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)

Sales & Marketing Executive

First things first: All joy in the world comes from wanting others to be happy; all suffering in the world comes from wanting oneself to be happy.

Secondly: I am a CRO who still picks up the phone and cold calls - even with > 25 team members. Because it is fun and rewarding. 

In the first 10 years of my BtoB Sales career, I helped several startups in Europe to grow from < 500k ARR to > 10 Mio. ARR within < 5 years as AE, VP of Sales, CSO and CRO, with one Exit so far. More to come.

I went from full-cycle AE to CSO within 6 years - without having a clue about sales the first 2 years.

When I started in BtoB back in 2014, I really sucked at it. I did not reach my targets - not even close.

What did I do wrongly?

👉🏻 ...travelled 8 hours to a 1-hour meeting without prior discovery
👉🏻 ...never picked up the phone. Did everything via Email
👉🏻 ...asked on average 2 questions per meeting
👉🏻 ...did not know any Sales methodologies
👉🏻 ...had no clue how the sales process looked like
👉🏻 ...never booked a follow-up meeting right away
👉🏻 ...thousand of other mistakes 

I was lucky my company brought in two trainers, Max and Mike who helped me tremendously. I was able to completely change the way I sold - but not without heavily resisting that change at first.

I did not believe in discovery calls or asking too many questions - and had done sales too long without.

But I managed to change. And it was the best transformation I could have wished for.

In year no. 3, I reached 158% of my sales target (1.58 Mio. ARR) with a 2-month holiday during summer.

Since then, I have learned a lot more and realized that learning is the most important activity in our profession.

Patrick Trümpi

I do not recommend starting your sales career at an early-stage startup.

For most people. 

Because I did the same.

Guess how much I learned about selling during the first 2 years of my sales career that I still use today?

Not even 5%.

I even learned things I had to actively unlearn later again.

Some issues:

1️⃣ You likely won't get any good coaching and waste precious years experimenting without a solid base.

I pitch-slapped 100 prospects because nobody in our company knew how to ask any questions.

2️⃣ You will not know whether your failure is due to product, market, topic, or yourself. You might be discouraged to continue even though you are skilled at selling.

I did not reach my target in the first 2 years and was doubting whether the job was for me. The only reason I could stay was the hard-working mentality in my 20ties.

3️⃣ The chances of failure are incredibly high because the startups aren't able to hire experienced salespeople but have the most difficult products to sell.

No other sales rep reached their target in the first company I worked.

The odds in an early-stage startup are heavily against you.


Yes, there are also a lot of positives about the experience as well.

You can learn a lot of different stuff and you have to build processes from scratch. 

If your goal is to be an entrepreneur one day and you do not mind an environment without structure, I might recommend the startup.

If that is not the case, a startup is not for you.

You could even waste your time if nobody knows how to sell or you do not get any external coaching.

I used to think that "Why are you not interested?" was a good answer to the objection "I am not interested".

Boy, was I wrong. 

It only increases resistance on the other side of the line. 

And with more resistance, you will never book that meeting. 


Here is what you should say with the 6 most common cold call objections:

Common Cold Call Objections.

Starting your outreach with a lie is the worst possible way to kick off a collaboration.

Did he really check my LinkedIn profile? 

If you send those kind of messages to hundreds of people whose LinkedIn profile you have never checked. 

You are using AI the wrong way. 

And you are hurting the sales profession. 

Which is all of us. 

Stop doing that or it will stop working for everybody.


Kevin, I remember you having a similar experience.

I heard that google is coming with a new SPAM filter:

They will mark all emails as SPAM who use an email address that has no website in the back or is re-directed to another url.

Like the one you see in the picture.

I get at least five of those every single day from “AI SDRs” and “Lead Gen” companies.

And I could totally live without getting any of these. 

I actually delete strange urls right away nowadays. 


What would the next "innovation" of emailing companies be if such a filter arrived?

One of the largest differences between a Head of Sales and a CRO?

The Head of Sales usually gets their target from above and has to execute. 

They have limited options to impact their number.

The CRO has to come up with a strategy and a feasible target for the whole organisation. 

They have to make two calculations:

Top down, and bottom up.

