The flagship GTM playbook every new T2D3 OS user gets after completing the Journey module. Mirrors the 13-lesson Practitioner Certification — turning each lesson into executable tasks — to take a fractional CMO from a freshly-signed engagement to a renewable, productized practice. Source: T2D3 book, the certification course, and the T2D3 masterclass series.
Project, OKRs, and rhythm cadence — the operating cadence that makes the strategy executable. Pairs with PC05 and PC06.
Translate the Journey artifacts into the project the team works against.
Create the project from the right playbook template
Pick the playbook template that matches your priority initiative. Edit the spine, do not rebuild it.
Link OKRs from the plan-on-a-page
Connect the project to the OKRs you committed to in the Journey module so progress flows automatically.
Schedule the first weekly Signal meeting
Run the first Signal in week one, not week three. The longer you wait the harder it is to install.
Mobile app, monthly board update, monthly coaching — the rhythm beyond the Signal.
Install the mobile companion app
Install T2D3 OS on iOS or Android. Capture and complete action items on the go.
Schedule the monthly board update
Auto-generated from Signal summaries, OKR progress, and calculator actuals. Two business days before the board meeting.
Schedule monthly coaching one-on-ones
Monthly one-on-ones with each direct report on the marketing team using the structured coaching template.
Team interviews + the GTM survey. The two listening instruments that turn the diagnostic into ground-truth before the ICP work begins. Pairs with PC07.
Sixty-minute structured conversations with leadership and customer-facing functions.
Identify 6–10 internal interviewees across functions
Leadership, sales, CS, product, plus 1–2 senior individual contributors. The diagnosis told you the dimensions; the interviews tell you the texture.
Generate role-tailored interview scripts
T2D3 OS produces a starter script per interviewee tailored to their role. Edit before the call — generic scripts produce generic answers.
Conduct, tape, and transcribe interviews
Tape every call. Notes alone miss the off-script story that's half the value. Use the upload-and-transcribe feature for high-quality transcripts.
Synthesize findings after 6+ interviews
Click Synthesize Findings. The contradictions section is where the strategy work actually lives.
Whole-team survey, including the people who'd never be invited to the strategy meeting.
Edit the starter survey using interview insights
Run the team interviews FIRST. The starter survey is generic; sharpen it with what the interviews surfaced.
Send the survey to the entire client team
Personalized link per recipient, anonymous in the aggregate but tagged by role for slicing.
Drill into bimodal answer distributions
Bimodal distributions are the highest-value signal — the team is split on something fundamental.
Build the ICP using the Five-Test framework — Pain, Profile, Trigger, Economics, Density — plus the Anti-ICP. The anchor of every campaign for the next twelve months. Pairs with PC08.
Five sections, each a test the ICP must pass.
Sharpen the Pain section: 3–5 confirmed pains in customer language
Edit the draft items from the listening module. Use verbatim customer phrases — do not paraphrase.
Make Profile criteria specific (not 'mid-market', but 50–200 employees)
Vague profile criteria produce a generic ICP. Specific criteria produce a target list you can build.
Add 3+ triggers with detection methods
Triggers are often missing from listening because few interviewees articulate them. Add manually based on judgment.
Validate Economics against the calculator
Pull CAC, LTV, ACV, gross margin from the calculator. Confirm the math works for both sides.
Validate Density: 300–50,000 likely-buyer accounts globally
Below 300 is too narrow for scale. Above 50,000 means you should beachhead.
Patterns of customer who'll buy but shouldn't. The document the sales team will love you for.
Build 3–5 Anti-ICP patterns from churn + lost-deal data
Anti-ICP patterns describe the customers who'll technically buy but should not — they churn, they sue, they sink CSAT.
Run the ICP draft past the head of sales BEFORE locking
The head of sales lives in lost-deal data. Their feedback is the highest-yield review.
Lock the ICP
Locking creates a versioned snapshot. Future changes are tracked.
P1/P2/P3 personas mapped against Why Change / Why You / Why Now — the 27-cell Pain-Claim-Gain grid that drives every campaign. Pairs with PC09.
P1 (user), P2 (decision maker), P3 (sponsor or blocker). Real people, not archetypes.
Build P1 — the user
The person who uses the product day to day. Lives with the current alternative every day; champion or blocker; rarely the buyer.
Build P2 — the decision maker
Owns the budget, signs the contract, cares about outcomes. Almost never uses the product themselves.
Build P3 — the sponsor or blocker (often multiple patterns for enterprise)
Procurement, security, IT, legal, peer executive whose budget overlaps. Skip P3 and enterprise deals close 8 weeks late.
