THE RECEIPTS SERIES · #1
What it really costs to build your own GTM engineer
Not the sales-page number. The actual bill: salary, software, and the AI tokens nobody budgets for, added up like a receipt.
Here's the pitch you hear everywhere: "Just hire a GTM engineer. They'll stitch together a few tools, automate your outbound, and run circles around an old-school SDR team."
Sounds cheap. It isn't. Below is the actual, line-by-line bill for building that function yourself, the kind of receipt nobody hands you during the demo. We added it up so you don't have to.
One person. One price tag.
Same outcome, a working outbound engine, two very different bills.
That's roughly 10x the cost, for one person doing part of the job LeadGenius does out of the box.
In plain English: what you're actually paying for
The human
This is the person who has to log into all five tools every morning and make them talk to each other. Smart people cost real money, and this is before they've enriched a single lead.
The phone book of phone books
Clay doesn't own most of its data. It calls other companies' databases for you and passes along the bill, plus a fee for the convenience. Handy. Not cheap.
The two smart interns
Great at drafting emails and summarizing calls. You pay per word they read and write, and the meter runs faster than most people expect once you're automating, not just chatting.
The filing cabinet
Every lead needs a home. This is that home, and it charges rent per seat, per month, whether you use it heavily or barely touch it.
Two machines doing one job
Both of these send messages on a schedule. Most teams end up running both anyway, because each one covers a channel the other doesn't. That overlap is quiet, expensive duplication.
Add it up, and "just hire someone and wire up a few tools" turns into a six-figure bet, before you've booked a single meeting. LeadGenius bundles the data, the enrichment, and the outreach engine into one bill, starting at $20,000 a year.
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