Bottom up numbers needed: 

1/ Number of new Sales Accepted Leads per SDR and month
2/ Number of SDRs including hiring plan
3/ Ramp-up of those SDRs: Target achievement % in first months
4/ Average Quota achievement (usually 60-90%)
5/ Win rate of SALs to Close Won
6/ Avg. Deal Size

With these numbers, they will see what revenue can be achieved this year with the current SAL/SDR Quota. 

The top down calculation and numbers:

1/ Annual Quota per AE and year
2/ Number of AEs including hiring plan
3/ Ramp-up of those AEs: Target achievement % in first months
4/ Average Quota achievement (usually 60-90%)
5/ Churn rate & Seasonality

With these numbers, they will see what can realistically be achieved with the AE team they have now and hire over the year. 

With partner management and AMs, the calculation obviously has to be extended to those. 

They will likely get two different numbers from the calculation. 

The lower one will show them where the bottle neck is. 

And what they have to work on. 

Likely they will have to take that lower number as a realistic target. 

Or work on a plan to increase it and match the higher one.


Jetro kindly put together a clean calculation sheet for you to be ready to use.

You find the link in the comments 👇🏻

A small hack changed my life a few months ago. 

Like for real.

For those who have heard me talk about it know what I mean:

After putting our son to bed, I’d sit down to work again.

Specifically, I was meant to write my book and articles for Substack.

But I struggled heavily with this. 

Sitting down in the evening to write down my thoughts in a structured way was always the most painful exercise for my brain. 

I dreaded the evenings because it was so hard.

Writing stuff down after a full day of work?

Not easy. 

I regularly skipped to do something else. 

But then I discovered the "dictate mode" in ChatGPT. 

And realised I can actually talk to ChatGPT.

For hours. 

(even though I have to re-start the dictation every 10 minutes)

And have it structure the whole text for me.

Talking is really easy for me. 

Writing is a pain. 

The thing with LLMs: If you give it 2 hours of context in the form of a transcript, the content turns out to be really good.

And that is not just my opinion. 

Stephan kindly shared his feedback with me. 👇🏻

Now, I am actually excited to sit down again in the evening.

And that is such a huge difference in my life.

People are still discussing whether we should leave em dashes in the texts we write with the help of LLMs.

I find that such a dumb discussion. 

For two reasons: 

1/ In 2 years, nobody will care anymore. It will be so common - like in normal books. Just read one of those 😅

2/ Why judging a text according to how many em dashes it has and not how much you learned from it? It really does not matter how it has been written if you take something from it.


What do you think?


PS: Thanks to this hack, I will be finishing my book very soon.

I am on my way to the yearly army service.

For Swiss men that is quite a normal thing to do as it is still mandatory in this country.

Ok, 99% at my age are actually done with it, I must admit 😅

Thanks to the army, I was in my first leadership role at the age of 19, leading a platoon of 40 men.

And boy was I a bad leader.

The only thing I did intuitively right was leading by example. 

The rest was a disaster.

Some soldiers in my platoon behaved badly? 

I would get them out of bed at 1 am and take them on a run for an hour. 

Did it help with their behaviour? 

Nope. 

Only later did I understand that instilling fear and pain won't bring any lasting results.

And guess what: I learned that in the army too. 

From a really good company leader who taught me the most important lesson in leadership: 

"Make sure you talk to every single soldier in your platoon. At least 30 min. Be curious about their lives. Have an ear for their problems at home. If they understand that you have their interest at heart, they will make sure to protect yours during the service."

The exact opposite of what I had done naturally. 

And it changed everything. 

Could not have been more true.

Grateful for that lesson to this day Claude.

The worst salespeople treat questions from prospects in a demo like yellow lights on the street.

As soon as they get a question, they accelerate and try to push through.

This behaviour erodes trust.

I actually believe that a single bad answer to a question can cost you the whole deal. 

Here is an analogy you can use to handle this situation:

Think of your demos like a street with traffic lights 🚦

With every question the prospect asks, the light turns yellow 🟡

Your task is:

Find out whether you can put it back to green 🟢 

or whether you have a show-stopper 🔴

Two examples:

1️⃣

Prospect: "What is the price of your solution?" 🟡

Salesperson: "I cannot give a price at this point. Too early" 

NO-GO ⛔️

The rep does not change the light 🚦

Better Answer: 

"As you can imagine, this heavily depends on the project. Typically, for clients for whom we solve a similar challenge, we calculate 50-150k in the first year, depending on integration, consumption and licenses. How does that sound to you?"

