Foundry GTM · Playbook Skeleton
The Sales Playbook Skeleton.
Every scalable commercial operating system has three layers. Foundation. Machine. Discipline. Build your playbook and identify your blindspots in one session.
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How to use this
A book you finish by filling it in.
There are 16 sections in this playbook, across three layers. Each has 3-5 prompt questions and one filled-in example from a fictional Series A company, AcmeSaaS. Answer the prompts for your business as you scroll.
The prompts are inputs. Your answers save to your browser as you go, so refresh the page and they stay. When you finish, you can export a PDF of your playbook. Or reset and start over.
If a prompt is hard to answer honestly, that's the layer that will break first at scale.
Layer 1 · Foundation
Foundation.
Who you sell to. Why they buy. What wins the deal.
Ideal Customer Profile
Foundation · 01Your Ideal Customer Profile is the smallest possible ring of companies who will buy from you fast and stay. Not everyone who could buy. Everyone who does.
Personas + Buying Committee
Foundation · 02Deals are won and lost inside buying committees, not by individuals. Naming everyone at the table is the first step to running the deal.
Positioning
Foundation · 03Positioning is the sentence your buyer says to their peers when they explain why they picked you. If you can't write it, they won't say it.
Messaging Framework
Foundation · 04Messaging is how you translate positioning into moments. Every touchpoint needs a pain, an agitation, a resolve, and a metric.
Competitive Frame
Foundation · 05Buyers evaluate you against 2-3 alternatives. Naming them in your playbook lets your reps counter without improvising every deal.
Layer 2 · Machine
Machine.
The operational engine that turns Foundation into revenue.
Pipeline Stages + Exit Criteria
Machine · 01Stages are the vocabulary your team uses to describe every deal. Objective exit criteria at each stage stop 'buyer confirmed they'll get back to us' from counting as advancement.
Forecast Cadence
Machine · 02Forecast is a promise the team makes to leadership. Cadence is what turns it from a guess into a commitment.
Motion Definition
Machine · 03Motion is how the deal moves through the funnel. Confusing your motion is the fastest way to build a sales team that ramps slowly and blames the market.
Compensation Design
Machine · 04Comp tells your reps what to do. If your comp doesn't reward the behavior you want, no coaching in the world will fix it.
Tooling Stack
Machine · 05Your tool stack is the physical substrate your motion runs on. Every tool that doesn't have a clear owner and integrated data flow is a leak.
Deal-Desk Workflow
Machine · 06Deal desk turns non-standard deals from friction into velocity. When it's absent, every non-standard term takes a week of back-and-forth.
Layer 3 · Discipline
Discipline.
The behavioral rigor that makes the Machine repeatable.
1:1 Cadence
Discipline · 011:1s are where coaching lives. Not pipeline reviews with extra steps. Real coaching against a specific skill, documented, referenced.
Deal Review Process
Discipline · 02Deal reviews are where the team learns what a good deal looks like. Every review is a case study for the reps who aren't running it.
Ramp Plan (30/60/90)
Discipline · 03Ramp plans are how you know if the hire is working before you're 12 months in. Written expectations at day 30, 60, 90. Owned by the hiring manager, not the AE.
Hiring Scorecard
Discipline · 04Hiring is where the team gets built or broken. Scorecards force you to interview for the same competencies every time. Anti-nepotism, anti-vibe.
Weekly Ops Rhythm
Discipline · 05Rhythm is the drumbeat the org marches to. Missing a beat once is human. Missing it twice sets the culture that beats don't matter.
The skeleton is yours
Filling it in for real takes 6-9 months if a VP does it.
Foundry does it in 2-8 weeks.
You have the skeleton. If any section was harder to answer than it should have been, that's the layer that will break first at scale. Foundry designs the whole operating system so your next revenue leader inherits a running motion instead of building one from scratch.
Foundry GTM · The commercial operating system between product market fit and scalability.