Manuel Hartmann

Founder & CEO@SalesPlaybook | Build & scale B2B sales without trial & error

Transforming B2B SaaS Sales in the DACH Region

With over 5 years of experience, I built SalesPlaybook from CHF0 to 30k MRR in under 18 months and scaled it to a 7-figure annual revenue with fewer than 6 FTEs. I’ve supported 300+ B2B SaaS and Professional Service Entrepreneurs to:
- Achieve EUR 0-10 Mio. ARR in under 3 years profitably
- Accelerate ARR growth by over 5x from 0-1 Mio. in less than 18 months
- Close 10-50x larger deals through Message-Market-Fit & Value Selling
- Implement & optimize HubSpot Sales Hub & Outbound Sales from scratch

Career Highlights:
- 2009: Launched sales career with 3-figure NPO donations
- 2012: Reached 6-figure sales with sportscars@Tesla
- 2014-2016: Led 7-figure CRM transformations@Accenture
- 2017-2019: Managed 5-figure AI SaaS@Onedot
- Present: Driving 5-figure deals@SalesPlaybook

What I Offer:
- Pipeline Generation: Developing and executing strategies to build robust sales pipelines.
- Sales Enablement: Equipping sales teams with the tools and training needed for success.
- HubSpot Services: Comprehensive implementation and optimization of HubSpot CRM

Personal Interests: 
- I’m an avid UFC fan, active (kick)boxer, snowboarder, and musician (piano + e-guitar). 
- I enjoy taking on challenges like writing a book in under 30 days or completing 1,000 push-ups

Education: Master’s Degree in Business Innovation from HSG with MBA Exchange in Canada

Let’s connect if: 
- You're a B2B entrepreneur looking to scale sales quickly, efficiently & without 6-figure mistakes
- You identify as a Top 1% talent on hunger & drive, urgent curiosity, intelligence & integrity

Founder & CEO

Join 220+ customers to build & scale sales with the #1 B2B SaaS Startup Sales Journey Partner in DACH.

All the expert sales help you need to fast forward your B2B SaaS Startup.

👉 Book a 1:1 Sales Assessment Call: https://thesalesplaybook.com/bookacall
👉 Get proven hands-on sales resources: https://thesalesplaybook.com/resources
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Track Record:
❖ 0-2M booked ARR in <15 months by finding message-market-fit in <9 months (boostbar)
❖ 0-7 figure ARR in <12 months by hitting message-market fit, setting up outbound sales engine & more (Kyan Health)
❖ 0-7 figure ARR in <18 months by hitting message-market-fit, building outbound sales & training first sales hires (Archlet)
❖ >10 projects to 50+ subscriptions to exit after building outbound sales from 0 (Airica)
❖ 0-2M+ ARR in <18 months by building a sales team from scratch (rready)
❖ 5x MRR by building scalable sales & hiring first sales rep (Turbit)
❖ Ramp 5 SDRs to quota in less than 3 months (Beekeeper)
❖ 4x annual revenue after closing 700k deal with Fortune 500 company by leveraging value-selling (novoMOF)
❖ 2x MRR in 6 months by niching down on Ideal Customer Profile (Houston & Ko)
❖ 370k+ deal closed through hands-on support, approaching 7-figure revenue (56k.Cloud)
❖ 2x ARR in 9 months by 10x'ing ACV by 10x, winning 100K+ deals & hitting 90% reply rates (Classtime)
❖ 2x MRR in 3 months, from 5-10k deals to EUR 150k contract, hitting 30% booking rates (wowflow)
❖ 2x MRR in 6 months from group coaching sessions & more (Houston & Ko)
❖ 250k ARR deal closed by changing their positioning & negotiation approach (Linimex)
❖ <5% to 80% opening and 30%+ reply rates on scalable outbound sales (TRESIO)
❖ 2x MRR in 6 months by niching down on Ideal Customer Profile (Houston & Ko)

What happened when the Founder CEO of a 7-figure agency (me) has been on paternity leave for 10 weeks straight...

