring them on board.

FDs are not interested in features, methodology, or execution. They are interested in financial outcomes. This means translating everything you do into the language of money.

What FDs really care about

Let’s translate some marketing speak into the language that the FD understands:

This is about reframing what you are proposing. The operations manager cares about the functionality. The FD cares about whether the money spent will generate money in return.

For every claim you make about what you are proposing, ask yourself whether you can express it as a financial outcome. If you can’t, you are not ready to put it in front of an FD.

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 B2B research, 56% of B2B marketers cite difficulty attributing ROI to content efforts as a core measurement challenge. This is primarily a language issue.

Create content that arms your internal champion

You will rarely deliver your message directly to the Finance Director. Instead, someone inside the buying organisation will carry it for you. That person is your internal champion, and your content needs to do two jobs simultaneously: convince them, and give them the tools to convince the FD.

Here are a couple of ideas to help your key contact get the Financial Director on side.

The Internal Briefing document

Can you produce a one-page financial summary? Not a brochure or a case study. A concise, structured document that your champion can put in front of the FD with confidence.

A strong internal briefing document covers:

• The business problem being solved, in plain language
• The proposed investment, clearly stated with no ambiguity
• The expected return, expressed as a financial outcome with a timeframe
• The risk scenario, showing what happens if the investment does not perform as expected
• Comparables, ideally from similar businesses or industries
• The cost of inaction, which is often the most persuasive element of all

The cost of inaction is a good one (if I may say so). FDs are trained to scrutinise spend. They are less trained to scrutinise the financial impact of not spending. If your champion can show that the status quo costs more than the investment, the conversation shifts entirely.

Case studies written for Finance

Most B2B case studies are written to impress the main buyer. They focus on the challenge, the process, and the outcome in qualitative terms. For the FD, this is not enough.

Rewrite your case studies with a financial lens:

• Lead with the measurable outcome, not the story
• Include specific numbers: percentage reductions in cost, increases in revenue, payback timelines – think about the section above on what they need to hear
• State the investment made, so the FD can calculate the return themselves
• Add a quote from a financial or operational lead at the client business, not just the marketing team

As a marketer keen on storytelling, I find it tricky not to lead with story, but really it’s about telling a different type of story. A case study that says ‘we helped a manufacturer reduce their cost per lead by 34% within six months’ is far more useful to an FD than one that says ‘we transformed their content strategy and increased engagement significantly.’

Is this double the work? It’s certainly extra, but FDs are notoriously busy, so perhaps the case study can be a simple one-pager.

Other suggested content opportunities to present to the Finance Director

Having a suite of assets and material ready for when the Finance Director is in the frame of mind to consider them is a smart move for marketers. Businesses plan at different times of the year depending on when their fiscal year start. Having them ready is smart.

Here’s what you can work on:

• Sector-specific insight reports that frame the cost of falling behind competitors
• ROI calculators that allow the internal champion to model the financial case
• Short video or written content that explains the business case in plain terms (designed to be shared internally)
• Benchmark data showing what similar businesses are spending and achieving
• A clear, one-page summary of the investment and expected return (as described above)
• Third-party validation: industry data, analyst findings, or recognised benchmarks that support the business case
• Scenario planning: a best-case, expected-case, and worst-case financial projection, with the worst case still showing a net-positive outcome

According to research from B2B Marketing, FDs are far more likely to approve spend when the worst-case scenario has been explicitly addressed. Acknowledging risk is actually a strength; it demonstrates credibility.

The FD is not your enemy

It is tempting to see the Finance Director as an obstacle. In reality, they are doing what they should be doing: protecting the business from poor investment decisions. The problem is not the FD. It’s just that most B2B content is never designed with them in mind. So, let’s change that.

When you build content that speaks their language, arms your internal champion, and arrives at the right moment in the financial calendar, the FD stops being a risk to your deal and starts being the person who closes it.

Here are a few final bits you can consider to get them to say ‘yes’:

• Audit your existing content. Tweak to include numbers and talk about revenue outcomes.
• Create a financial summary template that your sales team can customise for each prospect, covering investment, return, risk scenarios, and the cost of doing nothing
• Build budget-season content that reaches prospects and their FDs before annual planning begins, not after

Sometimes having the best product or service isn’t enough to clinch the deal. Making it easier for the Finance Director to say yes could be the difference between a win or a loss.

LikeMind can help you create content for the Finance Director

If you would like help mapping the content your buyers actually need at every stage of the journey, including the moments the FD controls, get in touch with us for an initial no obligation discovery call.

Article posted by Paul Ince

Paul, aka BizPaul (to everyone), is the little big cheese (Director) at LikeMind Media. He can often be found talking to others about all things about conversations, whether that’s through social media, writing or even audio. With over 20 years’ experience in bringing businesses and customers together, Paul has worked with a vast range of clients including a working cow farm, a smart factory software company and a pregnancy pilates business. He’s the host of MarketEd.Live, our flagship marketing education event in Nottingham and the associated podcast.