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)

Clayground

The most technical & creative Claygency
We scale your B2B business the engineering way.

Evergreen: Never ending campaigns right out of your CRM
Warm: Based on your existing network
Cold: We find contacts no one else can and contact them with relevance

We also offer CRM cleanups, where we turn messy CRMs into pipeline growth through data hygiene & AI.
We do magic with your CRM and unlock warm leads you would think you have lost.

Co-Founder & CEO

Clay

Certified Expert - I clay to win

As a creative digital professional in market development and product management, I focused on developing the market in alignment with innovation. I specialized in the German, Swiss, and Austrian markets, where I achieved significant results in the following areas:

I managed target temperature management (TTM) in cardiac, neurological, pediatric/neonatal, and interdisciplinary ICUs, concentrating on Sudden Cardiac Arrest, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injuries, SAH/ICB, and HIE.
I delivered tangible benefits to patients and providers through temporary balloon electrodes and stool management systems.
I extended my responsibilities to the field of urology, gaining experience in endourology, urinary incontinence, and homecare.
By staying informed and up-to-date on industry developments in these areas, I developed strategic plans that drove growth and optimized healthcare outcomes.

Market Development Manager Critical Care and Urology GSA

Responsible for delivering high quality service in market development and product management for BD in Germany Switzerland Austria with the specific fields of:
- Target temperature management (TTM) in cardiac, neurological, pediatric/neonatal and interdisciplinary ICUs
- Temporary balloon electrodes 
- Stool Management Systems

Urology:
- LDR Brachytherapy
- Endourology
- Homecare

Product Manager Critical Care and Urology GSA

Responsible for delivering high quality service and products to intensive care units (ICU) in Switzerland with the specific fields of:
- Target temperature management (TTM) in cardiac, neurological, pediatric/neonatal and interdisciplinary ICUs
- Temporary balloon electrodes 
- Stool Management Systems

Urology:
- LDR Brachytherapy

Sales Representative Critical Care & Urology

Oakura

RWA (Real World Asset) Tokenization for startup as a marketplace, scalable venture fund

Head Of Product

ETH Zürich

In this Masters Thesis, an intelligent tutoring algorithm was established and its usability assessed to train microsurgeons by developing a realistic Augmented Reality eyemicrosurgery simulation .

More can be read here : https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/common/docs/media/globe/2019/ETH-Globe-1-19-EN.pdf

Augmented Reality in Microsurgery

National University of Singapore

Investigation of magnetic fields on growth and senescence of intervertebral disc & muscle cells at the Yong Loo Lin medical school of Singapore.

MTT/Western Blot/qPCR/RNA extraction/cell dissection/B-Gal/cell culture

Research Assistant

Investigation of human and bovine intervertebral disc TRP-Channels  response to agonists and antagonists.

MTT/qPCR/RNA extraction/cell dissection/cell culture

ETH juniors

Responsible for project execution in:
- Website development
- Machine learning
- Image recognition
- Market analysis 
- Innovation workshops

Talent acquisition:
- Responsible for organizing the biggest job interview day of Switzerland
- Acquisition and leading of several employee leasing projects

Projektmanager

Asia Spa

Personal Fitness Trainer

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

Hi there, I'm Dominique and I post a lot about CRM transformation, Cold & Warm Outreach to drive your Revops.

So, if you are a creative mind who loves to apply AI to drive sales and marketing, you've come to the right place.

I am the product of what happens when marketing & sales has a child, but the child is actually into engineering too. As a GTM Engineer (Go-To-Market) I leverage 20+ tech tools to clean your CRM and hyperscale outbound campaigns.

About my person: I am into adventures, freediving, photography, gaming and lifting weights.

Dominique Michel

when asked what I do, I usually answered that I run a small AI startup.
🇨🇭-reaction: WOW! You are risking everything.
🇺🇸 -reaction: “...Why do you say a “small” startup….?”

Switzerland's mindset comes with an ingrained fineprint:
Be humble. Avoid risk. Value safety over ambition.