First, finishing Q4 >10% ABOVE ambitious booking targets.
With me gone for all of November + December 2025.
Yes, I wrote a 10 page Sales Enablement GDoc.
No, it was not what helped most to succeed.
What really helped was qualified pipeline.
And indeed a rockstar team of "Drivers".

Second, "Drivers Only" is 1 of our 3 Core Values.
It includes to take charge, to lead, to take action.
Every single team member did that, proactively, WITHOUT ME.
Or my huge ego aside, probably a lot more than with me working.

Third, it proved that SalesPlaybook is resilient and operating well.
"If the company needs you all the time, it is not worth much".
(Most agencies work only if the founder works.)
Wise words from our board a while ago.
Glad we're directionally correct here.

Fourth, it seems it gave both the team and me perspective.
That "Manu & Manual processes" do not matter THAT much."
That the team is allowed, able & willing to take decisions alone.
That I contribute positive impact, but it is not critical for survival.

Thank you Florian Lussi Miltos S. Erik Steffen Eric Mattner Erik Plischke Luke Schneider Diego Sosa Fabian Geissler Matteo Treichl Christoph Karger Alen Cerovina Constantin-Alexandre Papadopoulos Jan Fischer for making the above happen + also Jeremias Meier Patrick Trümpi Lars Mangelsdorf Julius Göllner Timo Mueller for your support.

Now truly looking forward to scale sales quickly again here.
I've never been more confident in SalesPlaybook success.
Still Day 1.

Helping DACH B2B software firms to scale sales quickly, efficiently & without 6-figure mistakes with done-for-you pipeline generation, fractional sales & HubSpot services.

After 3 years on Salesforce, this B2B software firm completely moved to HubSpot for Marketing, Sales & Customer Success in <3 months.

Like most companies, they were hesitant at first.

Because CRM migrations are notorious for:
- Misaligned processes with low adoption
- Broken data and data quality issues
- Low adoption and frustrated teams

Here’s what the client appreciated with SalesPlaybook
- A structured, hands-on migration approach from start to finish
- Clear mapping and adaptation of Salesforce processes into HubSpot
- Deep HubSpot, Software & GTM expertise, not generic CRM consulting

CRM migrations do not work with "good morning, go-live & goodbye."
They require onboarding, training, and continuous optimization.
So revenue teams do not get a new CRM.
They get to buy back their time.
And scale sales quickly.

One line from the client that stuck with me from this 5-Star Review:

“We switched to HubSpot and are not looking back.”

I have never seen a CxO say "I miss Salesforce...".

👉 “Considering a Salesforce → HubSpot switch this year?”

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How to grow impressions by +8‘000% & members reached by +15‘000%:


Post 0 for 10 weeks while on paternity leave. 

Then post reasonably valuable content. 

Sounds feasible for most CxOs here. 

Just not happening a lot.

Due to capacity or fear. 

👉 Share below?

Vertrauen im Vertrieb ist die neue Währung. Nicht Technologie. Nicht Budget.
Wer in B2B "kaufen lassen" will in 2026, muss eines verstehen:
Ohne Vertrauen kein Meeting. Ohne Meeting kein Umsatz.
Das gilt in DACH noch 10x mehr als in den USA.
Hier ein paar unbequeme Wahrheiten:

1. Kunden, die Dich nicht kennen, kaufen nicht.
- Vertrauen ist die Eintrittskarte in den Entscheidungsprozess.
- >70% der B2B Software-Deals scheitern nicht an der API-Doku.
- Sondern am als zu hoch empfundenen Risiko des Buying Centers.

„𝘞𝘦𝘯𝘯 𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘢𝘴 𝘬𝘢𝘶𝘧𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘴 𝘨𝘦𝘩𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘧  𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘬𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘯 𝘑𝘰𝘣 𝘮𝘦𝘩𝘳.“ 
Das ist die stille Angst auf der anderen Seite.
Nicht, ob Du jetzt CHF 30 oder 50k willst.

2. Vertrauen ≠ Reichweite.
- Niemand kauft, weil Du "laut, VC-backed & 10x" bist.
- Kunden kaufen, weil Du ihr Problem besser löst als sie selbst.
- Dafür brauchst Du Relevanz und Tiefe, nicht Likes & Clickbait.

