The Playbook Agency

Growth Partner for SaaS, Web3 and Enterprise B2B Companies.

Co-Founder

Bolt Cover

Angel Investor

Antler

• Selected as the top ~2% from 2500+ for Antler’s 7th UK cohort to start a globally important company.

• Antler is the world's most active early-stage investor with over $2 billion in combined portfolio value. 

• Antler invests in high-potential individuals to help them meet their co-founders, develop their ideas and raise capital from leading investors in less than 3 months

First Start Up Attempt: Tracking and Updating Job Changes for HubSpot. 

The Pilots Landed: 

- Beauhurst
- GWI
- Strativo
- Bowimi

Cohort 8

Sales flow - AI-powered Sales Engagement Platform

Achievements:
- Built revenue function from $0 - $4M ARR.  
- Recruited and managed a global team of 4 SDRs, 1 SDR Manager and 4 Account Executive.
- Highest quarter in company history (Q1, 2022)
- Managing the sales enablement and sales operations function (Hubspot CRM, Apollo.io, Sales Navigator, Lusha, RingOver,  Sales Impact Academy etc)
- Built and managed agency programme.
- Landed largest agency client and commercial team.

Head of Sales

Senior Account Executive 

Sales Development Representative

Co-Founder @ The Playbook Agency | Implementing AI into the Revenue Teams of Series A-C Companies Successfully |

Resist change to stay comfortable, embrace change to move forward.

Spent my weekend building something I've been thinking about for ages
 
A Substack.
 
Just... everything else.
 
AI hacks that actually work (the simple ones, not the 47-step workflows that break after a week).
 
My takes on the AI, especially how it's affecting the SaaS space we all live in.
 
What's actually happening in AI vs. what the hype cycle wants you to believe.
 
I've been consuming a lot lately - podcasts, essays, economic data, AI tools - and I need somewhere to process it all.
 
So I built it.
 
First piece drops this week.
 
If you're interested in that kind of thing, link in the comments ﻿
﻿
No fluff. No daily posts. Just when I've got something worth saying.

Leo  Branica

Co-Founder @ The Playbook Agency | Successfully Implementing AI in Revenue Teams of Series A-C Companies |

What’s the hardest part of running The Playbook Agency?

Honestly? Saying no to money. 

Last week we had 2 inbound leads:

1. Seed Stage SaaS, 10m in Funding. 
All the budget in the world. 
However, super hard product. 
ERP, too many use cases, too many industries.

2. $1.5M ARR company. 
They have tried everything; outbound agencies, ads..,etc. but with no luck.
After diving deeper, product had no clear differentiation.
No agency can fix that.

Early-stage me would’ve said yes to both.
(narrator: not the best decision)

Here’s what I’ve learned: The wrong clients don’t just waste budget, they drain your team, your focus, and your reputation.

Now we only take clients we can actually help. It’s why they win. 

And why we still sleep at night.

So here’s the question:

What would happen if you fired your worst-fit customers tomorrow?

Everyone's losing their minds over AI SDRs.

We tripled a client's conversion rate by fixing the boring stuff nobody wants to talk about.

April 2024: 2% account-to-booking ratio
December 2024: 6.28% account-to-booking ratio

Zero AI magic. Just foundations that actually work.

Here's what we did:

1. Mapped their entire TAM
Not "companies that might buy."
Every account that SHOULD be buying, and why they should care right now.

2. Enriched for real triggers
Funding rounds. New hires. Tech stack changes. Expansion signals.
We didn't wait for accounts to raise their hand.
We found the exact moments they were ready to buy.

3. Assigned accounts to playbooks that made sense
Tier 1: White-glove research + custom outreach
Tier 2: Semi-automated campaigns with real personalization
Tier 3: Nurture sequences

Stop treating a $500K opportunity the same as a $15K one.

4. Built messaging around what's actually happening
Not AI-generated templates.
Actual messaging based on what's going on at each account RIGHT NOW.
The result? 3X conversion improvement over 8 months.

But here's what nobody wants to hear:

This took 8 months. 
Not 8 days. Not 8 weeks.

While everyone's buying AI tools expecting instant wins, we built a foundation that compounds month after month.

Data quality > AI quantity.
Every. Single. Time.

The boring stuff wins. It just doesn't get the Twitter threads.