(Really important to ask that follow-up question)

This can go two ways now:

Prospect: "That sounds reasonable" 🟢
Prospect: "That is really expensive" 🟡

With the second answer, the light remains yellow.

Find out more: "It sounds like you do not see the value for that price?"

Prospect: "....."

Don't ever let a yellow light go unchecked.

There is a reason the person is asking for the price.

Find out why.

--

2️⃣

Prospect: "Do you integrate with HubSpot?" 🟡

Many salespeople immediately jump to an answer: 

“Yes, of course, we integrate with HubSpot.” (too vague, promises too much)

“No, but it’s technically possible, and we can prioritise it.” (solution before understanding)

NO-GO ⛔️

Why?

The rep does not change the light 🚦

Clarify first: 

“Before I answer, do you mind sharing what exactly you mean by ‘integration’? Integrations can be very different in depth and direction. What would you expect to happen between our tool and HubSpot?”

Then answer based on their definition.

If you can do it:

“Okay, got it. The way you described it – that’s exactly what we can do today. From day one, X and Y will flow into HubSpot in that way.”

Move to 🟢 Green

If you’re not sure:

“I’m not 100% sure we can deliver it in exactly that shape. I’d like to check this with the product, so I don’t promise the wrong thing. Would you be okay if we put ‘integration workflow’ as a first agenda point on our next call so I can come back with a concrete answer?”

Stays 🟡 but with clear homework and next meeting.

If you can’t do it now, but maybe later:

“Functionally, what you want makes sense. We don’t support that exact workflow today, but I’ve seen customers start without the integration and add it later. Is this a must-have for day one, or something you’d be okay with as a phase two item?”

If must-have now and you can’t: 🔴 Red

If phase two is okay → 🟢 → plan contract/roadmap

For more info on objection handling, read my article in comments 👇🏻

One of the worst advice I practiced the first three years of my sales career:

"Do not talk about pricing in the first call"

When I just started in sales, I felt anxious to talk about pricing every single time. 

"Is that pricing not too high?"
"Are they going to immediately reject us?"

Not being able to talk about pricing made it even worse. 

Treating it as something to be hidden is just weird.

But things got a lot better over time.

Because I learned from experts with practical, not just theoretical knowledge.


Here are a few rules about pricing that helped me tremendously:

1️⃣ Do not withhold pricing. Never say something like: “I cannot give you a price right now”

2️⃣ Always have a range of pricing ready when the prospect is asking. Something like: “Other banks that did projects with us typically spent 75k to 200k for the initial project”

3️⃣ Only communicate the exact price when you know the business case

4️⃣ Right after you communicate pricing, you have to ask: “How do you feel about that price”

5️⃣ Never communicate the first pricing through email or text - only in a meeting 

6️⃣ Adjust the offering to the business case. If you have a 1.5 Mio. efficiency case, do not offer 50k. Go for a 350k-500k option and pack it with some support and services that will make the implementation more successful

7️⃣ Don’t make any promises about discounts right in the call in case you are not sure. Say: “I have to check internally and get back to you”

8️⃣ If you give a discount, always get something in return. A few options:
👉🏻 Reference Video or Case Study with KPI Improvement
👉🏻 Introduction to other companies
👉🏻 Signature by a certain date (e.g. end of quarter)
👉🏻 Presentation at Webinar for other potential customers
👉🏻 Long-term contract (2 or 3 years)
👉🏻 Yearly up-front payment
👉🏻 Open for reference calls with other prospects

9️⃣ In case they say “This is expensive”, you clarify first: “There are usually two different reasons I encounter when someone says that. 1st you do not see value for the costs or 2nd you do not have the money available. What exactly is it in your case?”

🔟 The client says: “We only have Amount X” - what do you do? Find a different solution other than a discount. Make them pay the mentioned amount this year after the start of the project and the difference at the end of the project or when the new year starts in January.

 If you put those into place, you will rock that dicey topic.

In the last 6 months, we halved our sales cycle.