3. Vertrauen muss skalierbar werden.
- Heute: LinkedIn Content, Case Studies, E-Books.
- Früher: Persönliche Beziehungen, Netzwerke, Messen.
- Auch Heute: Software + AI, um früher zeitlich möglich zu machen

Wenn Du Aufbau & Skalierung von Vertrauen heute nicht systematisiert?

Kannst Du morgen im 2026 Sales nicht skalieren ("ohne sauteure Leute").

Most "AI GTM B2B SaaS" in 2026 is too much, too confusing.
Ocean.io is one of the few that consistently just f***ing works.

I've been 10+ years in the GTM Tooling space (Salesforce in 2012...).
But I struggle to understand what "the market leaders" do.
Salesforce, Apollo, Gong, ZoomInfo, 6Sense etc?
Those stopped working for <500 FTE firms.

Here’s why I love "niche" solutions like Ocean.io :

It does ONE job really, really well:

“Show me companies that look like my best customer.”

That’s it. Not 14 features, 9 use cases and 3 clouds.

If let's say Personio is your #1 customer. 
Just type in Personio. Get 14,000 lookalikes.
Filter for DACH + 50–200 FTEs. Get 60 real prospects.

That’s who you should call in January 2026.
Not some inflated number from an SDR scraping LinkedIn.

We do not need more "GTM Tech."

We need a few tools that help us execute.

Daniel Ryan 🐨 is also one of the friendliest humans I know.
So just chat him up if it seems useful?

("Disclaimer": Yes, we use ocean.io with almost all our clients.)

Switzerland "Scaled paternity leave 5x" in 2021.
From 2 to 10 days for dads welcoming a new family member... 😐️ 
Don't know how this is supposed to welcome a new family member. 

For context, I took 10 weeks off from late October 2025 to early January 2026.
(That is still <50% of what my wife has been taking off for both our sons!)

As a Founder CEO of a 7-figure agency, I "get" some of the concerns.

1/ "But the company needs me to run the firm."
SalesPlaybook is still at <20 FTEs, so yes, a challenge for small firm.
But even more motivation to "raise" your team to function without you?
And for the 2025-minded ones - is this not the same for women as well?

2/ "The dad can anyways contribute 0 to the family in the first months."
I completely disagree here - even if it is "unpleasant & inconvenient".
Yes, I don't give milk (Matteo argues my boobs are too small.)
Yes, I can even give milk via a bottle, and carry Alessio.
But most of all, I can help my spouse to recover well.

3/ "Clients want to see the Founder CEO all the time".
Honestly, not at all in my experience - with a great team.
"How can I get less Manu & more Luke", one client asked me.
"Just sign this 6-figure quote here & you're great to go."
The client DID sign the 6-figure deal on the spot.
Still want to have lunch with him.
Because I want, not need to.

4/ "But it has always been that way - women nurture, men work".
Now you lost me, like completely. Common, it is 2026 now. 
Even if Switzerland only approved women to vote in 1971.
Besides losing out on 50% of the potential workforce.
Every human deserves to fulfill their work potential.
If the person wants & commits to it indeed.

Now if you are an (aspiring) young dad reading this:
- I do not judge you if you work 7 days a week, 8am-10pm
- I do not judge you if you do not work at all and stay home
- Just please don't claim "I'd love to, but.......<excuses 1-4>?

Zylon had 39k+ GitHub stars in <2 years with PrivateGPT.
Backed by top-tier VCs, but without a revenue engine.
Here's step-by-step how they fixed it to 5x revenue.