What's your team avoiding because it's not sexy enough?

As a founder with a calendar so full, I eat lunch during team meetings, I like to torture myself by listening to discovery calls every week.

Not to look for mistakes.

Just looking for clues.

You know when you're looking for your phone, but it's already in your hand (why does that even happen, how?)

The phrases that convert? 

Same thing.

They're hiding in plain sight.

Your ICP hands them to you on every call.

Last two months: $120K in pipeline from phrases I found on calls.Gave stuck deals the push they needed.

Here's what I'm paying attention to:

Discovery Calls:
→ Exact words they use when frustrated
 → Competitors they mention unprompted
 → The pain they can't ignore
 → What made them book the call. 

But calls only tell you what YOUR prospects are saying.

To find what the ENTIRE market is thinking? I go where they hang out.

Latest trends in the market, for my industry:

→ 20VC
→ SaaStr.ai
→ Slack communities
→ Lenny's Newsletter

What's triggering debate THIS week?

What are they trying to solve TODAY?

That is your messaging.

Last month, 4 of our prospects said the same thing:"I don't want to bring in legacy tools."

We made that our hook.

Booked 8 calls in 2 weeks.

My routine now:
→ Review 5 disco calls/week
 → Listen to 2-3 hours of ICP content
 → Update messaging with real pain
 → Test it in outbound within 48 hours

Right now, everyone is evaluating AI tools.

The founders, SDRs, AEs who are booking meetings?

They're listening. Not just sending.

—————————————————————————
I’m Leo, co-founder of The Playbook Agency

We run automation outbound and inbound campaigns for you or with you

hanging out where my ICP hangs out

I built Champover in 2023 and shut it down in 2024.

If I had understood what Clay understood, I might be telling a very different story.

I started Champover (with a brilliant CTO) because I saw UserGems 💎 crushing it. 

And as a former sales leader, I knew I needed that functionality. The market seemed obvious.

So I did what most founders do: I went straight to prospecting.

Prospects said, "This is interesting, I could use something like this." 

I took that as validation and built. 

People signed up. They used it. But when it came time to pay? Crickets.

Here's what I got wrong:

I built a feature, not a solution to a deeply understood problem.

I asked "Will you buy this?" instead of spending months understanding "What are you actually struggling with?"

I prospected when I should have been discovering.

In 2024, I shut Champover down. LinkedIn page stays up for memories.

Then I learned about what Varun Anand actually did at Clay.

When Varun joined Clay in late 2021, they had fewer than 20 customers paying $100–$200/month.

Here's what shocked me: he didn't scale. He went deep.

For 12 straight months, Varun sat on calls from 10am–5pm.

Not sales calls. Discovery calls.

He did "reverse demos", showing customers how to solve their problems using Clay. He gathered feedback, and they iterated relentlessly.

He was active in communities like where his ICP actually lived, and found people struggling with problems Clay could solve.

No cold email campaigns. No LinkedIn ads. No "spray and pray."

Just manual, one-on-one conversations.

For an entire year.

Most founders (including me) would never do this.

We'd build an ICP list, set up cold email infrastructure, launch ads, and hope for traction.

We'd treat customer conversations as a sales motion, not a discovery process.

We'd rush to scale before we truly understood the problem.

Varun did the opposite, and that's why Clay raised at $3.1B.

When asked why their valuation more than doubled from $1.25B to $3.1B, Varun said something that hit me hard:

"It's because we have a culture that's still doing exactly what I did that first year. We're constantly talking to customers and using that feedback to improve our product."

The difference?

I built fast. Clay listened longer.
That's the $3.1B difference

Sales cycles are longer than ever.

Which means getting into sales cycles is even longer.

Your prospect reads your "best" cold email and thinks: "What's the point?"

They're not being rude. They're being practical.

Another 6-month evaluation. Another internal champion to convince. Another budget committee.

So they ghost.

Here's what changed my close rate:

I stopped selling meetings. I started selling ROI.

Before they even reply, I show them the money.

Not "we can save you time." Not "we can improve efficiency."

Actual numbers. Their numbers.

I research 6 variables before I send one email:

→ Number of sales reps 
→ Location (salary benchmarks) 
→ Estimated salary per rep 
→ Sales tools they're using 
→ Estimated tool spend 
→ Time spent on admin (I calculate this)

Then I build a mini ROI model:
X hours saved per year
$Y in salary waste eliminated
$Z in redundant tool costs

I send it in the first email.