There is a cultural fear of being judged. What if I fail? People will point fingers.

In the USA, every garage project is "changing the world."

Recently an American investor asked me:

"Your agentic AI is better than everything I've seen. Yet you call it a 'small startup. 
Why are you actively downplaying your work?"

I realized: I wasn't "just" humble. 
But it rather looks like I am hiding.

Hiding behind "small" so that if I failed, I could say:
"Well, it was just a small thing anyway...."

It got me thinking:

The Swiss mindset for realism can be a strength,
but only if you don't let it become an excuse.

We don't need American-style hype. 

But we also don't need to shrink ourselves,
before anyone else gets the chance.

So I stopped saying "small startup."

Not because I'm changing the sales world today, 
but because I'm no longer apologizing for trying.

If you're building something in Switzerland, 
or anywhere that teaches you to play it safe:

Think bigger than they taught you to.

Image: My friend Marc sending it from a 12-meter high crow's nest in Raja Ampat.

Never get ghosted again 👻 | Agentic Revenue Recovery | Co-Founder @ Tricle AI & Clayground

The right AI-powered stack easily turns $15K/year into the output of a $100K+ hire. The approximate costs of running allbound in 2026 to take your company to the age of AI:

💰 For $1216 per month, you can arm your SDRs with a tool stack that 10x their efficiency.

Your options: 
↳ Hire another SDR for $100K+ (wait months) 
↳ Invest $15K/year to supercharge your team 
↳ Outsource to a Claygency such as Clayground for $50K+ and have experts operating it, including tool costs

🤖 1 GTM Engineer with the right stack > 5 manual SDRs.

Reality check: Automation isn't plug-and-play. That's why elite GTM agencies earn their price, they're AI-powered partners, not just sales teams.

You need to build expertise to string it together, or have external experts doing so.

Is this necessary for every enterprise, even startups you might wonder?

If you've found product-market fit, absolutely.
If you want to validate ideas quickly, absolutely.
If you want to do signal-based outreach, absolutely.
If you want to pay for tools & proceed to never use them: no.

Tools that make it happen:
↳RB2B
↳Octave
↳Zapmail.ai
↳Trigify.io
↳@LinkedIn & Sales Navigator
↳@Apollo.io
↳Ocean.io
↳Prospeo.io
↳DiscoLike
↳CompanyEnrich
↳@Apify
↳PhantomBuster
↳@Vayne.io
↳@Instant Data Scraper
↳Clay
↳Findymail
↳BetterContact
↳Instantly.ai
↳Smartlead
↳HeyReach.io
↳ZenRows
↳TryKitt.ai
↳Twain.ai

And all leads lead to nothing if you don't follow up:
↳TRICLE AI

And a CRM that supports integrations
↳HubSpot
↳Pipedrive

What tool slipped my attention?

Building Tricle in public: OMG!
I cannot believe what happened within just 1 week:

1.  We integrated Linkedin to our reengagements 
2. We now integrate with Pipedrive CRM
3. We implemented a self-signup
4. We got approved by Microsoft & Google
5. I had a "WTF" moment, when I realized that I currently am providing KAM treatment for over 500 people in my CRM as if it were no big deal 

Talking about big deal: 

🔥 3/10 early users reactivated their BIGGEST deal this year.
Someone even with a Fortune 250 company.

This is honestly insane & motivates us to keep pushing. 
Users getting thousand-fold ROI on our product after mere weeks.

No negative news this week.

2014: 15-20% average email reply rates
2024: 1% average email reply rates
2026: Buyer fatigue crushed cold outbound (how I flip the script) 

Stop saying:
"WE help." "WE save." "WE reduce."

No one buys promises anymore.
No one cares about features.

This is why buyers are fatigued.

They care if you know them:
"I see you, I get you, and here is value for YOU" 

You will need signals.

1st Party Signals:
Your warm network. Start here. 10-20% reply rates.
Expand fast!

