The book
Go-to-market: from zero to specialist
Taking a product to market — finding who cares, explaining it, selling it, and getting them to come back — is the skill that decides whether a company lives or dies. This book teaches it whole: the complete system, in order, from «what is GTM, and why does it never end?» to «how do I get paid for this and deliver excellent work?». One manual, not a hundred scattered fragments.
Instant download · print-quality PDF · 447 pages · 14-day guarantee
2nd edition · July 2026. Buy once and always read the latest edition, free — go-to-market changes and the book stays current. See what changed.
The problem
If you come from marketing and systems, you already know the feeling: everyone says «GTM» and almost no one explains what’s inside. You learn it in scattered pieces — an outbound sequence here, a positioning idea there — and you never quite see how it all fits. You have pieces; you’re missing the blueprint.
The value of this discipline is in holding the whole map in your head, knowing where your place is inside it, and being able to diagnose any startup without hesitating. With that map, you’re the person they call when «we have something good» has to become «we have a business».
The opportunity
Why this skill pays — and will keep paying
This skill has three traits that, together, make it an exceptionally solid career bet:
It never ends
Channels expire and competitors copy: the game is replayed every quarter. You don’t sell a specific tactic — you sell the ability to find the next one. While one play lasts, you’re already building the next: your value rises with every channel shift.
Companies compete for you
In B2B, either you sell to the client or your competitor does. That zero-sum dynamic makes the specialist who knows how to do it someone in demand: hiring you means you win and your rival doesn’t get you.
There’s a gap and a budget
Almost every B2B startup needs GTM and almost no founder knows how to do it. Building a whole team is expensive and slow; that’s why the embedded specialist who sets up the system in ninety days is a growing figure.
And artificial intelligence? It raises the value of this career: it commoditizes execution and shifts the weight toward judgment — knowing what to play and why —, which is exactly what you absorb in these 447 pages.
What’s inside
Five parts, one complete journey
25 chapters · 5 parts · 5 appendices · 447 pages · more than 120,000 words
The terrain
What go-to-market really is, why it’s one of the best career opportunities right now, and why it’s an infinite game replayed every quarter.
The map
The four growth engines, the six skills of the specialist, and how to cross them to find your lane: your skill × your function × your company type.
The execution
How you actually win clients: outbound from strategy to deliverability, discovery and demo, inbound that converts, your personal brand as a channel, and getting found by AI (AEO/GEO).
GTM in the age of AI
The pendulum effect — what AI commoditizes and where value shifts —, what to do with it day to day, and how to build your first GTM agent with judgment.
The business
From founder to the specialist who gets paid: lessons on PMF and pivots, the venture-capital world, the craft of working and communicating, how to position yourself and price, an end-to-end case, and your plan to your first client.
Inside the book
A premium manual, designed to be consulted
Interior laid out with its own palette: vector figures, diagnosis tables and ready-to-use templates. This is what you open when you download it.
What you take away
Actionable assets to copy and use
The book is designed for you to copy and use. This is the tangible part you take away:
- 18 ready-to-use templates
- ICP in three levels · value-prop formula · five-step outbound sequence · A/B/C scoring rubric · 9-point GTM audit checklist · five-box battlecard · one-page 90-day proposal/SOW · four-line weekly update · champion kit · sales compensation-plan skeleton · lead routing and SLA · AI audit matrix (Worse/Same/Better) · discovery-call guide (S-P-I-D) · unit economics sheet · 30-day onboarding plan · partner kit · 30-60-90 salesperson ramp · positioning canvas (Dunford’s five components).
- 18 real-world B2B cases
- Snowflake, Slack, Stripe, Calendly and Zapier, Gong, HubSpot, Salesforce, Atlassian, Notion, Figma, Shopify and the European AI champions (Lovable, ElevenLabs, Magnific), among others — public companies you recognize, mapped to their engine and their play.
- 35 figures
- Vector diagrams that let you see each framework at a glance.
- The «GTM in plain language» glossary
- Translates every technical term into plain words.
- The cheat sheet: GTM on one page
- The subway map of the whole discipline, to review before a meeting with a client.
- Reading list and sources
- To keep going deeper on your own.
Who it’s for
Your place is here
Written for a specific person: you come from marketing and systems, you can build processes and read data, and you want to become a go-to-market specialist for B2B tech startups. It fits you if:
- You want to make the jump to a GTM specialist, RevOps or GTM Engineer role and need the whole map, not fragments.
- You already handle marketing or systems and want to see how each piece fits into a business that sells.
- You’re a founder or work at a startup and want to build a repeatable growth engine that runs without you in front of it.
- You want to learn to diagnose any B2B startup and propose the right play — going to the cause, not the symptom.
- You’re drawn to getting paid for judgment, not for hours, and want the method that makes it possible.
When you finish
What you’ll be able to do when you close the last page
A method to use from the first page. When you finish, you’ll be able to:
- Understand GTM for real: define it, see its six pieces, and why it never ends.
