Back in the real world – the digital one, anyway – I’ve spent some time in r/b2bmarketing and r/ABM on Reddit, G2 comparison pages, and LinkedIn threads where people let off steam.
As you’d imagine, there’s a lot of content to wade through. The most interesting theme is that the industry seems to have spent years tooling up against problems you can’t buy a fix for.
TLDR – there’s a widespread reluctance (or inability) to do the organisational hard yards that would do wonders for ABM performance in the way a platform purchase never could.
The platforms are getting it in the neck
I’m not going to name the companies receiving heat. That would be unfair. There are always two sides to every story and, in truth, a disorganised firm is never going to get the most from such an investment.
Nevertheless, I figured it would be useful to provide a quick snapshot of why some ABM practitioners are starting to lose patience:
- Data quality
- Contract terms
- Integration issues
- Lack of attribution
I’ve got sympathy for the platforms, because they don’t exist to create alignment. They’ll simply amplify dysfunction that already exists. (Incidentally, we see the same thing with measurement tools.) The right platform – one that delivers against defined objectives – will generally perform if your house is in order first.
Tools are being used as an uncomfortable safety blanket
Any addition to your existing tech stack needs to be judged on whether it fills a need the go-to-market team has and if it can be integrated into what’s already in place. (It’s also worth reflecting on whether you’re doubling up – i.e. investing in functionality that one of your existing tools covers.)
But, before you ever get to tooling, the single most critical success factor is sales and marketing alignment. I always afford myself a quiet chuckle when anyone talks about this, because everyone in the industry agrees on its importance, but hardly anyone ever provides a practical roadmap on making it happen.
ABM tools are not sentient – yet – so you can’t blame them for failing to deliver outcomes when they sit within a chaotic structure.
People start with positive intent, but alignment is hard because of structural issues
Paradoxically, sales and marketing alignment is very hard in reality, even though it seems easy-peasy in theory.
Even for people who are genuinely cooperative, the underlying incentive structures make misalignment a rational choice. On the one hand, you’ve got marketers who are typically salary-based and measured on lead volume, while compensation for sales tends to be commission-driven, judged on closed revenue.
What we have here is two functions optimising for what keeps getting them paid, with scant regard to whether it’s what the business needs and, if it goes wrong, they can always revert to flinging excrement at one another, ironically during a quarterly wash up.
Responsibility for alignment ultimately sits squarely with leadership across GTM functions, in service of overarching company targets. I want to be blunt here – many execs favour inertia over rocking the boat, which is the fuel for diminishing returns.
In my opinion, there are two levers that initiate the necessary behavioural changes:
- Accountability based on shared definitions of key performance metrics.
- Tying a share of variable compensation to shared, cross-functional metrics.
“Fake” ABM is the talk of the town
The familiar refrain is that most ABM is just demand generation with a target list tacked on. I agree with this up to a point. There’s a lot of lazy execution out there, but ABM shouldn’t be tarred with that brush.
Invera operates on the principle that ABM should be integral to the entire go-to-market motion, with several programmes running in parallel:
· 1:1 for strategic customers or prospects
· 1:few for high-propensity account clusters
· 1:many as an ICP-aligned nurture pool
In this type of system, accounts should be graduated (or relegated) based on closely monitored engagement and intent signals.
This leads me onto something else. The idea of graduation thresholds always gets talked about, but implementation is patchy, at best. I think this happens because the principle is often agreed, but the mechanism to make it happen is never formalised.
It ends up being the (manual) responsibility of one person who has to remember to make subjective judgement calls at regular intervals while juggling a shed load of other tasks.
It’s time to build for buying groups
The next stop on this whistlestop tour is to forget scoring individual contacts in favour of wider buying group coverage. We all know by now that B2B deals involve a tonne of stakeholders with competing agendas.
It’s lazy to initiate a flurry of SDR outreach on the unsuspecting soul who simply downloads a whitepaper, while simultaneously overlooking all the hidden (influential) buyers.
Research shows that tracking the proportion of identified roles reached in an account is associated with higher win rates and opportunity progression.
This stands to reason. B2B purchases tend to be high value, fraught with risk and carrying heavy ROI expectations. In this context, buyers tend to seek safety in numbers – i.e. consensus – before pulling the trigger.
On a more practical, human level, we're all naturally inclined towards the path of least resistance. If a buyer feels they’ll encounter friction by having to extol the virtues of your solution to several (cold) colleagues, most of them are likely to settle for the status quo, which means doing nothing at all. That 'thud' is the sound of you hitting a wall.
ICP discipline and the knock-on impact of AI search
Another theme informed by my visits to Reddit, G2 and LinkedIn is a shrinking target account list, often from several hundred down to fifty or less. The anecdotal feedback suggests that such an approach produces more pipeline.
The inference here is that a streamlined set of target accounts enables brands to focus on a tighter ICP and, from there, assign resources to deliver more bespoke, compelling experiences. (This is the Pareto Principle in action and is best supported by an objective, robust account selection methodology.)
People in ABM are also being impacted by a new challenge – GEO – without real clarity as to who should be owning it. We know that buying committees are increasingly forming vendor shortlists using AI answer engines, so if a brand fails or succeeds in being consistently surfaced at this stage, that’s going to have a knock-on impact for the effectiveness of account-based go-to-market efforts down the line.
There’s also the fact that LinkedIn content is frequently cited by LLMs, which elevates the importance of authentic communications from individual execs and sellers. Reposting company content just isn’t going to cut the mustard.
The key takeaway here is that ABM success can’t be controlled in a vacuum. There are upstream factors at play that’ll impact how your brand is perceived before anyone ever deploys a programme.
So, where does all this leave us?
Mark Corrigan never delivered the fabled alignment between marketing and sales, and many B2B organisations find themselves in the same position. I’ll leave it with you to decide whether the level of farce is comparable.
You’ve read what ABM professionals are grappling with. My take is that platforms end up bearing the brunt when the real guilty party is internal dysfunction. True collaboration means a shared definition of success that’s collectively rewarded.
Growth comes from understanding there are different types of ABM, all of which are important parts of your go-to-market engine, each playing different roles, but always targeting buying committees rather than just individuals.
What’s more, we need to resist the urge to dilute our go-to-market efforts by being selective about which accounts make the cut, ideally leaving you with a focused set of high-propensity logos that receive the attention they warrant.
You also shouldn’t sleep on how the brand shows up in AI-driven research before buyers are ever touched by an ABM motion.
None of this is so complicated that you should be cowering in the bushes. It’s just hard because it’s no one’s job by default and inertia is less exerting.
We need to stop waiting for someone else to put in the hard yards and grasp the nettle.