What did we change?

The ICP.

We sold a nice-to-have use case to publishers for a few years.

Now, we sell a proactive AI Sales Coach to sales organisations of software companies.

Something every sales org needs or already does (sufficiently or not) with human effort.

Sometimes the biggest improvements are not done by improving the sales team.

They are done by choosing a better focus for the product & team.

How I made $1'000 in 30 days on Substack?


By posting 4.5 years on LinkedIn.

I wish I could give anyone a shortcut. 

But I cannot. There is none. 

You only need to start. 

Share your knowledge. 

Or what you are learning right now. 


Back then, Thibaut pushed me to write on Substack.

And my friend Manuel was the first to sign up for a paid version that did not yet exist. 

Just because he likes to support friends. 

Thanks to you both, really appreciate the support. 

Maybe I can push you to start?

And if you want to become a better (Sales) person:

My article today will show you that finding problems and pains is not enough to uncover urgency in deals. You need something more. 

Article in the comments.

No rep ever told me:

I actually changed my practice thanks to the feedback from our recording tool.

None. Zero.

More often than not, reps actually lose trust in so-called “AI coaching”, a name role-play and recording tools attribute to themselves. 

But these tools rarely impact the reps’ behaviour.

Which coach listens to a recording (or does a role-play) and tells the rep:

Your talking speed is at 189s per word, but it should actually be at 120.
You asked 19 questions, but 30 would be great.
You answered 5 of 10 questions well.
You talked 50% of the time, but it should be at 20% (Which is wrong anyway).
Your longest monologue was 107 seconds, but it should be 98 seconds.
You could have personalised more.
You could have asked an impact question.
You did not summarise the call.
You did not set an agenda.
You found a pain point.
You talked about decision criteria.

I mean….what?

This has little to do with either coaching or learning.

Zero didactical value. (Using some learning jargon, for you, Maren 😃).

A coach/teacher has a different approach:

1/ Listens to a call.
2/ Finds 2 areas they want to give feedback on.
3/ Schedules a coaching session with the rep.
4/ Plays those two sequences.
5/ Asks the rep: What would you do differently? (to make them think first)
6/ After the self-reflection, give the feedback.
7/ Then says: Let’s quickly practice that.
8/ Does a role-play.
9/ Does another self-reflection exercise. 
10/ Gives another 2 points of feedback.

That his how coaching is done. 

That is how people can put learning into practice. 

Not 37 points you did well and 12 points you could improve.

I am probably exaggerating, and some people actually learned something from those role-play or recording tools.

But there is a much better way AI can coach.

The same way a human would do it. 


What was your experience with the feedback from those tools?

With one of our recent clients, we had 3 discoveries with the champion, one prep and a C-level meeting - all within 2 weeks. 

But after the first call, we really were not sure if we had a case. 

I could not wrap my head around what has been said because there were many different, sometimes unrelated topics.

I started the second discovery with a recap.

I repeated all the things I felt were important regarding challenges and potential impacts. 

We added some more information but it still did not click.

Then I asked: "Between 0 and 10, how important are these topics we are talking about for you?" 

The answer: An 8. Very important.

Me: "What makes it so important?"

Them: "We transfer the whole business to be more profit-driven"

There it was. 

The missing puzzle.

A business initiative that was driving the whole thing. 

And I did not capture that earlier. 

The question "from 0 to 10" saved us. 

Which happened often in my career.

It helps quantify something that is hard to quantify.

I reached 158% of my target in 2018 (1,58 Mio.), with one deal accounting for 41% of the total number.

That was by far my largest deal to date, and I closed it without any of these:

👉🏻 Sales Process
👉🏻 Champion rehearsals
👉🏻 Proper Business Case
👉🏻 Qualification Methodology
👉🏻 Talking to the Economic Buyer

We simply had nobody in the company who knew about any of that. 

Does it mean these are useless?

No, it means I got incredibly lucky. 

I would not want to risk another deal for not understanding how sales works.

And thinking in frameworks and steps is a big part of that.

If you struggle asking your prospect tough questions, use your human or AI coach as the reason you ask.

Let me show you what I mean. 

A few questions you might struggle asking: 

"I suggest we book the next meeting right away, when work for you?"

