A founder-led variant of the T2D3 Fractional CMO engagement playbook for early-stage B2B SaaS where the founder and team run the work themselves rather than hiring a fractional CMO. Same T2D3 OS methodology — six foundational phases (pre-engagement setup → day-one data collection → internal interviews + GTM survey → strategy workshop → customer validation → foundation finalization) plus an execution cadence module — but stripped of the parts that only make sense for an outside CMO running the engagement as a consulting business (pod resourcing, succession to a permanent CMO, CMO onboarding handoff). Adds explicit module-completion tasks at the end of foundation that point at each in-app GTM module so users can connect the playbook with where they are in the T2D3 OS app.
The setup phase before kickoff. Days minus-3 to 0. Five things have to be true before day one or the first two weeks of the engagement are spent waiting for credentials and chasing access. This phase establishes the working environment, the operating cadence, and the pod assignments. The Phase Review confirms all setup items are in place before kickoff happens with the client.
Organize your launch assets and align your team before go-to-market execution begins
1.1.1 Set up the T2D3 folder structure
Create the standardized client folder structure on the shared drive so every subsequent artifact has a known home from day zero. The naming convention and folder hierarchy are deliberate: they make handoffs between founding team members frict...
1.1.2 Send the internal team kick-off email
Align the founding team on the engagement scope, the client context, the deliverables timeline, and your team's individual responsibilities before any client communication goes out. The internal kick-off prevents the most common pod failure mod...
Confirm all pre-engagement foundations are complete and ready for Phase 1
1.Z.1 Phase 0 Review and sign-off
Phase 0 Gate — Pre-engagement setup is complete
Week 1 of the engagement. The day-one ask goes out before kickoff ends because customer interview scheduling has the longest lead time in the entire phase and has to start immediately. In parallel, the pod absorbs the product through a demo with someone who can talk about the why, audits existing content and channels, and pulls pricing and deal review notes. The output of Phase 1 is a complete situation snapshot: what the company has, what it does, who buys it today, and what the existing assets look like. The Phase Review confirms the snapshot is complete enough to inform internal interviews and the workshop.
Launch day-one with coordinated emails that align your team, founder, and customer
2.1.1 Send the day-one team kick-off email
Open the engagement with a single email that sets expectations, asks for the long-lead-time inputs, and confirms the operating cadence. The day-one email determines whether the first week is spent waiting for access or actually executing.
2.1.2 Founder sends the company-wide GTM kick-off email
Establish the founder & team's authority across the client organization through a CEO-authored email. Without this email, the CMO has to introduce themselves to every department head individually and re-establish credibility in every mee...
2.1.3 Founder sends the customer interview invitation
Get customer interviews on the calendar as early as possible by having the CEO make the ask, not the founder & team. Customer response rates to a CEO ask are 2-3x the response rates to an unknown consultant. Scheduling lag is the single ...
Collect critical client data, system access, and competitive landscape upfront
2.2.1 Marketing audit questionnaire
Capture the client's self-reported state of marketing across 15 competencies as a baseline before your team runs the external audit. The gap between what the client thinks is true and what the audit reveals is itself diagnostic — companies...
2.2.2 System access information template
Document every system your team needs access to, who owns it client-side, what the access level should be, and confirmation that access has been granted. Without this single source of truth, two team members request the same access on diffe...
2.2.3 Competitor research template
Document the competitive landscape as the client perceives it and as the market actually behaves. The output becomes input to the Best/Better/Only exercise in the workshop and the Anti-ICP definition. Most clients underestimate how many ...
Establish regular check-ins between founder and team to track progress
2.3.1 Founder + team 1-1 meeting agenda template
Establish the recurring 1:1 cadence between the founder & team and each direct report or peer leader on the client side, with a standardized agenda that ensures every conversation is productive even when one party is rushed. The standard...
