🕵🏻♂️ [ABM case study]: 10 discovery calls and 26 active focus accounts from a pilot
How we went from "it's not going to work" sales skepticism to "ABM is driving discovery calls with our enterprise accounts" in 90 days.
In this case study, we’ll share:
The 5-pillar ABM framework we used to generate 10 discovery calls and 26 active focus accounts with conservative B2B buyers who ignore traditional marketing
How we increased content engagement by 4x and response rates to sales outreach
How we got sales leadership to champion ABM instead of fighting it
Drive pipeline THIS quarter with full-funnel ABM programs.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but don’t do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you don’t know how to fix it
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales can’t get even a reply.
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets
We can help.
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
About Customs4Trade
I’ll start by providing a quick background about Customs4Trade and what led them to ABM.
Customs4Trade provides customs automation software that helps to optimize supply chain through customs automation for global manufacturing & FMCG companies. Typical sales cycle length - 2+ years.
The target buyers are supply chain directors, customs managers, and trade compliance leaders.
Before partnering with us, Customs4Trade had been trying to run their own version of ABM, but it wasn’t well-orchestrated. In a nutshell, it was a mix of marketing activities and standard outbound to target accounts without a structured strategic approach.
As Joseph Threlfall, Field & Partner Marketing Manager, reflects:
"Over the years that I've been with C4T, our team has actually got smaller at the end of the day, and we had to really look at what we were doing in the marketing team or within the go to market team that was most successful. We really wanted to stop with the sort of like spray and see what sticks approach to our marketing."
The breaking point came when they realized their traditional demand generation and outbound playbook simply didn't work for their conservative audience in customs and supply chain management.
These buyers are inherently skeptical of unknown vendor outreach.
Pilot Program Results
After a 3-month program, here are the results we’ve achieved.
Pipeline Impact:
10 discovery calls booked with enterprise accounts
29 accounts moved to "active focus" status
Future Pipeline accounts: 63 accounts with demonstrated engagement
Cluster ICP accounts: 109 accounts being nurtured for awareness
Brand Awareness:
LinkedIn posts reached over 50,000 impressions (previously 600-800 impressions)
200K total impressions in the last month alone
Significant increase in meaningful interactions and connection requests
Bowin (Account-Based Sales Rep) positioned as an industry expert, receiving inbound RFI and RFQ invitations
Sales productivity and efficiency:
Replies and meetings from accounts they'd been targeting for years without success
"There were some accounts that we had been reaching out to that had never responded via LinkedIn, for example. And then suddenly they start waking up. They either want to discuss customs automation with us and they want to have a discovery call". - Joseph Threlfall, Field & Partner Marketing Manager
Increased inbound requests to participate in RFIs and RFQs from accounts that were not targeted ebefore
Multi-threading approach implemented across large multinational accounts
"We've been in contact with this large company for a while. We've spoken to a director there, but we've never been able to get through to her boss and now with the ABM program, contact him on LinkedIn and doing all this stuff. We actually managed to book several meetings with him, which is great result I believe." - Bowin Cai, SDR
Enhanced pipeline coverage and SDR productivity through focused account targeting
Below I’ll cover our playbook and a detailed interview with Joe and Bowin.
GET ACCESS TO A NEW FULL-FUNNEL ABM 2.0 COURSE
What's included with the course access:
12 modules covering step-by-step ABM strategy development: goal decomposition, ICP, account list building, ABM team, warm-up and activation playbooks, reporting, scaling ABM and building a cohesive ABM & demand gen function.
Short explanation videos and "how to" examples. We believe it's better one time to see a practical example then listen to the theory hundreds of times.
5 orchestrated and ready-to-use ABM playbooks and a detailed explanation
Report dashboard for 4 types of ABM programs: new revenue, pipeline acceleration, expansion and churn prevention
Live case studies and examples of the campaigns we implemented with the clients of Fullfunnel.io in the past few years
17 templates to simplify your ABM strategy launch: ICP, revenue analysis, intent data tracking, account warm-up cadence, customer research, account scoring and prioritization, ABM budget planning and forecasting, account planning, reports, personalized offers, and many more.
Planning & Presenting a Pilot ABM Program to Execs and Sales Framework
Minimal viable stack recommendation and guidelines on how to use it to avoid ramping up budget and being pressured to show ROI for the purchased $50k software
The 5-Pillar ABM Framework
Here are 5 pillars of our playbook.
1. ACCOUNT ALIGNMENT & PRIORITIZATION.
We developed clear account prioritization criteria based on cluster definition, industry focus, and engagement signals - not just firmographics.
