🕵🏻♂️ How to implement ABM strategy 3.0
A step-by-step process to run a new ABM model without organizational overhaul, new budget, or new headcount.
After we published the ABM strategy 3.0 piece last week, we received a couple of questions:
What *must be true* for an organisation to truthfully say it is running ABM Strategy 3.0?
How do you help sales teams shift their mindset from traditional sales to ABM?
How to ABM in the world of AI and AI AI best practices in ABM
But the most popular question was: “How do I actually implement it and where should I start?”
No surprise, though 🙂 knowing the strategy and knowing how to implement are two different things.
Today we’ll dive deeper into answering these questions and share:
The baby steps and roadmap to implement ABM strategy 3.0 without new budget or headcount
How to leverage AI in ABM the right way
How to report on progress when you can’t show revenue
Let’s dive in.
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The 8 pillars of ABM strategy 3.0
We covered all 8 pillars in detail in the previous newsletter (read it here).
Here is the short breakdown as a reminder:
Cluster targeting: group accounts by shared challenge or use case, not industry or tier
Cross-functional team: ABM lead, account-based SDR, content marketer, SME.
6A framework: account qualification, segmentation and prioritization, research, awareness, development, activation
Playbooks optimized for long sales cycles: always-on, time-based, and signal-based playbooks running in parallel
Center of excellence: an internal team that owns ABM strategy, execution quality and benchmarks (how “good” looks like), and scaling.
AI-enabled program: manually creating a robust process -> Creating AI process -> Team training
Holistic full-funnel ABM measurement: leading indicators, lagging indicators, and pipeline impact tracked together
Operational rhythm: quarterly planning, weekly pipeline reviews, daily standups
Below we’ll share the implementation process.
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.
Learn more and join the academy here.
How to implement ABM strategy 3.0.
Step 1: Make your always-on programs account-based
Every marketing team has a quarter plan with budgeted and scheduled activities: webinars, market research, partner events, business breakfasts, etc.
The first implementation step is simple: take what you already have in your marketing plan and adjust it to a specific cluster of accounts.
Here is a real case from our client Backbase.
They are targeting private banks and wealth management companies. Instead of running broad events about AI in private banking, they picked up a specific use case: improving advisory efficiency.
Next, they planned a series of webinars for different buying committee members:
improving advisor efficiency and leveraging AI to deliver differentiated client experiences for economic buyers
AI implementation roadmap to improve advisory efficiency for the technical buyers
The entire change was narrowing the topic from a broad industry theme (e.g. Why do you need to use AI) to something highly relevant to a specific subset of accounts. They did not build new programs from scratch. They made the existing ones account-based.
Next sep: for every account-based activity, sit down with sales and define together shared success criteria.
Most teams skip this step and are later surprised why a specific activity underperformed. Let’s take a webinar as an example. Before you start promoting it, define together with sales:
How many target accounts signing up counts as a win?
How many buying committee members from those accounts?
Then, create an actionable plan: what will marketing and sales do to hit those targets?
I’ve been on a couple of retrospective meetings where the teams debated whether a certain activity worked. The problem was always the same: no definition of success.
But when you have it, you move from random acts of marketing to joint planning, joint execution, and evaluation based on agreed success criteria, not gut feeling.
Step 2: Run a small-scope pilot first
Before you involve multiple regions, multiple sales teams, or try to target multiple clusters, run a proper pilot.
The goal of the pilot is to build a proof of concept and gain trust from sales and leadership. We use POS framework: Pilot, Operationalize, Scale. The pilot has one job: prove the motion works with minimum resources and prepare the foundation for scaling.
The key pillars are:
Making your scheduled marketing activities account-based with shared definition of success (see the step 1)
Setting up a lean cross-functional team
Small scope (10 accounts max) for a focused joint engagement
Running and documenting what works (creating the robust processes)
Three months. You use what you already have, made account-based.
We’ve seen many ABM programs failed (read 11 guaranteed ways to kill an ABM program) because the team tried to run ABM at scale without building the proper processes:
Targeting hundreds of accounts including “wish lists” from sales
Spending money on ineffective air cover supported by “personalized” sales outreach cadences
Spending money on expensive ABM technology
But if there is one takeaway I can share:
ABM, like any other motion, works only when you have proven and robust processes, your team knows how to execute them, and there is a joint accountability.
*We explain the POS framework for ABM in detail and show how to plan ABM program in our ABM course: https://fullfunnel.io/account-based-marketing-playbook
Step 3: Prepare an account narrative and weekly engagement plan
When you define together with sales 10 accounts you want to focus on, the next logical question is:
How can we convert them into sales opportunities?
Two keys to success:
Creating your point of view and account narrative
Map out the buying committee and create a weekly engagement plan aligned with the length of your pilot
Let’s dive deeper into each of them.