2nd Party Signals:
Your content. Create your own warmth.
Make them recognize you.

3rd Party Signals
Market data. Events. Social activity.
Spot the intent.

Getting reply rates like 2014 works:
1. Have a signal
2. Don't say "this is the signal". They know. 
3. Instead, infer their problems & pains. 
You will miss most, for some it reads like magic, they feel seen & understood.
4. Share Value (Dream Outcome × Likelihood of Achievement) ÷ (Time Delay × Effort Required)
5. Do all of this in a skimmable email that can be read <30s.
Maximum of 2 sentences.

This is incredibly hard. 

But soon you can't sell to a list, but need to sell to a signal. 
What's your take on it?

Sculpting sales list is an art and not a copy-paste from Apollo.
(and most sculpt with a toothpick. From the wrong side.)

Most people build & engage lists wrong.
Filters too loose? You get a block.
Filters too tight? You get pebbles.

How to do it right: 
Get the right block (providers) and the right chisel (engager)

I map entire markets with the leading tools:
Apollo, SalesNav, Clay, CompanyEnrich or DiscoLike.

Say you find 10,000 leads across all, with quite strict filters.

Reality is still:
•Subtract 20% for misqualified accounts
•Subtract 20% for wrong job titles
•Subtract 20% for missing email data
•Subtract 10% for invalid email data

Your 10,000 leads suddenly turn to 3,000.

That’s when eyes open. 
That's when you realize, 
you need to make every single hit count:

You need to go multichannel outbound, 
through tools such as HeyReach.io, 
that now combines with Instantly.ai.

The databases show you clay. Your job is to sculpt it into something real.
From all angles and with the right chisel.

Plan accordingly or hire sculptors.

🔥 Hot take: High-volume outbound is on life-support and the playbook is breaking. Strategies in 2026 will involve one voice — yours. And not:
Step 1: Warm up 400 email accounts with new domains 
...
Step 99: Create massive lead lists 
Step 100: Be happy when 10/1000 people answer, of which 7 are negative

The future belongs to personalized, low-volume, voice-aligned messaging and from my domain.

This alternative gives you back control & 20-30% reply rates.
✓ Authenticity & brand alignment 
✓ Real relationships
✓ Personality 

Here is how I do it.
I use a tool called TRICLE AI that:

Step 1. Copies my voice and finds the right people in my CRM
Step 2. Gets context from engagement history and market signals
Step 3. Writes emails based on my quarterly strategy
Step 4. Helps me engage with 15 people per day from my main email or LinkedIn account

You stay in control. Your branding is cohesive. You don't send emails from xxx_tryClayground_xx1 dot com

Reality check: High volume will still be complementary to this strategy over the next few years. I'd recommend doing both.

But for those who have:
- A small, targeted market
- A highly complex sales process
- Or just don't want to "spam" the market

It might be time for giving AI-enabled, hyperpersonalized messaging in your voice a try.

This is the story of how we created the world's first AI SDR that works.
Our first week: It reactivated a 20k deal. We knew we were onto something, when our pilot customer had the same experience, just days in.

Let's rewind time, to fully understand how AI can create 20% reply rates on email and 75% on linkedin and not only reactivate, but also drive deals.

Jun 25: Found the key to 200+ leads per month, automated.
July 25: +100 sales calls for Clayground 
Aug 25: +100 sales calls, no time for July follow ups.
Sep 25:  Lost oversight, forgotten CRM revenue left and right.
Okt 25: This needs to stop! 

So I began asking myself...

What would happen, if I would train an AI Agent to sell just like me? With context of my strategy, but also CRM knowledge & market signals...

We began building it and gave it a name: 
Tricle was born.

We were our own users & iterated fast.
The emails were sent from our accounts.
2-digit reply rates.

First users:
❌ Left YC-backed Software 
✅ Paying for Tricle

Doubters wrote: "I'm starting to believe" and 1 week later: I love Tricle, it works like magic.