We implemented a three-tier account classification system using DealFront intent data and structured weekly reviews. Our lists included:
Cluster ICP (109 accounts): Companies fitting the ideal customer profile but vendor unaware - the primary focus is creating brand awareness.
Future Pipeline (63 accounts): Accounts showing engagement with content or website visits, requiring relationship building with the buying committee and in-depth account research.
Active Focus (started with 4, ended with 29 accounts): Accounts with demonstrated interest, some level of relationship established, and evidence of potential need - the primary focus for personalized account plans and sales opportunity generation.
2. REPOSITIONED SALES REPS AS INDUSTRY EXPERTS.
Our pilot sales team shifted from a standard sales messaging to:
Sharing valuable insights on customs automation challenges that their target audience cared about.
Building relationships with the entire buying committee.
Running in-depth research to identify the needs and the buyer journey stage of the target accounts.
As a result, Bowin was “repositioned” from a sales rep to a trusted industry voice.
"I'm mostly positioning myself or trying to position myself as a kind of thought leader on LinkedIn, trying to gain as many impressions as possible, building brand awareness, and using engagement as an opportunity to connect and engage with the target buyers"” - Bowin Cai
3. VALUE-ADDED ENGAGEMENT OVER PITCHING.
This playbook included multiple meaningful non-sales touchpoints to create awareness, including:
Conducting interviews with target buyers to understand market challenges and pain points while building relationships.
Account-specific "love letters" mentioning target accounts achievements and initiatives.
Thoughtful commenting on buyers posts.
Multi-Threading: Contacting different buying committee members across various organizational levels and departments.
"We've begun creating an attack plan for large accounts instead of just contacting a single key decision-maker like we did before. But in large multinational companies, decisions aren't made by just one person, of course” - Bowin Cai.
4. BUYER-CENTRIC WEBINARS.
Webinars historically worked well in terms of sign-ups and attendance rate for Customs4Trade. We decided to incorporate them into ABM playbooks.
But instead of a hidden product demo, we created an educational webinar for supply chain experts, revealing non-obvious mistakes in customs workflows, and how to handle them. Next, showing the best practices.
Joint promotion by marketing and sales helped to achieve a 50+% attendance rate.
5. WEEKLY SPRINTS.
Every week became a sprint where, with the team, we reviewed and planned the next week, including:
What went right?
What can be done better? What can we immediately implement?
How can we work better together during the next sprint?
What are the bottlenecks that slow down our velocity?
What content should we publish next?
What new accounts should we research and engage?
What can we do to facilitate opportunity generation with the engaged accounts?
"We now internally have something called a pipeline battalion meeting, which is every kind of every few weeks. And then Bowen and I then report in that pipeline battalion meeting on kind of what has actually happened. The team tracks specific metrics weekly: meaningful comments to target buyers, personalized connection requests, content collaborations, event sign-ups, meetings booked, and conversations started”. - Joseph Threlfall.
In the next section I’ll share the pilot team set up and responsibilities.
BECOME A FULL-FUNNEL B2B MARKETER
Full-Funnel Academy is a comprehensive B2B marketing training and Slack community for B2B marketers who care about revenue and want to move the needle.
Academy includes:
All our B2B marketing courses including ABM playbook, Demand Gen Playbook, LinkedIn Allbound marketing playbook and 11 more courses that aren't available publicly + all upcoming courses.
Private Slack community to answer all your questions
Personalized learning plan. If you are not sure what skills you’d develop in the first place and how to get maximum from the program, we can create a personalized learning plan accordingly to the time you can dedicate to education.
Behind the scenes sessions. See what’s working and what doesn’t work and why on the “behind the scenes” sessions where we review the campaigns we are running for our clients and us.
30% discount for live events and bootcamps
Learn more and join the academy here.
Team Structure and Responsibilities
The lean team structure proves that ABM doesn't require massive resources:
Joseph Threlfall (Field and Partner Marketing Manager): Content coordination, strategy alignment, reporting to leadership, and supporting Bowin with LinkedIn content creation.
Bowin Cai (Account-Based Sales Development Rep): Primary LinkedIn engagement, thought leadership posting, account research, outreach execution, and relationship building.
Raf Schroons (Senior Account Executive): Sales guidance, subject matter expertise, account qualification criteria, strategic direction, account plans and progression.