Not a generic "we save companies 20% on average."

Their specific numbers. Their specific waste.

Real example from last week 👇

This prospect had SDRs in Toronto and Helsinki.

I calculated they were wasting $138,506 per year on entry-level research across their 11,500 account SOM.

Reply: "Really good email there Leo!"

Not a ghost. Not "let me think about it."

Engaged response asking how we fit into their H1 plans.

Because I didn't ask them to imagine ROI. I calculated it for them.

Sales cycles aren't getting shorter.

But if you can prove ROI before the first call, you skip 3 months of "let me think about it."

The formula:

Research their current state (team size, tools, workflow)
Calculate their waste (time × salary + tool overlap)
Model your impact (hours saved + costs eliminated)

Send it in the first email

Stop asking for 15 minutes to "explore if there's a fit."

Start showing them $138K in waste they didn't know existed.

When you lead with their money, they lead with urgency.
—————————————————————————
I’m Leo | Founder of The Playbook Agency

We run automation outbound and inbound campaigns for you, and with you

Everyone's chasing AI SDRs
 
We tripled a client's conversion rate by fixing the boring stuff
 
April 2024: 2% account-to-booking ratio
December 2024: 6.28% account-to-booking ratio
 
Here's what we actually did (no AI magic involved):
 
1️⃣ Mapped their entire TAM
 
Not just "companies that might buy" – we identified every account that SHOULD be buying and why.
 
2️⃣ Enriched for key triggers
 
Funding rounds. New hires. Tech stack changes. Expansion signals.
We didn't wait for accounts to raise their hand. We found the moments they were ready to buy.
 
3️⃣ Assigned accounts to the right playbook
 
Tier 1 accounts got white-glove research and custom outreach
Tier 2 got semi-automated campaigns with personalization
Tier 3 went into nurture sequences.
 
Stop treating all accounts the same.
 
4️⃣ Created messaging suggestions around it
 
Not AI-generated templates. Actual messaging based on what was happening at each account RIGHT NOW.
 
The result? 3X improvement in conversion rate over 8 months.
 
But here's the thing nobody wants to hear:
 
This shit takes time.
 
It took us 8 months to go from 2% to 6.28%. Not 8 days. Not 8 weeks.
 
While everyone else is buying AI tools and expecting instant results, we built a foundation that compounds.
 
Data quality > AI quantity.
 
Every. Single. Time.
 
 
____
 
Leo Branica | Founder, The Playbook Agency
 
We solve 1 major problem via AI & Automation: Too many of your reps doing too little selling to too few good prospects (Pipeline death!)
 
Supporting $2.4+ billion in SaaS revenue since 2023

"Should I be doing AI outbound?" 

You're asking the wrong question. 

Better question: "Do I have what AI outbound needs to actually work?" 

AI doesn't fix broken fundamentals. 
It scales them. 

Here are the 4 things you need before AI outbound becomes successful: 

1. A specific, urgent problem you're solving 🚑 

AI can write emails at scale. 
But it can't fix vague positioning. 

Works with AI: "Compliance platform for Series A fintech companies" 
Fails with AI: "We help companies grow revenue" 

Why this matters for AI outbound: If your problem isn't urgent enough to get budget approved, AI will just send more emails that get ignored faster. 

Need-to-have scales. Nice-to-have doesn't.

2. A market big enough to scale 🗺️ 

AI-ready: 50,000+ target accounts 
Not AI-ready: 30,000 or fewer accounts 

Why this matters for AI outbound: 
AI's advantage is volume at scale. If your TAM is small, you're over-engineering. 

You don't need AI to reach a few thousand people. 
You need deeper research and account-based strategy.

3. Case studies that show HOW, not just WHAT 🙅‍♂️ 

AI can personalize at scale. But it needs the right input. 

Doesn't work: "We helped Company X grow 300%" 
Works: "Here's the 3-step process we used to help Company X fix their onboarding flow, which led to better retention" 

Why this matters for AI outbound: 
AI pulls from your case studies to create social proof in messaging. If your case studies are just vanity metrics, AI will write generic fluff. 

Give AI the mechanism. It'll scale the story.

