Your outbound isn't broken because of your tools.
It's broken because you run them in the wrong order.
Everyone's arguing about which enrichment tool to buy. Wrong fight fr.
So I put how we actually run outbound at Sparq on one sheet. One loop, eight stations. Signal, companies, people, verify, variables, send, replies, book. Then back to signal.
The line in the middle is the whole game: cheap steps before AI steps.
A few rules on there I'd tattoo on every new GTM engineer:
→ Filter on signal first. Never run tenure first.
→ Qualify the company before you pay for a single contact. Max 2 people per company.
→ Claude Code writes 2 fields per row. The email template never changes.
→ Count humans only. One audit had 131 "replies" on the dashboard. 12 were actual people 💀
→ Reply to booked call is where pipeline leaks. Not volume.
The sending math is on there too. 1 inbox × 5 a day × 26 days = 130 emails a month. Want 100k a month? That's ~770 inboxes. No magic lol.
Bottom left there's a 0–10 scorecard for the five disciplines. Screenshot it and be honest with yourself.
Comment FIELD and I'll send you the full-res sheet.
#GTMEngineering #ColdEmail #Outbound
Nishkarsh Agarwal
Founder @Sparq Labs, GTME.School · 3w ago
We cancelled our Clay subscription 30 days ago.
Nothing broke. Outbound got faster.
For 8 months we ran the stack every agency runs — Clay, Apollo.io, Instantly.ai, n8n, and a
Google Sheet nobody actually reviewed. $1,200/month. Around 10 hours a week
keeping it alive. Auth failures every Monday.
Then March happened.
Clay reset pricing: +28% cost, −40% credits, Pro tier deleted. And every HTTP call
became a billed "Action" — which meant our own custom API integrations started
burning credits just for existing.
We were paying Clay to run our own code.
So we rebuilt it in Claude Code. One terminal. One prompt. Prospeo.io → FullEnrich →
LeadMagic waterfall, straight into Instantly.
$400/month. Under 2 hours a week. Same reply rate. 3x the campaigns.
Three things I got wrong going in:
1. I thought we'd lose speed. We got faster — campaigns now launch in 20 minutes
instead of 2 days.
2. I thought the team would resist. First question was why we hadn't done it in January.
3. I thought clients would care which tools we use. Not one has asked. They care about
meetings booked.
Full breakdown in the carousel — the architecture, the exact prompt we run in
production, and an honest list of who should NOT do this.
If you're an agency still paying the Clay tax, this one's for you.
—
Comment "STACK" and I'll send you the prompt we actually run.
#GTM #Outbound #GTMEngineering #ClaudeCode #RevOps
Nico Druelle
GTM Engineering for the best AI-native companies | Founder @ The Revenue Architects · 3w ago
I screened 176 AI companies in the Bay for a GTM engineer.
The number that actually have one surprised me.
𝟰𝟱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗶𝘁, i.e 131 don't.
Few takeaways:
#1. This job category is sooo new that 90% of everyone holding the title today started in 2025 or later, and 37 of them started this year alone.
#2. GTME are lone wolves. 61% of companies with a GTM engineer have exactly one. Leads me to think that this is still experimental. Having a GTM Eng department is not the norm yet
#3. Comp Variance is still HUGE, i.e., nobody has worked out what to pay for it. The same job title is advertised at $100K and at $330K. That is a 3.3x spread on one title (granted some seniority bias)
If you're a seasoned ops professional and thinking of changing your title on LinkedIn to GTME -- the market is wide open for you.
I reviewed 400+ GTM Engineer applications. The best candidates weren't doing MORE.
I just spent a week inside 400+ GTM Engineer applications.
I have notes 😂
Last week, I posted ONE GTM Engineer role.
My inbox exploded.
But the candidates who stood out weren't necessarily sending:
• More applications
• More DMs
• More follow-ups
• Longer messages
• 17-minute Looms
They were making my job easier.
They:
• Made their relevance obvious
• Led with experience matching the JD
• Shared actual performance data
• Kept their message SHORT
• Had examples of what they'd built
• Followed up without stalking me across the internet
One thing I'd especially recommend?
Build a brag file.
For every important project, document:
Problem → Build → Tech → Outcome → Data
Don't just tell me:
"Built an outbound system using Clay."
Tell me:
"Built X, reduced Y by 15 hours/week and generated $1.2M pipeline."
Now we're talking.
I broke down 9 lessons from reviewing 400+ candidates in this week's newsletter.
Because your job search shouldn't be random.
Treat yourself like your first GTM campaign.
