Sales Playbook

Manuel Hartman wasn't initially looking to build a coaching business—he stumbled into the problem through direct experience. After working as the first business hire for a CEO at an AI startup, he realized that sales for early-stage companies is a completely different beast than selling for established brands like Tesla, Accenture, or World Economic Forum. "There's no product-market fit, no resources, no brand," he explains. Watching entrepreneurs struggle despite having amazing products, Manuel realized there was a massive gap: most founders didn't have the knowledge or processes to sell effectively in the early stages.

In February 2019, Manuel launched Sales Playbook as a sales enablement platform. The initial offering combined coaching from experienced sales professionals with 40+ actionable templates covering everything from defining ideal customer profiles to ramping up email campaigns and call strategies. Rather than hire traditional employees, Manuel assembled a network of top sales talent—mostly VP-level professionals and co-founders from Switzerland—who enjoyed coaching for 2-10 hours per week as a side commitment. These coaches were typically earning $150-300K+ in enterprise roles but found fulfillment in mentoring founders navigating early-stage sales challenges.

Growth came through word-of-mouth and referrals in the tight Swiss startup ecosystem. Manuel's first customers were SaaS companies with initial traction ($5K-$10K ARR) looking to grow toward six figures. A case study emerged early: Wildflow, a company with $5-10K average contract values, doubled their ARR within three months after working with Sales Playbook and eventually closed deals worth $150K ARR. These early wins validated the model and generated referrals. By the end of 2019, Manuel had signed enough customers to generate $90K in revenue while still being the only full-time employee.

The revenue model proved straightforward: customers typically pay 5-10% of their annual revenue (or $500-5,000/month depending on tier) with the promise of 100-200% annual growth. Entry-level "Booster" packages ($500/month) target companies going from $10K to $100K MRR, while "Accelerate" and "Scaler" tiers serve those aiming for higher growth. Initial customer lifetime value hovered at 4-6 months in 2020, which was problematic for a coaching business model. Manuel addressed this by shifting from 3-6 month engagements to 6-12 month collaborations and improving customer selection to focus on better-fit founders. By being more selective about ideal customer profiles, retention improved and renewal rates increased.

One challenge Manuel acknowledged: attribution. When a coached founder's company grows, is it because of the coaching or because they hired a great salesperson? To address this, Manuel began building Sales Playbook's own sales team in 2020, hiring their first SDR and account executive six months prior to the interview. This dual approach—coaching founders while selling Sales Playbook's own services—created a learning loop: as Manuel's team refined their own sales execution, they built better frameworks and templates for customers.

By the time of this interview (likely mid-2021), Sales Playbook was operating at $25-30K MRR across 30 active customers and had achieved $360K revenue in 2020 (a 300%+ increase from $90K in 2019). The company remained bootstrapped and profitable, with just Manuel and one co-founder, Colin, handling the core business while working with freelancers and leveraging referral partnerships. Manuel's objective for 2021 was to break $1M in revenue—achievable, he believed, through signing more customers and solving the delivery challenge at scale (since the highest-value coaches were difficult to hire full-time).

Longer-term, Manuel had already tested a SaaS idea in the sales talent sourcing space, acquiring 100 users with zero revenue before shelving it. He viewed this as foundational learning for a potential future product: a specialized job platform for identifying exceptional B2B salespeople, particularly in the Swiss market. For now, the focus remained on growing the agency profitably while building the operational muscle that could eventually power a scalable SaaS tool.