4. An offer worth responding to 🎯 

AI can test different CTAs. But it can't invent value. 

Doesn't convert: "Book a demo" 
Converts: "Free personalized GTM audit for [specific vertical]" 

Why this matters for AI outbound: 
AI optimizes what you give it. If your offer is weak, AI will just write more variations of "let's talk." 

Value upfront gets replies. Vague asks get deleted. 

Here's what happens when you skip these: 

Founders hear "AI can automate outbound" and immediately launch campaigns. 

No clear ICP. No proven case studies. No compelling offer. 
Just AI writing emails at scale. 

Result: 
→ Low reply rates 
→ Low-quality meetings 
→ Deals that don't close 

Then they blame the AI. 

But AI didn't fail. It did exactly what it was supposed to do: scale what you gave it. 

The problem? What you gave it wasn't ready to scale. 

AI makes good outbound great. 
It makes bad outbound worse, just faster.

If you have these 4 components, AI outbound becomes a predictable growth engine. 

If you don't, fix them first. 

No amount of better prompts, data enrichment, or email infrastructure will save a broken foundation.
_______________________________________________

Leo | Founder, The Playbook Agency

We solve 1 major problem via AI & Automation: Too many of your reps doing too little selling to too few good prospects (Pipeline death!)

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linkedin.com

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Sales ops and enablement are merging faster than anyone expected.

And I'm watching it happen in real-time with our clients.

Here's what the next 18 months actually look like:

Today: 
-> Two teams fighting for the same budget. 
-> Endless alignment meetings. 
-> Reps getting conflicting playbooks.

6 months:
-> Clay workflows analyzing every successful deal pattern
-> Winning talk tracks extracted automatically from calls
-> Signal-based prospecting replacing spray-and-pray

12 months:
-> One "Revenue Intelligence" function emerges
-> Playbooks that update themselves based on what's closing
-> Every rep gets AI-powered account research in under 90 minutes (we're already doing this)

18 months:
-> Traditional "manual research" roles evolve or disappear
-> Enablement becomes strategic coaching + prompt design
-> Win rates climb because targeting is smarter

One of our clients increased their account-to-opportunity ratio by 50% in two months. Not because they hired more reps. 

Because we automated what their best rep was doing manually.

The separation between "ops" and "enablement" never made sense. The best teams are already treating them as one function.

If you're in sales ops → learn automation tools now

If you're in enablement → shift toward coaching and strategy

If you're a leader → the teams embracing this will dominate 2026

Which role are you preparing for?
—————————————————————————————————
Leo | Founder of The Playbook Agency

We run automation outbound and inbound campaigns for you, and with you.

Everyone's talking about the "AI Reset”

Here's what no one's saying:

It's not a downturn. It's a filter.

The data is clear:

→ YC founders are now 26 (down from 30)
→ 80%+ are engineers
→ Hiring for generative AI skills has surged from 55 to 10,000 jobs

Translation?

The market is rewarding efficiency, technical leverage, and speed.

Not presentations. Not theory. Not fluff.

If your GTM still runs on:

❌Serving 10 different industries 

❌You don’t know the clear metric you’re moving.

❌Poor GTM data foundations.

You're getting filtered out.

The reset isn't about AI hype dying.

It's about operators separating from talkers.

Predictable systems win.

Manual chaos loses.

That's it.

Ever notice how your tech stack just... gets out of hand?

It usually starts out simple. A handful of tools, each solving a real problem. 

But as you scale, it just snowballs.

By the time most B2B revenues teams reach Series B, things look a bit wild.

I’ve seen this happen over and over:

1. Someone needs a quick fix, so you add a new platform.
2. Marketing finds something shiny, so you bolt it on.
3. Sales wants a shortcut, so they get their own tool.
4. Ops tries to keep everyone happy, but it only makes things messier.

Suddenly, no one knows which data to trust.

Nobody agrees on how things actually work.

There’s always one tool collecting dust, another costing a fortune, and a workflow everyone hates.

And when you finally try to fix it? Untangling that mess is a full-time job.

Honestly, most of the time, it’s the basics that win.

Simple setup, clear ownership, and sticking to what works.

If you’re scaling fast, just remember: more tech doesn’t always mean more results. 

Sometimes, it’s just more headaches.

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