Glossary

The GTMcraft vocabulary, defined.

Twelve canonical terms that run through the whole system. One rule holds them together.

One rule: a human skill is a competency, an AI skill is an agent skill. Never mix them.

Agent skill

AI capability

The AI capability you run inside your LLM: a prompt, subagent, connector or automation that does a real go-to-market job. It lives in the Skill Library and is the AI half of the pair. Your human intelligence times AI.

In practice: You load an outbound-sequencing agent skill into your own AI and it drafts the cadence you sign off.

Competency, the human skill

Human capability / craft

The capability that lives in the operator, built by coaching and reps, not by a prompt. In the library it is kept as a competency; to a buyer we say it plainly: your human skill, your craft. It is the human half of the pair.

In practice: Running a discovery call that qualifies hard is a competency. The library holds it; you build it.

Metric

Outcome

The outcome you move, drawn from the GTM Metric Catalog and placed on the Winning by Design bowtie. Every metric carries a type: Conversion, Velocity or Volume. It is the number, not the activity.

In practice: Win rate is a Conversion metric on the Commit stage. Sales cycle length is a Velocity metric.

Play

Run-it asset

The run-it asset: a five-step move you can run this week. Every play targets one metric, so you always know what it is meant to move.

In practice: The mutual action plan play targets win rate. You run the five steps, you move the number.

The triangle

The core model

A metric is moved by a competency, the human skill, and an agent skill, the AI, operationalized by a play. Three points, one loop. It is the shape of the whole system.

In practice: Off-metric: win rate. Human skill: deal control. Agent skill: deal-desk copilot. Play: the mutual action plan.

Bowtie

The lifecycle map

The Winning by Design full customer lifecycle, both sides. Acquisition on the left: Awareness, Education, Selection, Commit. Retention and expansion on the right: Onboarding, Adoption, Expansion, Renewal. Every metric and play sits on it.

In practice: A leaking Selection stage tells you where in the bowtie your next increment is stuck.

The two diagnostics

Diagnosis

The GTM Metric Diagnostic reads the number and names the one metric to fix. The Competency Diagnostic reads the operator and names the human skill to build. One reads the outcome, one reads the person. They chain.

In practice: Metric Diagnostic says win rate is low. Competency Diagnostic says the missing craft is negotiation.

BIPSY and the 4 Ds

Coaching method

The coaching method. BIPSY diagnoses where a skill breaks down; the 4 Ds install it. It is how a competency actually gets built, not just described.

In practice: BIPSY finds the break at objection handling. The 4 Ds drill it until it holds under pressure.

Role tiers

Who owns what

Second line is the exec of the wider org: CRO / VP Sales. First line is the operators who run the motion: Founder-Operator, GTM operator, Head of Sales. Then the IC roles: AE, BDR, AM, CSM, RevOps, Marketing, Sales Engineer. And the value-creation operator: VC / PE.

In practice: A Head of Sales owns team-level metrics, first line. A CRO owns org-level efficiency, second line.

GTMcraft OS

The operating system

The operating system that ties it together: the metric catalog, the plays, the human skills and agent skills, the two diagnostics and the coaching, tuned to your context and run in your own AI.

In practice: You plug your context in, the OS returns the metric, the skills and the plays for your seat.

The corpus, the moat

The source

Koen's proprietary body of go-to-market signal: newsletters, LinkedIn, podcasts and operator input, re-trained as it grows. Everything, the plays, the skills, the diagnostics, is built from it.

In practice: When a new play works in the field, the corpus learns it and every operator gets it.

The primary persona

Who it is for

The founder-operator and GTM operator of a European private B2B SaaS company, roughly €2M to €25M ARR, growing lean. Senior AEs and AMs, and the investors backing them, sit alongside.

In practice: If you own the number at a lean European B2B SaaS company, the OS is built for your seat.