Creating your point of view and account narrative
Many B2B companies run ABM based on industry value proposition like “we help company’s like yours to …FIX INDUSTRY CHALLENGE or GENERIC VALUE PROP (book more meetings, increase revenue, etc)“. It works when selling to SMBs (precisely, to smaller startups), but doesn’t land in the enterprise segment.
Account POV (point of view) is what helps you to attract attention to strategic accounts. POV is your homework that shows intersection between:
Strategic projects the company already invests in
High-level outcome metrics your target stakeholders care about
Challenges they might face and why
How your product fits and and what your company can do uniquely to solve the challenges and help with the strategic projects
To create it, you need to create a robust account research process to find the answers:
What strategic projects is this company already investing money in?
What is happening in this account that is relevant to your product?
Based on all available information, what challenges are they most likely facing around those strategic projects?
Which metrics is each buying committee member accountable for?
What existing relationship or engagement already exists?
What buying signals and engagement do we see?
Next, you create an account narrative that helps you to define further content, touchpoints and messaging.
What it helps you with:
1. Pass the priority filter by aligning your activities with an active, funded priority that leadership from strategic accounts is already pushing.
2. Steal their “trigger phrases”: the specific, internal language the buying group from a strategic account already uses. If they have a project codenamed “Sundrop” or a mandate for “mid-single-digit organic loan growth,” put those exact phrases in your ads, posts, and emails.
3. Sell the approach. Your ABM content should not just list features. It needs to sell a vendor-agnostic “approach”that shows how to solve their problem before you introduce your product as the ultimate vehicle for that approach.
Map out the buying committee and create a weekly engagement plan aligned with the length of your pilot
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with an enterprise SDR. I asked him how many touch points he makes per buyer before giving up. Seven to ten, he said. Connection request, a couple of LinkedIn messages, a few email follow-ups. If they don’t reply after that, he considers them not in the market and moves on.
But this is the fundamental mismatch with the enterprise buying cycle.
HockeyStack shared data showing that for deals above $100K, you need at least 417 touch points to generate a sales opportunity. But too many companies try to create sales opportunities with seven to ten touchpoints.
The truth is that there is usually no documented account engagement plan with a breakdown for every buyer beyond air cover, marketing email blasts and sales outreach. But without creating it, there is no realistic way to close that gap.
Honestly, it’s not that difficult.
When you prepare account POV and narrative, the next step is mapping out the concrete buyers (not just CFOs or VPs of IT) you want to target. Then, build an engagement plan including a week-by-week list of activities for every buying committee member: marketing touchpoints, sales activities, content to share, events to invite them to, etc.
Come back to step 1 and look at always on programs you can leverage. Add them to the account engagement timeline. Then, feel the gaps with personalized activities specifically for this account (e.g. publishing an account love letter and distributing it to every buyer on week 3).
This is the fastest and easiest approach to gain trust from sales. They see that marketing actually cares about pipeline creation and are willing to help to create sales opportunities with the strategic accounts.
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.
Learn more and join the academy here.
Step 4: Develop scalable processes with AI enablement: manual process first, then AI automation
Before you can use AI effectively, three things need to be true.
1. You need to create a robust process by running it manually
Take account research for example. If you ask an LLM to research your target accounts without a defined process and quality benchmark, you will get tons of irrelevant data. Just because AI doesn’t know what “good” looks like.
It might pick the strategic initiatives that were announced two years ago. Or highlight that the company is hiring for a specific role that has been closed 6 months ago.
On a recent client call, an enterprise AE perfectly described the problem (citing him):
“Gemini said to me: this buyer has this initiative and seven key use cases. I doublechecked: what Gemini picked up was two years old. Two years in AI is like medieval. If I wrote an email to that buyer saying ‘the seven things you’ve mentioned,’ I’d look like a fucking idiot.”
The moral of the story:
Without a clear process for what to collect, where to find it, how to evaluate it, and what to do with it, the AI account research will give you trash. Same is with any other process.
2. Create detailed SOPs
Every AI prompt must be built on a documented SOP (standard operating procedure).
For account research, that means:
what is the specific question you are answering,
what does a good answer look like,
where exactly do you find this information,
where does it get stored in your CRM.
You need to test the AI output against the manual research. Then, train the model until it provides the correct output.
3. Create a quality benchmark
The last step is sharing with LLM the example of a good account research and tell them to use it as a quality benchmark.
Once these three keys are in place, AI becomes genuinely useful. You can outsource tedious work: researching more accounts, capturing signals at scale, extracting customer voice from call transcripts, etc.
Your goal is to accelerate a process that already works, not relying on AI to create a process for you.
