🕵🏻‍♂️ Who owns ABM?

The responsibilities of sales & marketing + a live case study

Sales often think that ABM is a fully owned marketing program. They should only pick the cherry from the cake by showing up on discoveries.

But if marketing could alone drive enterprise pipeline, shouldn’t we see smaller sales and bigger marketing teams? 😁

While marketing owns program orchestration, sales own critical execution areas.

In today’s newsletter, we cover:

• ABM with and without a dedicated Sales Rep

• Marketing & Sales responsibilities in ABM

• How to set up cross-functional collaboration between marketing and sales [Live Case Study]

---

[New Book Alert] Yes, It’s Your Fault.

The harsh reality of marketing and sales alignment?

Sales blames marketing for sending garbage leads. Marketing blames sales for not following up. Meanwhile, revenue targets get missed.

"Yes, It's Your Fault!" by Kelly Hopping and John Eitel isn't another fluffy "let's all be friends" book – it's a practical, no-BS guide that shows how to replace siloed teams with cross-functional revenue teams focused on pipeline velocity.

Stop living in a lead generation funnel utopia where MQLs are celebrated while revenue targets are missed. This book provides the frameworks to transform finger-pointing into actual revenue generation.

If your company struggles with the "marketing does marketing, sales does sales" mentality, this is your roadmap to fixing the fundamental misalignment that's killing your pipeline.

---

ABM with and without a dedicated Sales Rep

The typical problem almost every Head / VP of marketing faces is sales buy-in for ABM and getting a committed, dedicated resource.

Every VP of Sales likes the idea of improving lead quality and pipeline coverage, but doesn’t like the idea of assigning a dedicated sales rep for ABM :)

Here is what happens to the ABM program:

ABM WITHOUT DEDICATED SDR:

• Broad list-building with no real prioritization based on engagement or intent

• AI-based "research" pulling generic public information anybody can find

• No account prioritization framework to focus efforts on high-potential targets

• Marketing creates awareness through non-personalized activities

• Sales sends automated emails with nothing beyond title and industry personalization

• MQL handover

Two recent ABM audits I did last month tell you a painful story.

Outbound attempts to 4,412 accounts:

• 1.77% meeting booking rate

• 70.51% no-response rate

• Programmatic ads: 250k+ impressions, 588 clicks, 28 MQLs

• 0 accounts entering opportunity pipeline

Here is what changes if the ABM team gets a dedicated SDR.

ABM WITH DEDICATED SDR:

• Strategic list-building focused on clusters of accounts with high likelihood to become sales opportunities

• Multi-factor account prioritization based on revenue potential, vendor awareness, relationship strength, and product-need evidence

• In-depth desk and 1:1 research mapping product value to key initiatives and buyer JTBDs

• Detailed buying committee mapping identifying Champions, Decision-makers, Power Users, and Influencers

• Engagement playbooks aligned with intent level and vendor awareness

• Thoughtful commenting and content distribution with multi-threading

• Personalized messages based on captured signals and account research

• Joint program planning with marketing and weekly activation planning

The results gap is staggering (based on pilot program results in 2024):

- 40% increase in enterprise meeting conversion rates
- 25% reduction in sales cycle length
- 7-15 strategic conversations scheduled in the first 90 days

---

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.

---

Marketing & Sales responsibilities in ABM

Here is the list of responsibilities of both teams, with a breakdown by roles.

MARKETING TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES IN AN ABM PROGRAM:

1/ ABM LEAD

- Quarter program planning
- Messaging and narrative
- Selecting target clusters and verticals
- Aligning demand gen activities (blog posts, newsletters, events, white papers) with ABM program
- Develop an ABM content strategy
- Define core playbooks
- Planning and executing strategic events for target accounts
- Define with AE account qualification, segmentation, and prioritization.

2/ CONTENT MARKETER.

- Content mapping and backlog development.
- Creating personalized account content based on the account research
- Developing thought leadership content for LinkedIn.
- Repurposing existing content
- Interviewing Subject-Matter Expert
- Developing slides for presentations.
- Managing newsletter promotion.

3/ DESIGNER

- Infographics, carousels, and quotes.
- Covers for content assets.
- Webinar deck design.

4/ DEMAND GEN MARKETER

- Promoting target content using thought leadership ads.
- Repurposing LinkedIn content for newsletters and blog posts.
- Promoting webinars among existing customers.

SALES TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES.

5/ BDM (Business Development Manager):

- Daily social selling routines and LinkedIn audience building.
- Engaging buying committee members with playbooks
- Conducting account research and building/enriching account lists in Sales Navigator
- Preparing weekly pillars reports and engagement benchmark reports.
- Providing engagement insights for weekly meetings.
- Outreaching to potential clients through engagement cadences (LinkedIn, email, follow-ups).
- Multi-threading and entire buying committee engagement
- Conducting personalized follow-ups after events.

