The Game Plan is Sales Playground's fixed-scope strategy sprint for Australian startups and professional-services firms: four to six weeks, one signed page, targets and owners on it. Then, if you want the plays run for you, our implementation arm — Game Day — picks the page up and builds. You'll know the exact investment before you commit to anything.
Everyone's working harder than last year. Ask three people in your leadership team to state the strategy in one sentence and you'll get three different answers — or one answer that describes effort, not choices.
Every firm on your street says "quality work, great people". Every competitor runs the same outbound playbook. When buyers can't see a difference, they negotiate the only thing left: your fee.
A A$212K Head of Sales, a A$10–20K-a-month fractional, a big-firm engagement you'd never approve. Each buys a person or a deck — none of them buys the discipline of choosing, in writing.
Six artefacts. You can hold every one of them. Nothing is a workshop feeling.
The four ways to grow revenue, your margin structure, CAC and payback — read from your actual numbers before any tactic is discussed. Strategy starts at the P&L or it isn't strategy.
Your website and pitch, side by side with three competitors', identical sentences highlighted. Uncomfortable on purpose — it's the clearest picture you'll get of why buyers negotiate your price.
Where to play, how to be different, and what to stop doing. Choices, written as sentences a 12-year-old could repeat — not themes, pillars or aspirations.
The whole strategy on one page, with targets and owners against every line — and a signature block, because a strategy nobody signs is a suggestion.
The first season of execution, mapped: the plays, the sequence, the scoreboard you'll review. Strategy without a first fortnight is a poster.
Run it yourself with everything transferred, or have Game Day build and run it with you. Either way the playbook is yours — that's a principle, not a promise.
We look at your scoreboard together and tell you whether a Game Plan is warranted. Written note back within 24 hours. No pitch unless you ask.
Baseline, sameness audit, choices — then the page gets signed and the 90-day season plan maps the first plays.
Take the page in-house, or hand the plays to Game Day. The Long Game continues quarterly either way: season reviews that keep score.
Not arguments against hiring — arguments for being clear-eyed about what each option actually buys.
Average Australian salary before 25–35% on-costs and a 6–12 month ramp. A ~A$250K bet on one person's playbook — and you still haven't bought a strategy. You've bought a manager who needs one.
Senior thinking by the day-rate — with no delivery arms. The strategy shows up; the campaigns, content and outbound still need someone to build them.
Roughly one month of a Big-3 team, built for global CEOs. Advice-only: the deck leaves, and nobody stays to run it.
Doing nothing is also a price. It's just invoiced as CAC drift and founder hours — the founder stays the bottleneck, the pipeline stays personal, and every quarter compounds. Each alternative above buys something real. Be precise about what, before you spend.
Every engagement is fixed scope. You'll hear the exact investment at the kick-off call — and it's agreed in writing before anything starts.
The anchor: The Game Plan costs about one month of one mid-level hire — not a year of one. And doing nothing has a price too; it's just invoiced as CAC drift and founder hours.
$–$$$ shows relative investment level. Exact figures are shared at the kick-off, in AUD, GST excluded — and fixed means fixed: scope changes are a conversation before they're ever an invoice.
Every Game Plan is written by the founder — close to a decade in Australian B2B tech sales, from SDR seats through account management to running an enterprise BDM motion, with sales development functions built inside two firms. Research and operations come from a small bench of named senior contractors, all Australian-based. There is no handoff to a junior team after kick-off, because there is no junior team.
Capacity is the product. We work with three to four clients at a time, never two in the same sub-niche. It's the reason the work stays senior — and the reason we'll tell you honestly if the timing doesn't fit.
Meet the bench →The Growth Playbook is the firm's strategy discipline, written down — how to read your own numbers, why your market all sounds identical, and which different moves are available at your scale. Two editions: one for professional-services firms, one for startups. Pick yours in the form.
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Three ways. Price: a Big-3 team runs roughly US$500K for a month; The Game Plan is a fixed-scope fee sized for the mid-market — closer to one month of one mid-level hire. Fit: their machinery is built for global CEOs, ours for Australian businesses under $50M. And the ending: their engagement ends with a deck, ours ends with a signed page and an implementation arm that stays to run it. We borrowed their rigour — reading the P&L before recommending anything — and dropped the access model.
A fractional CRO is a part-time brain — typically A$10–20K a month — with no delivery arms. The thinking shows up; the campaigns, content and outbound still need someone to build them, which usually means more hires or more agencies. The Game Plan produces the strategy as a fixed-fee artefact, and Game Day exists to build what it calls for. One firm, both halves, and the retainer only starts if you want it.
A Head of Sales averages A$212K plus 25–35% on-costs, with a 6–12 month ramp — call it a A$250K first-year bet on one person's playbook. Worth making, at the right time. But a hire isn't a strategy: you've bought a manager who needs one. Most clients run The Game Plan first, then hire into a strategy that exists — the job description improves, and so does the candidate's first quarter.
Six artefacts: the financial baseline, the sameness audit, the written choices, the one-page Game Plan with targets and owners, the 90-day season plan, and the handoff — everything transferred, whoever runs it. The page is the point: if your leadership team can't state the strategy in a sentence each, it isn't done. Nothing is delivered as a slide deck.
If you want it, yes — that's Game Day, our implementation arm: outbound engine, marketing engine, sales system build, run by senior Australian operators on published retainers. If you'd rather run it in-house, the handoff is built for that and we'll cheer from the stands. The Long Game continues quarterly in either case, so the targets get reviewed by someone with no reason to flatter them.
Keep them — a strategy makes existing spend work harder. The Game Plan tells your agency what to aim at, gives your marketer the positioning they've been asking for, and gives your SDR a reason their messages should be answered. Where something genuinely overlaps, the season plan says so in writing and you decide. We don't need to replace anyone to be useful.
If you're an Australian B2B startup under A$10M ARR or a professional-services firm under A$50M — accounting, law, engineering, environmental, architecture, advisory, agencies — very likely. The method reads your economics first, so it travels across sectors. Two honest limits: we don't take two clients in the same sub-niche at once, and if we don't understand your buyer we'll say so at the kick-off, not at week four.
A fixed figure, told to you at the kick-off call and agreed in writing before anything starts — never an open-ended retainer, never a scope surprise. The honest anchor: The Game Plan costs about one month of one mid-level hire, not a year of one; the Growth audit is a fraction of that and credits forward if you continue. If the number doesn't make sense against the target it's meant to move, we'd rather you say no at minute 20 than at week four.
Twenty minutes tells both of us whether a Game Plan is warranted — and it's where you hear the exact investment, before you've committed to anything.