I've inherited a lot of broken ABM programs. More than I'd like to admit.
And the thing is, they rarely fail because of bad execution. The campaigns are usually fine. The content is decent. The sales team is bought in — at least in theory. What's broken is almost always upstream. Way upstream.
Here's what I keep seeing.
The list is a lie
Most ABM programs start with a target account list that someone built in an afternoon. Sales leadership pulled a few dream logos. Marketing added some firmographic filters in ZoomInfo. Someone's VP said "let's go after financial services" and suddenly that's your ICP.
That's not a list. That's a wish list.
A real ABM list comes from your existing revenue data first. Who actually closed? Who expanded? What did those companies have in common — not just in terms of industry and headcount, but in terms of what was happening inside them when they bought? Were they in a transformation? Under regulatory pressure? Did they have a new CRO?
Intent signals tell you who's looking. Your closed-won data tells you who actually buys. You need both. Most teams only use one.
Nobody agreed on what ABM actually means
This one is embarrassing to admit, but I've sat in rooms where the head of sales thought ABM meant "we send personalized emails to big accounts" and the head of marketing thought it meant "we run LinkedIn ads against a custom audience." Both were technically correct. Neither was running an ABM program.
ABM is a go-to-market motion, not a tactic. It means your entire revenue team — marketing, sales, presales, and leadership — is aligned on a named list of accounts, with a shared understanding of the target stakeholders, the business problem you solve for them, and the specific plays you're running against each tier.
If you can't answer those questions in a single document that everyone has read and agreed to, you don't have ABM yet. You have coordinated chaos with a fancy name.
The tiers are wrong
A lot of teams build a flat list and treat every account the same. Others build tiers that are basically just account size — Tier 1 is enterprise, Tier 2 is mid-market, Tier 3 is everyone else. Neither works.
Tiers should reflect your investment level and the strategic importance of the account — not just their revenue potential. A $50M company that's a perfect ICP fit, has an active initiative you can support, and has two stakeholders already engaged is a better Tier 1 candidate than a Fortune 500 that's never heard of you and has a 24-month procurement cycle.
Sales isn't actually aligned — they're just polite
This is the one nobody wants to say out loud. Sales alignment in ABM is not sales saying "yeah sounds good" in a kickoff meeting. It's sales actively participating in account selection, committing to follow-up SLAs, giving marketing feedback on what's resonating in conversations, and treating the ABM program as a joint motion — not a service they receive from marketing.
That requires trust that usually doesn't exist yet. The fastest way to earn it: pick five accounts, run a tight 90-day pilot, and show results. When sales sees that marketing can actually help them get into accounts, everything changes.
What actually works
The programs I've built that moved the needle had a few things in common. They started small — fifteen accounts, not two hundred. They were built on real ICP data, not assumptions. Sales and marketing agreed on the definition of success before the program launched. And we measured account engagement, not leads. Pipeline velocity, not MQLs.
The moment you're measuring ABM like demand gen, you've already lost.
If you're starting an ABM program and you haven't answered these questions yet, stop building the campaign. Go back and get the foundation right. The campaign is the easy part. The hard part is always the alignment.
— Erik R. Miller