Step 5: Build a cluster content library for sales
The easiest way to stay top of the mind of strategic buyers is to give sales reps content they can share on the channels where these buyers are: on LinkedIn, in communities, in direct messages, in email. Content that nurtures and adds value without pitching.
Here is how we do it:
We map existing content to the cluster challenges
Map it to the account narratives sales create during account research.
When sales reps see the connection between the content and the specific accounts they are working, they use it.
Let’s look at Backbase again.
Multiple sales reps are focusing on the same cluster “improving advisory efficiency in the wealth segment”. Every sales rep publishes relevant content that was created once by marketing. Obviously, they adapt and customize it, but it takes a few minutes.
The library compounds over time with every new content asset created. The whole team can use it, not just the person it was originally created for.
Step 6: Run weekly ABM pipeline review meetings
None of the steps above will work in the long-term without regular sync meetings. We described the operational rhythm here: https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/how-to-run-marketing-and-sales-alignment So here I’ll just share the core concept: weekly ABM review and planning meetings.
This meeting is for a cross-functional ABM team to review and plan the next week, review the execution, identify and solve the bottlenecks. Here is the agenda.
1. Account insights and engagement
Marketing and sales share and review the recent intent and engagement signals from target accounts. For example, sales might share new insights gained from a conversation with an internal Champion. Marketing reports on which accounts spent time viewing case studies or engaging with demand generation ads.
2. Account planning (what’s next?)
Based on the engagement data, you make a team decision on the exact next steps to influence each specific account. You might review your account narrative and update the weekly engagement plan.
3. Leading Indicators (are we on track?)
Remember the success criteria from step 1?
Every week you’d review your plan, leading and lagging indicators to see if your are on track before it’s too late. If you see that the team fell short, identify the bottlenecks and decide together on how to remove them to improve future execution.
4. Retrospective (what’s working and what’s not?)
We ask about wins and what everybody thinks actually works. This is the best way to build internal best practices. If you see that sales reps constantly report that account love letters help them to start the conversations, double down on them. If you see that they are hesitant to use some marketing content, don’t push them.
5. ABM pipeline updates (adding & removing accounts)
Lastly, review all newly engaged accounts and decide what to do with them. Do you have a capacity for 1-1 work or should they stay in the cluster demand gen layer? Also, whenever you define that specific account should be disqualified or should be removed from the program now (e.g. because they have just signed with the competitor), adjust your account list.
Learn more about marketing and sales sync meetings here; https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/how-to-run-marketing-and-sales-alignment
Step 7: Report on account velocity aside from revenue metrics
With a long sales cycle, you won’t be able to report on revenue sourced from ABM in the first quarter. That does not mean there is nothing to report.
Here are the 6 reports we share with leadership:
Total revenue by programs and tiers: new pipeline, deal acceleration, expansion, renewals
Pipeline progress: deals in the ABM pipeline, deal status, deal value
Program performance: number of cluster ICP accounts, future pipeline accounts, and active focus accounts, linked to leading indicators: engagements, discovery calls booked, total pipeline generated
Sales engagement metrics: personalized connection requests, non-sales touchpoints, conversations started, event sign-ups, discovery calls booked
Account engagement: intent data, replies, conversations started across target accounts
Account development progress: where each prioritized account sits in the account development plan.
One metric that we introduce later when we have a performance date is account-to-pipeline ratio.It helps you to show potential pipeline created by ABM program.
Here is an example.
If you have 10 active focus accounts at $200K ACV each, the total potential pipeline is $1.6M. With a 20% account-to-ppeline ratio based on pilot results, you can make a forecast of $400K in expected pipeline.
Read the full KPI and reporting framework here.
Where to start
If I could summarize the core principles, it will be: start small, build proven account engagement processes together with sales, establish a shared accountability.
Start with what you already have:
the programs that are already on your marketing calendar,
the accounts your sales team is already working,
the content you have already produced.
You make it account-based, define what success looks like with sales before you start, and run it together.
Pick one cluster, pick 10 accounts, agree on success criteria with sales. Run the pilot for 90 days. Document what works. Build from there.
If you need help, book a free strategy session with us here ⬇️
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.
Watch Full-Funnel Live - How to implement ABM strategy 3.0.
*If you want to attend the next live episode, sign up here to receive an invite. Usually, we host them every Wednesday at 3:30 pm CET (Central Europe) - 09:30 am ET (Eastern Time).
In this episode of Full-Funnel Live, Vlad and Andrei answer all these questions and explain what has been changed in ABM.
💡 Tune in to learn:
How to pivot from the current ABM strategy to the new one?
How does the new strategy impact full-funnel ABM playbooks?
How to evaluate the efficiency of the new strategy?
How to use AI, and what tools to add to the tech stack?