Everyone is trying to hire a go-to-market engineer. Ryan Vanshur thinks that person is already sitting inside your org — you just haven't found them yet.

Ryan is VP of GTM Intelligence and AI Solutions at Handle, a title that didn't exist until he built the job that needed it. Before that he spent nearly a decade as a co-founder at CourseKey, taking it from a San Diego State incubator through a full enterprise pivot to a private-equity exit. Today he runs Handle's go-to-market tech stack and BDR team, and he's led an AI transformation that put a custom context graph and a role-based internal AI Academy in the hands of every department.

In this conversation with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico, Ryan walks through exactly how he finds one builder inside each department and what he hands them — then shares his screen and takes apart the context graph underneath it all. He also puts real numbers on the other side: sales cycles from 12–18 months down to 6–9, a 9% lift in win rate, ACV up 70%, and a team that went from 12 account executives to 8 without a backfill and still had a record year.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Why the go-to-market engineer you're recruiting for is probably already on your payroll

Why the model is not your problem: how to build a go-to-market context graph from scratch

The real numbers: 12–18 month cycles cut to 6–9, 9% win-rate lift, 70% ACV growth

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold open + intro

02:05 — The GTM engineer you're hiring already works for you

05:02 — How to find the one builder inside each department

08:19 — Vibe-coding tech debt: data has a shelf life

14:50 — Why the context graph is the layer that matters

17:08 — Screen share: inside a live go-to-market context graph

20:51 — Build your own graph, step by step

23:15 — 75% of it was outdated: the content audit

27:37 — The wave theory of AI adoption

30:50 — The numbers: cycle time, win rate, and ACV

35:03 — Where RevOps is going

37:52 — Build vs. buy: micro-SaaS and why he won't rebuild the CRM

42:59 — What the Salesforce-admin generation needs to learn now

50:43 — Making the resourcing case to your exec team

54:22 — Headcount: three BDRs instead of four AEs

59:05 — Wrap

ABOUT THE GUEST

Ryan Vanshur is VP of GTM Intelligence and AI Solutions at Handle, where he owns the go-to-market tech stack and the BDR team and has led an AI transformation reaching every department. He spent nearly a decade as a co-founder at CourseKey, the San Diego trade-school management platform, running sales, marketing, client success and eventually revenue operations through a full enterprise pivot and a private-equity exit. He holds an MIT advanced certificate in artificial intelligence, is completing a certificate at Harvard Business School, and writes the Vertical GTM Guild, where he publishes AI-native go-to-market frameworks and playbooks for vertical SaaS operators.

ABOUT THE LEANSCALE PODCAST

The LeanScale Podcast is the show for GTM operators building the next generation of revenue infrastructure. Hosted by Anthony Enrico, co-founder of LeanScale, we go deep with the operators, founders, and executives shaping how modern go-to-market teams are designed, scaled, and transformed.

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KEYWORDS / TAGS

RevOps, GTM, GTM Engineering, GTM Engineer, Context Graph, Knowledge Graph, RAG, MCP, AI in RevOps, AI Transformation, AI Adoption, AI Agents, Vibe Coding, Sales Operations, Sales Enablement, Account Intelligence, Win Rate, Sales Cycle, ACV, Build vs Buy, Micro SaaS, Salesforce, Claude, Vertical SaaS, B2B SaaS, Handle, CourseKey, Vertical GTM Guild, RevOps Leadership, BDR, LeanScale, Anthony Enrico, Ryan Vanshur

HASHTAGS

#RevOps #GTM #AI #GTMEngineering #RevenueOperations #ContextGraph #AIAgents #SalesEnablement #B2BSaaS #VerticalSaaS #Salesforce #AITransformation #LeanScale #LeanScalePodcast

Stop Hiring GTM Engineers. They Already Work For You. | Ryan Vanshur, Handle

The LeanScale Podcast with Anthony Enrico

Stop Hiring GTM Engineers. They Already Work For You. | Ryan Vanshur, Handle