Playbooks

Guided processes for sales, onboarding, and account management.

Overview

Playbooks are step-by-step processes that guide your team through repeatable workflows. Instead of a generic automation builder, playbooks provide structured accountability: each step has a type (call, meeting, email, task, form, decision), an optional time limit, and time/expense tracking.

Pre-Built Templates

Breadbox ships with 8 playbook templates that cover the core MSP workflows:

• Initial Contact Outreach — multi-touch cadence to reach a new prospect
• Discovery & Qualification — once connected, qualify the prospect for handoff
• Assessment Delivery — once qualified and a Deal exists, run the formal assessment
• Proposal & Close — handle objections and move the deal to Closed Won
• Monthly Account Review — monthly reconciliation and engagement check
• Renewal Process — 90-day renewal runway
• New Client Onboarding — complete onboarding from kickoff to first review

Step Types

Each step in a playbook has a type that determines its behavior:

• Task — Generic to-do item
• Call — Phone call, auto-logs a touchpoint on completion
• Meeting — Scheduled meeting with duration tracking
• Email — Send an email, can use templates
• Form — Fill out structured data (assessment, checklist)
• Document — Upload or send a document (proposal, SOW)
• Decision — Branch point — advance, disqualify, or pause
• Milestone — Marks a significant checkpoint
• Approval — Requires approval from another user
• Wait — Pause for a configured number of days

Auto-Enrollment

Playbooks can be configured to auto-enroll prospects when they enter a specific engagement stage. Configure this in Settings → Prospect Engagement Stages by linking a playbook to a stage. When a prospect is advanced to that stage, the playbook starts automatically — useful for triggering an outreach cadence at “Attempting to Connect” or kicking off a discovery checklist at “Connected”.

Time and Expense Tracking

Each step completion can log time spent (in minutes) and expenses incurred. This data rolls up to the enrollment level and feeds the Cost to Acquire Client calculation.

Focus Mode

Playbook Focus Mode is an immersive full-screen experience for working through steps. Click "Focus" on any active playbook enrollment to enter focus mode. The screen shows:

• Context Panel (left) — Account summary, key contacts with preferred methods and last touch dates, previous step notes, recent touchpoints
• Step Form (center) — Instructions, type-specific input form (call logger, meeting notes, email composer, decision buttons), time + expense tracking
• Progress Tracker (top) — Visual step-by-step progress bar

Steps smoothly transition with animations. DECISION steps show large branch buttons. MILESTONE steps show a celebration animation. On completion, a summary shows total time, expenses, and steps completed/skipped.

Advancing steps from My Breadbox

You don't have to open Focus Mode to advance a playbook. In My Breadbox, clicking an account card opens the account pop-out, which includes an Active playbooks section. The card shows the current step name, its description, and the next step — with a ✓ Complete button that advances the playbook in place. This keeps reps in their morning-sweep flow without bouncing to a detail page.

Stage Gate Enforcement

Playbooks integrate with pipeline stage gates. When a pipeline stage has "Requires Playbook Completion" enabled, deals cannot advance past that stage until all required playbook steps are completed. This ensures process compliance — reps follow the methodology.

Configuration

Manage playbooks in Settings → Playbooks. You can activate/deactivate templates, create custom playbooks, add/remove/reorder steps, and configure triggers. Link playbooks to pipeline stages in Settings → Pipeline Stages.