"Who else would want to know about the topic we discussed today?"

"I suggest we include your boss in the next meeting. When works for them?"

"Did you already calculate an ROI regarding this challenge internally?"

"What is your personal benefit of advancing this project?"

"I am not sure if I understood this completely. Can you repeat again in different words. What do you mean by 'Standard'?


Instead of asking these directly, say something like:

“If I don't ask, my AI coach (or human) will chase me afterward."

(with a little smile)

And then ask the question: 

"Why don’t we put the next meeting straight into our calendars? What time works for you?”

It will work much better even if you don't frame the question perfectly. 

Just a small additional benefit of having a coach.

Julius and Dominic talked about my favourite prospecting trick in the last episode of Sales & Pepper:

1️⃣  Choose an Account you really want to get into.

2️⃣  Buy a pair of shoes. 

3️⃣  Send one shoe in a box to the C-level persona you want to talk to.

4️⃣  With a letter that reads like this: "Now that I already have one shoe in your door, shouldn't we meet so that I can bring the second one as well?"

This trick never failed Lars (from whom I learned about it) 😃 - he even built a 9-figure business on its pillars. 

Okey, that is a bit of an overstatement. 

(the fact that this trick was an important part of his business) 

But still kind of true. 😅

It clearly reflects Lars' personality to try literally anything ethical to succeed. 


PS: I can definitely recommend the podcast episode with Julius. So much prospecting value in 30 min.

Here is the number one pricing strategy I teach startups: 

Don't close temporary pilots. 

I often see founders close like a 5-month pilot with a client. 

Without any agreed solution on what happens after those 5 months. 

I used to do that as well. 

And what usually happened: 

I closed a pilot deal of 5-50k with a person who cannot themself decide on the next phase. They need involvement higher up in the hierarchy.

So after these pilots, the projects either stalled for months or did not continue altogether, even though the results were positive. 

Suppose you need such a deal because as your very first project in the history of the company, ok. That is the only time I accept that to happen. 

But afterwards, you should structure your contracts differently: 

1-year contract with a cancellation clause after 1, 2 or 3 months. 

You can experiment with the payment: 
- First 3 months right away, then the other 9 months after "not cancelling"
- No payment and 9 months right after "not cancelling"
- No payment and 12 months right after "not cancelling"
- other options

This way, the client has to be fully committed to the yearly contract from day one of the project.

They already need to figure out how to finance the full project/product. 

Otherwise, you are doing projects that likely won't ever lead to anything.

You don't want to make that effort unless it is for the logo (yes, the very first deal).

When I started my career in B2B software sales more than a decade ago, my manager told me: 

"Cold calling does not work in B2B." 

He did not say this because he had tested it, measured it, and seen the numbers. 

He said it because he didn’t like it. 

To him, sales was an elite profession, a career built on prestige and intellect. 

Picking up the phone and dialling strangers didn’t fit into the image.

Isn't that really weird?

All elite sellers I have seen actually all pick up the phone. 

😅

I also learned the craft a few years later.

And realised it was actually the best way to generate deals.

Not only that. 

I learned it really fast because I love the script I was using. 

Still today. 

And that is what I am going to share today. 

This time, not for free, though.

I often hear "you give way too much for free", which I actually don't mind. 

But this one will be a chapter of my book, which I shouldn't give away for free, I have been told. 

So here it is. 

Enjoy the (very long) read:

Open article: The Only Cold Call Script you will ever need. by open.substack.com

The Only Cold Call Script you will ever need.

In 2018, gatekeepers were a big topic when cold calling. 

Later on, mobile numbers became wildly available and I did not need that skill in my teams anymore.

That is why I rarely write about it today.

In some industries and for some personas, however, gatekeepers still play a big role. 

In logistics, for instance.

Now that I am working a lot with Felicia and REP - Revenue Excellence Partners, I wanted to have someone with real practice to write something about the topic:

How do you navigate gatekeepers today?

That is what you can read in Feli's article on my substack:


Thanks for your amazing insights Feli.

Open article: Gatekeepers in Cold Calling: How I Play My Way Through Level by Level. by patricktrumpi.substack.com

Gatekeepers in Cold Calling: How I Play My Way Through Level by Level.

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