1. Built their first enterprise sales motion
- ICP: NOT (anymore) "everybody that cannot use ChatGPT"
- 3-5 Specific niches: Credit unions, local banks, academia
- Clear buyer journey stages, fast follow-ups, playbooks
- Hands-on sales call reviews & coachings from experts

2. Converted traction into pipeline
- Increased sales velocity with improving message-market-fit
- From “GitHub stars” to "great enterprise contracts"
- Matured early inbound into recurring customers

3. Professionalized LinkedIn Brand Building
- Go from posting 2x/month to 2x/week
- Founder-first Point of Views from real experience
- Viral hits with > 1 Mio. impressions & 1'000+ engagements

4. Prepared & hired their first GTM professional
- Invested a lot into "Right Person, Right Seat, Right Enablement"
- Found & hired a top sales rep that "did it before" in their field
- Helped founders be ready to delegate without losing control

Look, there is no "Silver Bullet" to scale sales quickly in 2026.
But there is a right sequence of doing the right things right.
But here from Iván himself sharing his thoughts?
https://lnkd.in/ep6k9r3b

We Automate the Validation Of Medical Marketing Material by combining Human Expertise with AI

Recover deals you already paid for. Automatically. Your CRM is full of warm leads that went cold because nobody followed up enough. Tricle reactivates them.

I help sales teams wake up dead leads and recover lost revenue using Agentic AI.

At Tricle AI, we solve the "Ghosting" problem. We integrate with your CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive, etc.) to automatically detect and re-engage dormant leads with hyper-personalized messages.

Results: Lower CAC, Faster Pipeline, More Revenue
• You turn old leads into new 15-minute sales conversations. 
• You stop losing money to "bad timing" and "forgotten follow-ups." 
• You get a pipeline that fills itself from the data you already own.

Don't let your leads slip away.

🔗 Start the 100-Lead Challenge (Link above)

Outside of AI and sales, I believe in pushing limits. You'll find me lifting weights, freediving into the deep, gaming, or behind a camera lens looking for the perfect shot.

Dominique Michel

we worked our asses off to work from anywhere, to realize that all we wanted is to work together in an office. 

Super happy to announce: Clayground & Tricle are now newly located in Zurich and we are fully booked until March and growing fast (reaching 5 FTEs).

We love flexibility.

To work from anywhere. Whenever we want. 

And we can do that.

But honestly, building together benefits immensely from
deep focus, great internet connection, zero distractions and direct communication without time zone differences.

That's it - grateful to work on pressing problems with the newest tech, alongside my friends! 

Consider following TRICLE AI and Clayground to stay on top of what's hype vs whats reality in agentic AI & Sales.

I stop revenue leaks 🩸 Building the Revenue OS @ Tricle AI · Co-Founder & CEO Tricle AI and Clayground

Last week I resurrected 16 dead opps with 10% of the usual effort by using Gemini AI in Agents. Worked way better than any follow-up. NEVER sending a "just checking in" email again.

As a founder I had 2 choices:

1) Sending generic "Here's what we've been up to" updates. 
→ Result: It looks templated and gets ignored.

2) Spending 20 minutes re-reading old threads to write one thoughtful note. 
→ Result: You do 2 of them, get tired, and quit.

I had to try something different or ignore 90% of the money I already spent on leads. So I built a "Context Engine" Agent.

All I had to do was connect my CRM & Email.

It handles the heavy lifting instantly: 
→ gets my style
→ knows who I forgot 
→ understands why it stalled
→ pulls company news from the web 
→ scans the entire communication history 
→ reads marketing material to add relevance
→ weaves it all into a context-aware email 

The results were night and day. I have a calendar full of meetings for January from leads I thought were gone forever. 

If you want the agent, connect with me & comment "Agent" below.
I'll send it straight to your DMs.

Setup is <4 minutes and I can help you in Hubspot & Pipedrive.

I’m sending cold emails to 200,000 people in Q1. Most startups guess their Product-Market Fit. We are going to scientifically brute-force ours with data:

Goal: 100 new paying customers for TRICLE AI in 90 days. 
TAM: 400,000 companies worldwide using HubSpot.

The big question isn't "does the product work?" 
(It turns HubSpot into a pipeline machine). 

The question is: Who cares the most?

Is it the VP of Sales at a Series A?  Or the Marketing lamenting MQL to SQL transition at an Enterprise?

I’m running a massive, hypothesis-driven experiment to find out. 