Confirm Phase 1 completion and secure approval to advance
2.Z.1 Phase 1 Review and sign-off
Phase 1 Gate — Day-one snapshot complete
Weeks 1 to 3 of the engagement. The pod listens to the client team before it talks to them. Internal 1:1 interviews surface individual conviction before group dynamics flatten it. The GTM Alignment Survey to all go-to-market employees gives anonymous data points that contradict or confirm the leadership narrative. The marketing audit synthesizes the external view (Compass) with the internal view (questionnaire) into a scored report card. Output of Phase 2 is a pre-read for the workshop showing the top contradictions and convergences across leadership. The Phase Review confirms the synthesis is clean and the pre-read is in client hands 48 hours before the workshop.
Capture exec perspectives on product strengths, market fit, and GTM gaps via structured interviews
3.1.1 Executive interview questions and prompts
Run structured 1:1 interviews with every workshop participant plus the CRO, head of customer success, head of product, and two to three frontline reps from sales and CS. The 30 to 60 minutes per interview surfaces individual conviction, ...
Assess current marketing effectiveness and identify capability gaps with audit scorecard and findings
3.2.1 Marketing audit kickoff email
Frame the marketing audit for the client team so they understand it is a diagnostic, not an evaluation of their performance. The audit will surface gaps; the kickoff email determines whether those gaps land as useful insight or as critic...
3.2.2 Marketing audit report card
Score the client across the 15 T2D3 competencies on a 0-to-5 scale, combining the internal questionnaire responses, the Compass external assessment, and your team's own observations from week 1-2. The report card becomes the diagnostic bas...
3.2.3 Audit presentation deck
Present the audit findings to client leadership in a format that makes the gaps visible without making the team defensive. The deck is the moment your team earns the right to lead the workshop — if the audit lands well, the workshop will b...
Gather team input on GTM priorities and pain points before the strategy workshop
3.3.1 Pre-workshop survey form
Run an anonymous survey to all GTM employees to collect data points that the workshop will use to ground discussions in the broader team's view rather than only the leadership view. Anonymity matters because the variance across roles and...
Validate Phase 2 completion and secure stakeholder alignment before moving forward
3.Z.1 Phase 2 Review and sign-off
Phase 2 Gate — Internal interviews + audit synthesis complete
Week 3 or 4 of the engagement. One day on-site or two half-days virtual. The workshop converts pre-read insights into testable hypotheses across ICP, personas, value propositions, brand voice, and growth strategy. The morning diverges (generating candidates), the afternoon converges (selecting hypotheses to test). Output of Phase 3 is a set of working hypotheses, not conclusions — Phase 4 customer validation is the next gate. The Phase Review confirms the workshop output is captured in the right T2D3 OS modules and the customer validation interviews can begin.
Prepare invites and presentation deck to run your internal strategy workshop
4.1.1 Workshop invite email
Lock the workshop date, the participants, the agenda, and the pre-read expectations in writing. The invite email is what ensures the workshop has the right people in the room with their pre-read read; without it, the workshop becomes ori...
4.1.2 GTM workshop deck
The deck is the operating script for the workshop day. It walks the room through the pre-read findings, runs each exercise (Best/Better/Only, ICP definition, persona drafting, brand voice exercise, Ansoff growth matrix), and captures the...
Work through positioning, ICP, personas, messaging and growth templates with your team
4.2.1 Best/Better/Only template
Surface what the company is great at (table stakes), what it is better than competitors at (comparable claims), and what it is the only one to offer (uniquely-differentiated claims). The exercise is the foundation of every value proposit...
4.2.2 Positioning vector template
Translate the Best/Better/Only output into a positioning statement using the standard T2D3 positioning vector format: For [target customer], who [statement of need], [product name] is a [product category] that [statement of key benefit],...
4.2.3 ICP and personas template
Build the first formal draft of the Ideal Customer Profile and the buyer personas (P1, P2, P3, plus Anti-Persona). The workshop output is a hypothesis set, not a final ICP — Phase 4 customer validation is what confirms it. The most impor...
Validate Phase 3 outputs and secure stakeholder sign-off on GTM strategy
4.Z.1 Phase 3 Review and sign-off
Phase 3 Gate — Strategy workshop deliverables locked (mentor session 1)
Weeks 4 to 6 of the engagement. The workshop produced hypotheses; customer interviews validate or kill them. Eight to twelve interviews segmented across closed-won, closed-lost, churned, and expansion. Each segment teaches a different lesson. The interviews surface verbatim language for messaging, dollarized pain for ICP, and the gap between leadership's belief and the customer's experience. Output of Phase 4 is a validated ICP, persona set, and value prop hypothesis ready to be turned into the locked Foundation Document. The Phase Review confirms the persona set passes the Five-Test quality gate.