- Read the map: identify your primary and secondary skill and translate them into a concrete GTM role where you shine.
- Master the four engines — outbound, inbound, product-led and partnerships — and your personal brand, and how AI fits into each.
- Diagnose any B2B startup in four questions — is there product-market fit? which engine suits it? where’s the bottleneck? what’s the play? — and propose the right plan.
- Chart your roadmap to position yourself as a specialist and build your authority starting today.
With that judgment, you stop selling execution and start selling decisions: that’s what gets paid for judgment, not for hours.
From the book to your first engagement
You finish by producing your first sellable case
The book walks you step by step to producing it yourself: with the diagnosis tree, its templates and a 90-day plan, you pick a real startup and deliver the one-page mini-diagnosis. That deliverable is your first case — the one that fills the work section of your site and opens your first engagements.
As the book itself puts it: the first client pays you little in exchange for the case, and the case brings the next ones at full price. For $69, you come away with your first commercial asset: a real case, produced by you.
How it’s written
Three promises of style
In plain language
Every concept arrives first in plain words and with an everyday analogy, and only then with its technical name. GTM is like a football team: scoring a goal isn’t just the striker’s job. Same with everything.
With examples and cases
Real, public companies you already know, an example startup that runs through the whole book, and exercises so the method sinks in by doing it, not reading it.
Current with AI
We tackle artificial intelligence head-on: what it commoditizes, where value shifts, how you build and govern an agent, and why human judgment matters more than ever. AI raises this career: it moves value toward judgment, which is exactly what the book teaches.
About the author
Mario Hernández is a go-to-market consultant and the creator of creactia, where he helps B2B tech startups turn «we have something good» into a repeatable growth system.
He works the way this book argues: embedded, as one more member of the team and not an advisor watching from the sidelines; with few clients at a time to give them real dedication; with fees tied to results; and with artificial intelligence at the center of the operation, to decide with data and execute at scale.
He comes from marketing and systems. He wrote this book as the map he wishes he’d had when he started: go-to-market complete, in plain language, from zero to specialist.
Try it first
Read a free sample
The prologue, the table of contents and the full first chapter, exactly as you read them in the book. I’ll send it to your email.
Questions
There’s endless free GTM content in English. Why this?
Free newsletters and threads teach you a piece — one sequence, one positioning idea, one tool. This is the whole system in one place, and the judgment to connect the pieces: the map, the four engines, the diagnosis, the unit economics, the business of getting paid for it. The fragments are everywhere and change every year; the system is what compounds, and it’s what you get paid for.
Why a print-quality PDF and not a Kindle ebook?
Because it’s a technical manual with a designed interior: 35 vector diagrams, diagnosis tables, laid-out templates and its own palette. The PDF keeps that exact design on any screen, with the figures and tables in their place. It’s a premium manual made to be consulted.
What devices can I read it on?
Any device that opens a PDF: computer, tablet, phone or PDF reader. It’s ~4 MB. It looks the same on all of them, and it prints perfectly if you’d rather have it on paper.
Will I get updates?
Yes. When I publish a revision of the PDF, everyone who already bought it receives it, through the same delivery email. You buy once and always read the current version.
Is there a refund?
Yes: you have a 14-day guarantee. If the book isn’t what you expected, write to me and I refund the amount.
I already know a fair bit of marketing. Is it still for me?
Yes, and that’s where its value is: the book takes what you already know in scattered pieces and gives you the map that connects them. You’ll see where marketing fits inside the complete system — engines, RevOps, sales, partnerships, product growth — and how to move from executing tactics to diagnosing businesses.
Does it work for B2C?
The book is centered on B2B tech startups: that’s where its cases, engines and templates live. The underlying frameworks — positioning, growth loops, unit economics, the awareness ladder — are useful in any business, but the execution and the examples are built for B2B.
What starting level do I need?
That of someone coming from marketing and systems, who can build processes and read data. Every concept is explained in plain language before it gets its technical name: the book takes you from zero to specialist, in that order, starting from your current base.
Get it
The whole go-to-market, in one book
You’ve learned this discipline in pieces because almost no one teaches it whole. Here you have it complete: the map, the engines, the skills, the execution, AI and the business of getting paid for judgment. More than 400 pages, 18 templates you can use tomorrow, 18 real cases and the cheat sheet that fits in your head.
Secure payment with Stripe · instant PDF delivery · 14-day guarantee.
The book is the complete system, for you to apply. If you also want guidance, there’s a course.
With the book you have the whole go-to-market to read and apply at your pace. If you also want guidance — an AI tutor that quizzes you and runs roleplay, the exam, the certificate and the prompt library —, that’s the GTM specialist course: the same content, with that layer on top. And your purchase counts: the book’s price is credited toward the course — your personal code arrives in the delivery email.
See the GTM specialist course →