What is a Playbook?
A Playbook is a complete sales and marketing strategy that connects every element of your GTM knowledge into a single, executable unit. It is the most interconnected entity in Octave — the hub that pulls together who to sell to, what to sell, why it matters, what evidence to use, and how to position against competitors. Unlike a static sales deck or enablement doc, a Playbook is a living structure that agents read at runtime to generate personalized, context-aware output for every prospect interaction. When your market shifts, you update the Playbook once, and every agent, workflow, and API call that references it immediately reflects the change. When an Octave agent generates a sequence, qualifies a prospect, or preps for a call, it reads from one or more Playbooks to determine the right messaging, objection handling, discovery questions, and positioning for that specific context.What a Playbook contains
Every Playbook includes:- Messaging strategy — how to position the product for this audience
- Discovery questions — what to ask to qualify and understand the prospect
- Objection handling — prepared responses to common pushback
- Positioning guidance — how to differentiate against specific competitors
How Playbooks connect to other entities
A Playbook is composed of references to other Library entities:| Connection | Role | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Offering | What you’re selling | ”Octave Platform” |
| Personas (Buyer) | Who makes the purchase decision | ”VP of Sales”, “CRO” |
| Personas (User) | Who uses the product day-to-day | ”SDR Manager”, “GTM Engineer” |
| Segment | Target market | ”Mid-market SaaS” |
| Use Cases | Problems this playbook addresses | ”Automate outbound”, “Scale ABM” |
| References | Customer success stories to cite | ”Acme Corp — 3x pipeline” |
| Proof Points | Stats to reinforce credibility | ”58% cost reduction” |
| Competitors | Competitive context to address | ”Lavender”, “Unify” |
| Alternatives | Non-product substitutes to position against | ”Manual spreadsheets”, “Do nothing” |
| Buying Triggers | Signals that activate this playbook | ”New CRO hire”, “Series B fundraise” |
| Collateral | Supporting materials | Case study PDF, demo video |
| Value Props | Per-persona benefit statements | Linked via Hypotheses |
How agents use Playbooks
When you run an agent — say, the Sequence Agent to generate an outbound email sequence — it selects the relevant Playbook based on the prospect’s profile. From that Playbook, it reads the messaging strategy, pulls proof points for the prospect’s industry, references the right customer success story, and addresses the most likely competitive objection. This is why the same agent produces different output for different prospects. The agent logic is constant. The context changes based on which Playbook applies.Value Props (Hypotheses)
Value Props in Octave are persona-specific benefit statements that live within a Playbook. They connect a specific persona’s pain points to the Playbook’s solution. For example, a “Cost Reduction” value prop in an Enterprise Playbook might be tailored differently for the CFO (focused on budget impact) versus the VP of Sales (focused on rep efficiency). You can manage value props through the MCP tools or API:list_value_props— list all value props grouped by personaadd_value_props— add user-provided or AI-generated value propsupdate_value_props— update, archive, or delete value props