6/ ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

- Creating business cases
- Contributing to cluster challenge decomposition by providing market and buyer insights.
- Participating in selecting clusters and defining account qualification criteria/ICP.
- Engaging in quarterly planning sessions.
- Discovery calls and strategy sessions for target accounts
- Speaking/attending strategic events for target accounts
- Orchestrating ABM programs with an ABM lead

---

GET ACCESS TO A NEW B2B DEMAND GENERATION PLAYBOOK

You’ll get access to:

• 25 short and actionable videos and tutorials. No theory or high-level overview

  15-mins max videos to explain a specific process or show how to implement it

• 10 ready-to-use templates including demand gen reports, budgeting demand gen program, creating joint playbooks with sales, a pilot demand generation program presentation, demand generation program examples, thought leadership, nurturing content production templates, and many more

• 30/60/90 launch plan with step-by-step instructions, demang gen plan example, and a timeline

P.S. If you have access to our ABM course, the new demand generation playbook will help you increase awareness and support your ABM program with engaged strategic accounts.

---

How to set up cross-functional collaboration between marketing and sales [Benchprep Case Study]

Here is how we made ABM into a pipeline generation engine with limited resources with the BenchPrep team (below you can watch a detailed interview with their team):

1. CREATED A COMMITTED CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAM THAT CAN WEAR MULTIPLE HATS.

Our pilot team included:

- Briana - ABM lead and subject-matter expert, and partially RevOps.
- Megan - content creation, design and technical tasks.
- Jalynn - Acount engagement.

With operational support from Evan and Ashish for personalized follow-ups and engagement with Active Focus accounts + thought leadership.

2. RUN A SMALL-SCOPED PROGRAM FOCUSING ON A SMALL # OF ACCOUNTS.

Instead of spray & pray to hundreds of accounts, we defined strict cluster account qualification criteria, including:

- Revenue potential
- Level of relationship
- Level of awareness
- Product need evidence

When applied, the account list was narrowed to 62 strategic accounts.

3. CREATE AN ABM CONTENT STRATEGY FOCUSED ON REPURPOSING EXISTING ASSETS AND CREATING STRATEGIC ONE.

Before defining what content to produce, we did an analysis of the buyer journey of the key cluster clients.

Next, defined:

-What is our strategic narrative should be and what assets could be repurposed
-What new pieces of content we MUST create that sales can leverage in conversations
-What types of personalized content we can create.

This content was shared by the CEO, VP of Sales, and SDR 2-3 times a week, including 1-1 distribution.

4. ESTABLISH DAILY ENGAGEMENT KPIS.

With limited resources, every team must prioritize WHAT can move the needle and impact account engagement.

We defined 4 core engagement pillars for the sales team + 2 supportive KPIs for marketing. Next, created a simple report to track our input weekly.

5. SET UP WEEKLY REVIEW AND PLANNING MEETINGS.

During these meetings, we reviewed:

- what’s working and why
- what’s not working and why
- what bottlenecks do we have and how to unblock them
- what content do we want to create
- what accounts are we going to research and engage
- which accounts we'd move to active focus, and what actions can we take to facilitate opportunity generation

Weekly plan was adjusted to the team's capacity and other marketing & sales activities to avoid overwhelming the team during extremely busy schedules.

6. RUN FULLY PERSONALIZED ACTIVITIES FOR THE ACTIVE FOCUS ACCOUNTS.

For each of the highly-engaged accounts we defined what would be the most meaningful touchpoint, both to help the target buyer and help us to facilitate the sales opportunity generation:

- personalized content hubs
- follows up from CEO suggesting free strategy sessions
- personalized demo accounts with video overview

TLDR;

The reality in 2025: ABM doesn't require massive teams or budgets, but it does demand focused execution and cross-functional collaboration between marketing and sales.

Active sales participation can make or break the program.

Stop living in the utopia that marketing can generate enterprise pipeline on their own.

ABM is a joint motion to holistically influence the buyer journey of target accounts and generate revenue.

---

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.

---

Listen to Full-Funnel Live - ABM to professional associations [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) - 10 am ET (Eastern Time).

In this episode of FullFunnel Live, we are going to share a live ABM case study of our client, BenchPrep, presenting ABM to professional associations playbook.

Tune in to learn:

• What can you expect from the pilot program: live results

• The key playbooks we've executed, what worked and what didn't

• The main mistakes B2B teams make when trying to launch an ABM program?

• How to get buy-in from sales and leadership for ABM

Subscribe to the Full-Funnel podcast:

• ​iTunes

• ​Spotify

• ​YouTube