ABM is not automation. It’s a strategic approach relating to how Enterprise buyers choose.

After analysing more than 50 conversations which I have had over the past couple of months on ABM, ICP, and GTM strategy conversations, one uncomfortable pattern kept resurfacing:

Most ABM programmes don’t fail because of bad tools. They fail because companies are not fully aligned on what ABM requires.

I am not talking about a marketing tactic or a platform selection. Here I am talking about whether an organisation is structurally and culturally ready to operate differently.

In this article, I focus on what ABM really demands and why going all in is the only way to succeed.

The framing that slows ABM down

ABM rarely enters organisations at full speed from what I have noticed. More often than not, it shows up as: a pilot, something marketing wants to try, extra support for sales, and it is sometimes even perceived as Enterprise ads.

That framing can end up being damaging because ABM is none of those things.

ABM is a commitment to design for how enterprise buyers actually decide:

• Building visibility and credibility early, sometimes even long before a deal is active
• Reducing perceived risk through consistent presence and narrative 
• Shaping buying criteria and context before an RFP ever exists
  

ABM creates control

The focus shouldn’t be about tools, attribution models and not even on budget to start with. Instead, the initial conversation has to be around a deeper organisational question: are we aligned on running an enterprise motion differently?

ABM forces leadership to confront a hard constraint: Enterprise growth cannot be brute-forced. It won’t be any help if you try to out-spend category leaders, or work around distrust.

ABM isn’t a promise of more speed: it’s about creating control. When I talk about control here, it is about:

• buyers encountering your narrative
• how your category is understood
• shaping how value is understood, compared, and chosen.
• which criteria exist before an RFP
• appearing established
  

For organisations selling into enterprise, this is structural.

Why ABM usually breaks at the data layer first

From what I have seen, when ABM fails, it happens because marketing, sales, and RevOps are operating on different CRM realities.

The same breakdowns show up repeatedly across organisations:

• Marketing captures multiple signals from the same contact (events, content, product interest), but the CRM can only store one “primary” interest. The context gets overwritten.
  
• Sales receives leads and account alerts without visibility into earlier engagement, making conversations feel colder than they should
  
• RevOps defines ICPs and segmentation logic, but those rules aren’t enforced in routing, scoring, or reporting
  

At the same time:

• Consent is managed differently across brands or regions, creating risk and hesitation around outreach
• Dashboards show email sends, clicks, or leads, while sales is measured on account progression and revenue
  

The result can be misalignment where Marketing believes accounts are active but Sales experiences stalled conversations. And RevOps struggles to explain the gap with confidence.

This is what happens when ABM strategy advances faster than the operating model that supports it.

Teams that make ABM work redesign their CRM to reflect how enterprise buying actually happens:

• Contacts are allowed to hold multiple roles and interests simultaneously (e.g. buyer, influencer, technical evaluator), without overwriting previous context
  
• Product interest, buying signals, and engagement are stored as structured data (objects, fields, or relationships), not free text or “latest activity” only
  
• Account status and progression are defined once and calculated consistently (e.g. target → engaged → active → pipeline), so marketing, sales, and RevOps see the same stage at the same time
  

Only after these rules are enforced at the data level do teams allow campaigns, routing, and reporting to run independently.

ICPs need to be operational to drive ABM

ABM depends on knowing which accounts deserve focus and why. That only works when ICP definitions are enforced in the systems that run daily execution.

In teams where ABM works, ICP logic is built into the CRM and actively drives behaviour:

• Lead and account scoring prioritise ICP-fit accounts automatically
• Routing rules ensure ICP accounts reach the right sales teams first
• Sales prioritisation is based on ICP fit
• Reporting clearly shows ICP performance
  

This is what turns ABM from intent into action with Marketing focusing effort where it matters, Sales spending time on accounts that can actually convert and RevOps measuring progression instead of activity.

The importance of Buyer Personas

Successful ABM programmes at scale look at “which buyer persona needs to act next and what friction are they facing?”.

That shift changes execution:

• Personas influence routing
• Buying centres are mapped
• Marketing, sales, and customer success share a common mental model
• The messaging is adapted

Why Operational Leaders need to be all-in

ABM is an operating system, that reshapes:

• How marketing plans
• How sales prioritises
• How pipeline is supported
• How success is measured (from lead volume to account progression)

In reality, Leaders rarely doubt whether ABM works. What they worry about is what happens in the meantime. This can be boiled down to “Does this reduce pipeline?”.

What generally changes their perspective is the quality of conversations that happen when an ABM motion runs:

• Warmer first interactions
• Familiar account names
• Buyers who already trust the narrative
• Committees with shared language for value

ABM doesn’t replace sales effort. Not at all. What it does is that it removes friction sales teams have been compensating for silently.

ABM loses impact when we forget buyers are…Human

Some underperforming ABM programmes that I have seen share one trait: they were indistinguishable from competitors (Same messages, same signals, same safe positioning). 

ABM loses relevance when organisations forget that:

• Buying decisions are emotional
• Trust is built creatively
• Differentiation is human
  

Where ABM actually begins

Many organisations move through the same sequence:

• Discomfort: something isn’t working
• Curiosity: ABM sounds promising
• Misunderstanding: is this ads, software, or a campaign?
• Reframing: this is about influence and risk
• Executive hesitation: are we ready to operate differently?

After months of discussion, ABM is generally adopted through shared belief that enterprise buying is shaped early, that marketing is leverage and that sales performs best in warmed environments and it’s the only structure that fits how enterprise buyers actually buy.