Extract validated customer wins using structured interview templates for testimonials and case studies
5.1.1 T2D3 customer testimonial interview template
Run structured customer interviews using the standardized 24-question Pain-Claim-Gain script. The interview structure produces three things in parallel: validation or rejection of the workshop hypotheses, verbatim quotes for messaging, a...
5.1.2 Case study interview template
Run a deeper interview specifically with high-signal expansion accounts to produce a publishable case study and a deeper understanding of the expansion motion. Expansion accounts are the highest-signal predictor of where the next dollar ...
Confirm Phase 4 customer validation completion and readiness to advance
5.Z.1 Phase 4 Review and sign-off
Phase 4 Gate — Customer validation complete
Weeks 6 to 8 of the engagement. The Foundation Document is locked, the messaging house is built across three layers (corporate narrative, persona-specific, channel-adapted), the activation sequence is defined using the asymmetric credibility play, and the next ninety days have explicit OKR targets. Output of Phase 5 is the complete Foundation Document, the activation runway, and the ninety-day OKRs that the engagement will execute against. The Phase Review marks the end of the Foundation Phase and the handoff to the execution phases.
Craft core messaging and press narrative to communicate your GTM positioning
6.1.1 Messaging template
Build the complete messaging matrix as message cells per persona × pillar combination. Each cell carries the pain statement (in the buyer's language), the claim statement (what we promise), the gain statement (the outcome they get), proo...
6.1.2 Fictional press release template
Write the press release we would publish if we had to announce the company tomorrow, exactly as we believe it should sound. The exercise is the fastest sanity-check on whether the positioning is real — if the press release sounds like a ...
Document marketing strategy, plan, and growth priorities for alignment and execution
6.2.1 Marketing strategy presentation
Present the complete marketing strategy to client leadership: validated ICP, personas, positioning, messaging house, brand voice, growth bets, and the activation sequence for the next ninety days. The presentation marks the end of the Fo...
6.2.2 Marketing plan spreadsheet
Translate the messaging house and the activation sequence into a quarterly marketing plan with channels, campaigns, content, owners, dates, and budget. The plan is the operational document that the marketing team executes against once th...
6.2.3 T2D3 growth priority spreadsheet
Lock the ARR projections, the lever assumptions (ARPU growth, churn reduction, customer growth), and the prioritized initiatives across acquire / retain / expand for the engagement period. The spreadsheet is the source for the Growth Cal...
Define budget allocation and OKRs to measure Phase 5 success
6.3.1 Marketing budget template
Document the marketing budget for the next 90 to 180 days across categories (people, programs, tools, agencies, events) with explicit allocation per channel and per initiative. The budget grounds the marketing plan in financial reality a...
6.3.2 T2D3 ACMO Handbook engagement OKRs
Convert the marketing plan and growth projections into Objectives and Key Results for the next 90 days using the standardized T2D3 ACMO Handbook OKR structure. The OKRs are what the engagement will be measured against during the executio...
Walk through every GTM module in the T2D3 OS app and enter the Phase 1-5 outputs there, then lock each module. Locking signals that the foundation work is durable and downstream artifacts (messaging, content agents, dashboards) can safely depend on it. Each task below points at one in-app module — open it, paste in the workshop output, and switch the status to "locked".
6.4.1 Run + lock the GTM Survey module
Open the GTM Survey module in T2D3 OS, send the 9-section anonymous survey to the team that produced internal interviews in Phase 2, then lock the module once responses are in and analyzed. Apply to Modules seeds the ICP module's Pain / Profile / Trigger / Density / Anti-ICP items directly.
6.4.2 Run + lock the Team Interviews module
The internal interviews you ran in Phase 2 (Module 3) live in the Team Interviews module. Capture each interview note, extract themes, and lock the module so the synthesis can feed the ICP and Personas work.