So we decided to build an UI. 
Gamified it. 

Saw the incredible reply rates and thought: 
Why not add linkedin to the mix?

Now we're making it available for everybody because:

The future of sales will be low volume. High impact. In your voice.

Most AI SDRs are built to annoy 1,200 people to get 10 replies.
We built Tricle to do the opposite.

We’ve officially launched our Multi-Channel AI SDR (Email + LinkedIn) with full Hubspot & Pipedrive integration.

Instead of "spray and pray":

Tricle reads your CRM, finds the high-fit contacts you’ve ignored too long, and drafts messages that actually sound like you wrote them.

Best part: It learns from how you edit those messages.

I single-handedly can manage up to 500 people per month on my own after 4 weeks of using it.

Other results:
Old "dead" deals are reactivating at a 10% reply rate. Most users are reviving 2 deals just during their 14-day trial.

The future of sales is high-impact. Low-volume. And in your voice.
And we will make it happen.

Full breakdown of how it works in the comments.

"can't AI do that?" - you hear in Q4 sales meetings.
The answer is yes. Here is how I've setup a system that creates 20 weekly meetings through AI-automated RevOps:

Clay is your backbone for it.

1. Sync your CRM 
2. Connect your forms & visitors
3. Monitor market signals
4. Source leads*

-> Everything harmonized, segments & scores automatically through workflow automation with ✨ AI ✨ in Clay and/or n8n.

Based on different Tiers, take different actions:

5. Push to a chat/email/linkedin/call sequencer
6. Sit into meetings instead of doing admin work
7. TRICLE AI to follow-up with elegant persistence on every lead created

Interested how this works for you?
DM

*Lead sourcing is the only part where humans still have to pour in hours to get to that juicy lead list, modifying it with Clay

🛑 Stop trying to "catch up" in sales tech. Sales is burning to the ground right now. It is a true phoenix moment. (But most companies misunderstand what comes next)

They think "catching up" means adopting the latest automation tools or increasing outreach volume.

In reality, catching up literally just means you catch up to the noise, become part of the ashes. You become slightly less invisible.

Here is what the rebirth of sales actually looks like:

Offering ❤️: 
It was never as important to have an offering people love & need. It's critical to rethink critically, if your offering is valuable in today's age.

Trust Economy 🤝: 
Soon, most businesses will rely almost entirely on inbound motion and brand authority. If they don't trust you before they talk to you, they won't talk to you. And this trust building equation is highly complex.

Unique Voice 🗣️: 
Your messaging cannot be a template. It must be a specific solution to a specific pain, delivered in a voice that sounds human, not algorithmic.

Operational Perfection ⚙️: 
This is where most fail. You can generate all the trust in the world, but if your backend sales process isn't airtight, you can close your business tomorrow.

You cannot fix this with a new SDR hire or a LinkedIn tool.

To survive this shift, you have to transform the RevOps organization from the ground up:

    - Continuous Experimentation: Trial & error to find the winning formula - or find another, because yours today might break tomorrow
    - Automation: Ruthlessly automate the redundant parts of that formula.
    - Enablement: Create a repeatable process that integrates AI in harmony with now superhuman SDRs.

The goal isn't to be louder but to be a voice worth listening to.

Entering Events 2025: Strobe lights + ear-splitting music. Dear event organizers, I came to network, not to survive a nightclub & fight an epileptic seizure. (quick rant)

The majority of events I attended in 2025,
I felt like I'm bombarded.

Strobing lights, deafening bass, 
and zero regard for sensory limits.

I nearly walked out of a venue, 
before the opener even hit the stage.

Am I the only one who has a strong dislike of this "disco" event style that overloads your senses?

Whoever thinks this is "en vogue" - I always overhear attendees strongly complaining about this - I assume I am not in the minority?

Lesson learnt: Next time I will wear my Sunglasses & Noise Cancelling Airpods.

taplio

The Battle

Manuel Hartmann

Dominique Michel

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The Battle

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