Sometimes I think ABM is one of those things marketers and companies say they’re doing just to sound modern. Like, “Oh yeah, we’re totally account-based.” Cool. Until you ask for their tiering strategy or account list rationale and get a blank stare.
Been there. And honestly, I get it. When I first got into ABM at Elastic Grid, I wanted to rush to the fun stuff: creative campaigns, quirky gifts, personalized landing pages. But I had no real structure behind it. No account tiers. No pilot math. Just vibes and a list from sales.
Here’s what I learned after falling flat the first time (and the second):
If you skip the planning, ABM becomes just another fancy marketing campaign.
The promise of ABM is big. Coordinated sales and marketing (and maybe even finance). Higher close rates. Larger deal sizes. But getting there takes real work.
Let me walk through what I’ve found actually made a difference with my ABM efforts.
Planning Your Pilot Is the Unsexy Secret to ABM Success
This is where I used to get it wrong. I would get excited, throw together a list of cool companies and call it a strategy.
ThThen I learned to do pilot math. And no, it’s not just picking a round number of accounts and hoping something lands. It’s working backwards from a goal.
Start with:
- What’s one win worth?
- What does success look like?
- What’s my realistic win rate?
- How much pipeline do I need to generate from this pilot?
- What’s my expected engagement-to-opportunity rate?
- How many accounts do I need to target based on those conversion assumptions?
Say a single deal would bring in $50K ARR. If I wanted $150K in pipeline from this pilot to feel like it was worth doing again, that meant I needed at least three wins. If I assumed a 10 percent close rate from engaged accounts, then I needed 30 to 40 quality accounts to start with. That’s not random math. That’s guardrails.
It also made conversations with leadership easier. Instead of asking for a vague budget or buy-in, I could show them the logic. That clarity went a long way.
Also, and this took me way too long to learn, a pilot should be small enough that it doesn’t freak anyone out. No one should be betting their job on this. I kept the Tier 1 list extremely focused, five to eight accounts max, and designed plays that we could execute without pulling in 15 other teams.
Eventually, I learned to structure my ABM programs into three clear phases: foundation, activation, and measurement. Foundation was all about selecting the right accounts, aligning with sales, and getting data in order. Activation focused on launching tailored plays for different tiers. Measurement wasn’t just about pipeline. It included signals like account engagement, progression through journey stages, and qualitative feedback from the sales team. That kind of structure gave us a roadmap and made sure we weren’t just winging it once the pilot started
Don’t Let Sales Hand You a Wish List
I once ran a campaign where sales handed me a list of 200 companies, many of which were aspirational, to put it kindly. Fortune 100s, random international companies we had no route to, and several companies already working with a competitor who had them locked into multi-year contracts.
The problem wasn’t just the list. It was that marketing wasn’t invited to the account selection process.
I started pushing hard for a more collaborative approach. I brought:
- Fit (firmographics, tech stack, revenue)
- Intent (who’s actively researching a solution)
- Engagement (who’s already interacting with us)
One of the best improvements I learned about to incorporate as well was layering in what’s called “gates and weights.”
- Gates: must-haves. If they didn’t meet this, they were out.
- Weights: nice-to-haves that boosted priority.
Doing this helped us move from 200 “maybe” accounts to 40 highly qualified ones. Six made it to Tier 1. That felt manageable. It felt strategic.
I also started identifying key buying triggers that indicated whether an account was warming up. New leadership hires, funding rounds, or a surge in relevant content engagement were real signals. Instead of waiting for leads to trickle in, I created outbound sequences based on trigger events. That gave us a head start and helped personalize messaging to what the account was likely dealing with in the moment.
CRM Data Is Always Worse Than You Think
The first time I sat down to pull contacts from our CRM, I laughed. Then I panicked. Outdated titles. Missing emails. Duplicate records. People who had left their jobs two years ago.
I ended up rebuilding our contact lists manually for Tier 1 accounts. Yes, it took time. But when you’re sending expensive direct mail packages or putting together custom demo videos, you can’t afford to be wrong.
The takeaway? If your ABM strategy involves high-touch tactics, don’t rely on volume tools. Start clean.
We also built progression-based playbooks for these accounts. If a contact had never engaged before, we started with education-heavy assets like guides or benchmark reports. For mid-funnel contacts, we brought in case studies, ROI calculators, and peer stories. Late-stage accounts got one-to-one outreach from sales paired with something highly relevant, like a technical checklist tailored to their tech stack. Mapping plays to each account’s behavior and stage helped scale personalization without reinventing the wheel every time.
You Will Hit the ABM Hype Cycle
Nobody talks about this enough. The ABM Hype Cycle is real.
- Stage 1: We launch with swagger. Everyone’s excited. Sales is engaged. Slack is buzzing.
- Stage 2: Reality hits. The results take longer than expected. The leads feel slower. Sales starts grumbling.
- Stage 3: The Trough of Disillusionment.
I’ve been in that trough. I’ve questioned everything about the program. The one thing that helped me crawl out of it was building in testing from the beginning.
I tested creative. Channels. Messaging. Cadence. When to involve sales. What kind of offers worked.
That testing gave me real learnings and ammo to defend the strategy.
We also had to reset expectations. We reminded stakeholders that ABM isn’t about volume. It’s about velocity and influence at key accounts. We showed early signals of success, like increased engagement across decision-makers or deeper conversations, and used those to keep momentum going. That helped us buy time while the real pipeline developed.
Communicate Like Your Job Depends on It
ABM isn’t a channel. It’s a company strategy (not just a marketing one). But most people in the company will default to thinking it’s just another marketing campaign.
So I had to re-train them.
I did this by creating a dashboard that tracked:
- Movement across tiers
- Engagement within accounts
- Meetings booked, pipeline sourced, revenue won
I literally printed out what became known as the “ABM bingo card” and stuck it on the wall. And when the CEO started asking how many green squares we had this week, we knew it was working.
It sounds cheesy, but reframing the win changed the way people viewed the marketing team’s work. Suddenly ABM wasn’t a “marketing thing” anymore. It was a company priority.
We also created an internal scorecard we updated weekly. It didn’t just show outcomes. It showed process milestones. Did we launch the Tier 1 play for a specific account? Did sales follow up on the demo watch from last week? This made progress visible and got cross-functional teams invested. Everyone saw that ABM wasn’t a black box. It was a machine we were all building together.
If the Pilot Works, Then What?
The pilot did its job. We learned. We closed deals. Then came the question, “how do we scale this without breaking it?”
At Elastic Grid, where we supported partner marketing programs for major tech brands, this question came up constantly. We didn’t jump straight to full-blown one-to-many. We used what worked in the pilot and templated it. Playbooks, asset types, outreach cadences. We figured out what could be automated, what had to stay human, and where personalization actually paid off. That way, we kept the soul of the ABM strategy intact while expanding our reach.
One of the biggest lessons I learned in scaling was that repeatability beats volume. I resisted the urge to pile on more accounts until we had reliable ways to track progression, rep feedback loops, and internal coordination. We stayed disciplined with tiering. We built tools and workflows that made it easier to replicate success instead of just working harder.
I’ll leave you with this:
If you treat ABM like a marketing campaign, it will behave like one. It will launch with a bang and fade just as quickly.
But if you treat it like a system, one that learns, adapts, and matures, you’ll build something that prints revenue.
Start small. Plan hard. Build slow. Learn fast.