*We’ve invited Raf to our roundtable sharing sales perspective on ABM. Tune in here:
https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/the-sales-perspective-on-abm
Astrid van Dam (Product Marketing - on maternity leave): Originally handled product marketing and content creation, responsibilities temporarily absorbed by Joe.
One of the greatest things about the ABM actually is really getting us coming together as a cross-functional team to work together. We're a small team anyway, so it's not like we were really siloed. We all knew what was actually happening in there. But now, with an ABM approach, it has the buy-in from multiple people on the team and ownership of certain processes.” - Joseph Threlfall.
Reporting ABM Progress to Leadership
With a two-year average sales cycle, reporting progress required focusing on leading indicators rather than immediate revenue. It’s important to set up the right expectations with the leadership before kicking off the program.
As Bowin notes about managing expectations:
"How can you expect immediate results from ABM if the average sales cycle takes at least two years, like you can't expect it to give immediate returns based on that statistic alone."
The team developed a comprehensive reporting structure:
Weekly Updates: Joe provided weekly updates to the go-to-market team about ABM activities, wins, and progress, keeping everyone informed about resource investment and results.
“Pipeline Battalion Meetings”: Regular broader team meetings where ABM progress is formally reported, covering both qualitative and quantitative results over longer periods.
Executive One-on-Ones: "ABM is always part of that" in Joe's regular meetings with the CEO, maintaining ongoing visibility and support.
*Learn more about measuring ABM here:
https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/how-to-measure-abm-w-report-templates
To wrap it up, we asked the team, now with the hindsight, to share the most common mistakes when launching an ABM. Below is the breakdown with quotes from Joe and Bowin.
Main Mistakes B2B Teams Make When Launching ABM
Expecting Immediate Results: The biggest challenge is managing expectations when results don't appear immediately, leading teams to abandon the approach and return to traditional lead generation tactics.
Lack of Structured Process: "If you're not really into the program or you don't see like the results immediately... it's difficult to quantify or feel like how and what it's doing exactly," warns Bowin.
Insufficient Resource Commitment: "You need to have the sort of resources behind you from an FTE kind of point of view. You need to have the content, revops, account engagement and outreach going behind it as well," emphasizes Joe.
Treating ABM as Separate from Existing Marketing: "All the things that we're doing as part of ABM you should be doing anyway. It's just putting it in a more kind of joined up process and with more structure behind it, rather than doing the spray and see what kind of like sticks type things," Joe clarifies.
Technology-First Approach: Their minimal tech stack (Dealfront for intent data, HubSpot for CRM, Aligned for content hubs) cost approximately €2,700 annually total, proving expensive technology isn't necessary.
Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration: "It's not separate. It's including everything that you are already doing." - ABM is evolution, not revolution, of existing go-to-market approaches executed in a more structured, cross-functional way.
*In this post we break down the real reasons why ABM initiatives fail:
We’ve interviewed Bowin and Joe on our podcast. Tune in below to learn more about their ABM program.
Work with us to develop a successful ABM motion.
Our approach enables your team to:
Holistically create brand awareness among key buyer personas of strategic accounts to create a future pipeline.
Achieve revenue alignment between marketing and sales and set up cross-functional collaboration with clear responsibilities, KPIs, and accountability.
Create an account prioritization criteria to define what accounts deserve a 1:1 approach from sales based on relationship, engagement, and buying signals.
Create joint pipeline progression and acceleration playbooks to increase the conversion of engaged contacts and accounts into discovery calls and sales opportunities.
Incorporate ABM in your GTM to make an evolution and increase the efficiency of your existing marketing and sales mix.
Leverage signals, engagement, and intent data, account insights, and research to improve personalization and efficiency of sales outreach.
Customize content to influence the entire buyer journey with industry-specific, account-specific, and buyer persona-specific content.
Create strong documentation to go from random acts of marketing to predictable enterprise pipeline generation.
Creating visibility about ABM progress and results with holistic program and activity dashboards.
Listen to Full-Funnel Live - ABM Program to Engage and Land Enterprise Sales Opportunities [Live Case Study].
*If you want to attend the next live episode, sign up here to receive an invite. Usually, we host them every Wednesday at 4 pm CET (Central Europe) - 11 am ET (Eastern Time).
In this episode of Fullfunnel Live, we are sharing a live ABM case study of our client, Customs4trade, presenting an ABM program to engage and land enterprise sales opportunities.
Tune in to learn:
The real playbooks marketing and sales run
The key marketing and sales alignment points
The role of SDR in ABM described by SDR
How to report on ABM to the leadership
Subscribe to the Full-Funnel podcast: