The problem this solves
Finance leaders are the hardest buyers to reach and the ones most worth reaching for anything that touches cost, revenue reporting or risk. Their titles are consistent, which makes them easy to search, and their addresses are guarded, which makes unverified lists expensive: a sequence to CFOs with a high bounce rate burns the sending domain on exactly the audience you cannot afford to lose.
A clean CFO list is therefore a verification job as much as a search job. Every address should be checked before it is loaded, the ones that fail should be dropped rather than hoped for, and the sequence should wait paused so the copy can be reviewed against the seniority of the audience. Apollo is where many teams run that sequence, so the list should arrive there ready.
How the mission runs
- Build the company set. The Prospecting Agent runs a company search for <industry> companies in <country> with 200-2000 employees using live firmographics, excluding subsidiaries whose finance function sits at a parent company.
- Find the finance leader. People search identifies the CFO, and where no CFO exists the VP of Finance or Finance Director, one per company. Where a company recently changed CFOs, the current holder is used and the change is noted, since a new CFO is a buyer with a mandate.
- Verify every address and drop the failures. The email finder produces an address per contact and verification runs on every one. Only deliverable addresses go forward; catch-all and risky results are reported in a separate section rather than loaded, because the audience does not tolerate bounces.
- Load Apollo and leave the sequence paused. The verified contacts are added to an Apollo sequence named <name>, created paused, with company size and industry as fields so the steps can reference them. The report shows the count loaded and the count held back.
The prompt
This is the exact objective the agent receives. Swap the obvious placeholders for your own domain, segment or channel and run it as-is from the console, Slack, or the API.
What comes back
A paused Apollo sequence named <name> containing one verified CFO or VP of Finance per <industry> company in <country> with 200-2000 employees, each with title, company size and a verification status. The report gives the number of companies found, the number with an identifiable finance leader, the verification split, and the contacts held back with the reason.
Make it yours
- Add the Controller or VP of FP&A as a second contact per company to reach the operator beneath the CFO.
- Restrict to companies that raised or changed CFOs in the last year for a timing angle.
- Deliver to Lemlist or Instantly instead, or to a Google Sheet for a compliance review before any sequence.
- Ask for a company note per row summarizing headcount, funding and recent news so the sequence can reference a specific fact.
Frequently asked questions
Why drop catch-all addresses here when other playbooks keep them?
Because the audience is senior and the sending domain is the asset at risk. You can ask the agent to include catch-alls marked, but the default for this playbook is strict.
How does it handle companies with a finance leader at the parent?
Subsidiaries are excluded by default; ask to include them and the parent's finance leader is attached with the subsidiary noted.
Can the sequence copy be written at the same time?
Yes. Pair this with the segment sequence playbook and the steps are drafted from each company's evidence before you unpause.
How does the agent handle companies where the CFO title is not used?
It looks for the most senior finance leader by seniority rather than by exact title, so a Head of Finance or Finance Director at a 300-person company qualifies, and the title actually held is stored on the contact.
Can I see the companies whose CFO could not be verified?
Yes. They are listed in the report with the finance leader's name and the verification result, so a rep can pursue them by phone or through a colleague rather than losing the account.