6.4.3 Lock the ICP module
The Five-Test ICP (Pain, Profile, Trigger, Economics, Density, plus Anti-ICP) you wrote in Phase 3 of the workshop lives in the ICP module. Enter every test, name 8-12 named accounts that fit the criteria, and lock the module once the team agrees this is the wedge.
Validate foundation completeness and transition to ongoing engagement
6.Z.1 Phase 5 Review and engagement transition
Phase 5 Gate — Foundation locked + activation runway sequenced (mentor session 2)
Ship 3-5 visible wins. Stand up the operating cadence.
Ship the 3-5 wins from the diagnostic.
Run the Quick Wins with Single Owners
Each quick win has a single owner, due date, and success metric.
Track and Report Weekly
Each week, what shipped, what slipped, what we learned. Send to CEO + CRO.
Celebrate Wins Publicly
When something ships, post it in #general. Builds team confidence and CEO endorsement.
OKRs, weekly ops, monthly leadership review.
Stand Up Marketing OKRs
Top 3 OKRs for the quarter. Tied to revenue, not activity.
Run a Weekly 30-Min Marketing Ops Meeting
Status, blockers, decisions. Replaces ad-hoc Slack threads and one-off conversations.
Run a Monthly Leadership Review
CEO + CRO + you. 60 min. KPIs, top wins, top risks, asks.
Single source of truth dashboard the CEO trusts.
Build the Single Source of Truth Dashboard
Pipeline by source, MQL→Opp conversion, blended CAC payback, NRR, top 3 channel productivity.
Get the founder to use it daily
If the CEO doesn't open it weekly, you're still operating on competing dashboards.
Document the Definition of Each Metric
When the next CMO arrives, the metric definitions are documented and live.
4.2.4 Asana brand words template
Run the inside-out brand voice exercise to capture leadership's intuitive sense of the brand voice as a starting point for the Brand Voice strategy. The exercise asks every participant to free-associate words that describe who we are, wh...
4.2.5 Ansoff growth matrix template
Force the leadership team to be explicit about which growth bets they are funding and in what order across the four Ansoff quadrants: market penetration (existing market, existing product), market development (new market, existing produc...
6.4.4 Lock the Personas (P1-P2-P3) module
Inside the ICP account, define the three buying-committee roles: P1 (the user / champion), P2 (the decision-maker), P3 (the blocker / sponsor). Each persona carries pains, dreams, objections, communication style, and buying journey. Locks once the messaging team can write a different opener for each persona without ambiguity.
6.4.5 Lock the Value Props (Best/Better/Only) module
The Best/Better/Only output from workshop section 4.2.1 is the source for the Value Props module — three Pillars (Great, Better, Only) that frame everything downstream (messaging, brand voice, content). Locks once the team agrees these are the three bets, not just three ideas.
6.4.6 Run + lock the Brand Voice module
Run the MaxDiff Brand Voice exercise from workshop section 4.2.4 inside the Brand Voice module. The free-association → sorting → MaxDiff sequence converges on the four words that define your voice across content. Locks once the content team can apply the words consistently without re-asking.
6.4.7 Lock the Growth Matrix module
Workshop section 4.2.5 produced an Ansoff growth matrix — the four-quadrant prioritization of growth initiatives (existing market × existing product, existing market × new product, new market × existing product, new market × new product). Lock the chosen plays in the Growth Matrix module so the OKR-and-quick-wins work in Module 7 has a single source of truth.
6.4.8 Lock the Customer Interviews module
The customer-validation work from Phase 4 lives in the Customer Interviews module. Capture each interview, run Synthesize Findings to extract themes + a language bank, then run "Apply to ICP" to convert customer-voice signals into ICP Pain / Profile / Anti-ICP items. Lock once the language bank is rich enough that the messaging module can quote real customer phrases.
6.4.9 Lock the Messaging Framework module
The Pain-Claim-Gain matrix from workshop sections 4.2.2 (positioning vector) and 6.1.1 (messaging template) is the source for the Messaging Framework module. One message cell per (Pillar × Persona). Lock once every cell has a primary message, supporting evidence, and a How/Why ladder.
