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Free · open · 16 chapters

The GTM Engineering Handbook

A practical guide to GTM engineering: who to target and why now, how to build and enrich the list without wasting money, how to land in the inbox, and how to wire it into systems that run themselves. About 3 hours of reading, in order or by chapter.

Start reading See the skill roadmap

  • Original scenarios

    Every chapter is built around situations you'll meet with real customers.

  • Diagrams you can redraw

    One picture per idea, drawn so you can sketch it on a whiteboard.

  • Exercises with answers

    Commit to your answer first, then compare it with a worked one.

  • Credit where it's due

    Public frameworks are named and linked to their authors.

Part I

The job

What GTM engineers build, and the machine that turns strangers into pipeline.

  1. 01What a GTM engineer actually doesHalf commercial thinker, half builder: how the role differs from RevOps, SDRs and software engineers, and where it sits. 9 min
  2. 02The pipeline machineFive jobs every outbound system does, the handoffs where it leaks, and the arithmetic of a funnel. 10 min
Part II

Strategy before tools

Who to target, how many of them exist, why now, and what to say.

  1. 03The ideal customer, and the customer to avoidBuild an ICP from the deals you already won, write the anti-ICP, and make both specific enough to filter a database. 12 min
  2. 04Sizing the market from the bottom upCount real accounts instead of quoting analyst reports, and use the count to choose where to start. 10 min
  3. 05Signals: the reason to write todayEvents that make a company likely to buy now, how to tell a strong signal from noise, and how fast they go stale. 12 min
  4. 06Offer and messageSay one useful thing to one kind of buyer. Testing offers before you automate anything. 11 min
Part III

The data

Building lists, enriching them without burning money, scoring them, and researching with AI.

  1. 07Building the listDatabases, LinkedIn searches and scraping: what each is good for, and the quality bar a list must clear. 11 min
  2. 08Enrichment that doesn't waste moneyWaterfalls, gating expensive steps, de-duplicating, and the one cost metric worth tracking. 13 min
  3. 09Scoring: who to contact firstFit plus timing, built as a rubric you can explain and checked against deals you actually won. 10 min
  4. 10AI research at scaleUsing language models to research thousands of accounts, without publishing their mistakes to prospects. 12 min
Part IV

Reaching people

Getting into the inbox at all, then writing something worth reading.

  1. 11Deliverability: the plumbing nobody seesDomains, authentication, warm-up and sending limits: the plumbing that decides whether anyone sees your email. 14 min
  2. 12Copy and personalisationShort, relevant and honest beats clever. Where AI helps write at scale, and how to keep it from embarrassing you. 13 min
Part V

Systems that run themselves

Orchestration, the CRM as source of truth, and code and agents.

  1. 13Orchestration and handoffsWebhooks, workflow tools and APIs, and why the joins between tools are where pipelines quietly break. 13 min
  2. 14The CRM as the source of truthObjects, ownership, routing and hygiene: making the CRM trustworthy enough that reports mean something. 12 min
  3. 15Code and agents for GTMHow much code you need, what it unlocks, and where AI agents help versus where a script is safer. 12 min
Part VI

Getting the job

Proof of work, portfolios and trial projects.

  1. 16Proof of work and getting hiredOne company, a handful of shipped systems with numbers, and how to handle the paid trial project. 11 min

This handbook is written from scratch for Fieldwork and is free to read. Where a chapter builds on someone else's public work, the author is named and linked.