Over the next 12 weeks, I’m documenting the entire process of how I build a massive outbound engine from scratch:

1.) Listbuilding: How to find 200k relevant contacts.
2.) Infrastructure: Sending this volume without landing in spam.
3.) Messaging: The psychology of the cold emails.
4.) Sequencing: What tools I'm using. 
5.) AI Agents: Using AI to handle thousands of replies automatically.
6.) Automating Deal Closing: Tricle AI to never lose sight of anyone who showed interest.

I’ll be testing new tools, new providers & share the wins, the failures.

Are you up for the ride?

Coders have Cursor, web designers have Lovable, but you still manually research contact history, try to find reasons & signals for follow-up, or the perfect angle for that lead that was just assigned to you.

It’s 2025 and sales teams are still stuck in "CRM Hell."

As a rep, you usually have 2 choices:

Spray and Pray. 
→ You burn through your territory with generic templates that get deleted instantly.

Play "Sherlock Holmes" for 30 minutes. 
→ You find a great hook, send one perfect email, but miss your quota because you spent all day researching three people.

I had to stop choosing between quantity and quality. So we decided to build this 0-prep agent that closes pipeline for us on autopilot.

It stops the manual digging and automates the logic behind the outreach even in the messiest CRM.

All I do is tell my focus. 

Tricle handles the detective work instantly: 
→ digests the full CRM history 
→ scans their LinkedIn & company news 
→ identifies the specific "signal" (hiring, funding, posts) 
→ connects the dots between their pain and my product → serves up a hyper-relevant draft ready to send

The results were night and day. I’m spending 90% less time on research but my reply rates have doubled because every email looks like I spent an hour writing it.

Setup is done <4 minutes and it works right where you work.

The biggest wealth transfer in history is happening as we speak. This week alone, Clawdbot and Kimi k2.5 proved that speed is the only metric that matters now and you either adapt or get replaced.

Products built overnight based on chat history? Done.
Websites copied with one sentence? Done.

Meanwhile, SME's still spend millions in building Apps no one asked for and paying designers 100k for a new website.

You have two choices: Embrace or get replaced.
And yes, this is a "Brutal Truth".

If you aren't using Agentic AI but instead buy legacy Software, you already fell behind.

If you are hiring staff that rejects those systems, you miss out on 10x productivity.

Tomorrow, with the right setup you can:

Build customer lists from prompts
Map market signals
Write human-grade outreach
Manage perfect pipeline execution

...before lunch.

If you aren't adapting your offering to the market, your enterprise dies.
If you're a first mover, your enterprise flourishes.

Who else is blown away by the speed of shipping this week?

Feel like you're failing because LinkedIn "Gurus" keep saying how easy it is to grow? ❌ It has NEVER been harder to build pipeline than it is today. (not-so-popular-opinion)

Ignore the screenshots of niche offers in unsaturated markets. Or wrong analytics (below).

It has never been harder to: 
• Run profitable Ads 
• Rank for SEO 
• Get replies in Outbound

It's quite the paradox: AI made execution easy. But when it’s easy for everyone, it becomes hard for everyone.

We entered the era of "Infinite Volume." 

Everybody creates more. Everybody spams more. 
Your costs go up, but your rewards go down.

So, what now? It’s time to lower your costs, while increasing efficiency.

1/ Reactivate the leads you already paid for.
2/ Experiment with uncrowded channels.
3/ Fix your funnel.

It’s going to get miles harder, not easier.

I watched a client burn through 1000$ Clay Token in 2 hours. It hurt to watch.
They were using Clay for company enrichment.  (You can enrich for free, unlimited, if you know where to look.)

We decided to stop the bleeding.

Here is the exact workflow we used to enrich 50,000+ companies without spending a dime on credits:

1.  Use Clay’s free list-building tool to identify your target accounts. 
2.  Export raw domain csv immediately.  Don't enrich it there. 
3. Upload to Apollo. They allow you to enrich up to 10,000 records per run on their free tier.
4. Rinse and repeat.

We just finished a 50k record project. 

Cost: $0.  Data quality: 100%. Techstack: included.

Still paying premium prices for commodity data?
Save your Clay credits for the complex & expensive stuff.

Recovering lost revenue from your CRM on autopilot · Co-Founder Tricle AI · Co-Founder & CEO Clayground

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