Customer interviews — the validation layer. Eight to twelve calls across happy, lost, and churn pools. Two outputs: strategy validation and a testimonial bank that powers a year of marketing. Pairs with PC10a.
8-12 interviews. Mix: 5 happy, 3 lost, 2 churn.
Have CS nominate 8-12 interview candidates across 3 pools
Recruit through customer success, not directly. Nominated customers reply more and talk more.
Send personalized outreach to each candidate
T2D3 OS drafts the email; you edit and send from your own address.
Run the interview, ask permission to quote, log the transcript
Sixty minutes, structured but conversational. Ask the testimonial question at the end of every call.
Two outputs from one motion: strategy validation + testimonial bank.
Synthesize after 5+ interviews; walk contradictions with founder
The synthesis report has 6 sections. The contradictions section is the most strategic.
Generate testimonial drafts and send for approval
Pick 3-5 quote-flagged notes from each consenting customer; one-click drafts polished testimonials.
Best-Better-Only value proposition + an unimprovable elevator pitch.
Best-Better-Only + the elevator pitch.
Build the Best-Better-Only value proposition
Three sentences, worked over until unimprovable. Best, Better-than-what, Only-you-can.
Polish the elevator pitch until unimprovable
T2D3 OS strings Best-Better-Only into a single elevator-pitch value proposition.
Voice from a word-sort with founder + team + customers; compile and lock the profile.
Word-sort + a locked voice profile.
Run the brand voice word-sort with founder + team + 2 customer-facing folks
Voice should be derivable, not invented. The word-sort surfaces what is real.
Compile and lock the voice profile
The compiled profile is a 5–7 attribute list + do-and-don't grid + voice rubric for contractors.
Pain-Claim-Gain grid + the 9-cell-per-persona messaging framework — the source of truth for every campaign.
27 cells (3 personas × 3 questions × Pain/Claim/Gain). Yes, it's a lot. Every cell is reusable.
Fill the P1 9-cell grid
Why Change × Pain/Claim/Gain. Why You × Pain/Claim/Gain. Why Now × Pain/Claim/Gain. Use customer language for Pain.
Fill the P2 9-cell grid — disproportionate effort on Why Now
P2 has heard the why-change pitch a dozen times. Why-now is what closes the deal.
Fill each P3 9-cell grid
P3 personas care about safety, control, and not being the person who let in the thing that broke.
Run personas past the head of sales for a 40-minute review
The head of sales lives in the buying committee. They will sharpen every persona within 40 minutes.
Lock the personas
Locking creates a versioned snapshot. The messaging framework will reference the snapshot.
The 9-cell-per-persona grid that becomes the source of truth for every campaign.
Fill the messaging grid for every persona
Rows × columns: P1, P2, each P3 pattern × Why Change, Why You, Why Now.
Use Compile Voice on every cell
Rewrites the cell's headline and copy in the locked brand voice profile.
Generate and share the messaging framework PDF
One page per persona. The document every contractor, agency, and team member references for a year.
The operating cadence that lets the engagement run on autopilot for two more quarters with you working four days a month. Pairs with PC11.
Three nested cadences: monthly board, quarterly business review, custom dashboards.
Schedule the quarterly business review (QBR)
12-page document, half-day commitment, three audiences (founder, leadership, board) in three framings.
Build founder + leadership dashboards
One dashboard for the 3-5 numbers the founder watches; one for operational health for the leadership team.
Set up bowler charts for every key result
Actual vs planned, week by week, with variance indicator. Three audiences, one chart, dramatically less friction.
Beat the founder to bad news, every cycle. Track artifact reuse for productization.
Beat the founder to bad news every week
If a key result is going to miss, you should be the one telling the founder 24 hours before the Signal — not the other way around.
Track artifact reuse for productization
Capture which playbooks you reused, which deletions were always required, which conversations you had four times.
Convert the engagement into reusable templates. Quote 25-50% higher for client #2. The compounding return is the rest of your career. Pairs with PC11.
Last 2 weeks of the engagement: convert projects, diagnostics, and frameworks into your specialty templates.
Convert this project into a custom playbook template
Keep the task structure. Genericize client-specific names. Drop tasks that were one-offs.
Save the diagnostic as your specialty diagnostic
Specialty diagnostics charge 3-5x more than generalist diagnostics.
Write the engagement retrospective
One-page summary: what worked, what didn't, what you'd change for client #2.
Quote 25-50% higher for client #2
Most fractional CMOs leave the increase on the table. Don't.
