ABM starts with a shared account plan.

Choosing a list of target accounts creates a commitment. It means deciding where sales and marketing will spend their time, what they need to understand and what they will do differently for those organisations.

That is the point I keep coming back to when revisiting my CIM ABM course. A recognisable company name on a slide tells me little about whether the team has a credible route to helping that account buy.

Account based marketing focuses effort on selected organisations and the people making the buying decision. The account sets the priority. The buying group tells us whose questions need answering. Bring both into a plan that sales and marketing can use.

Account selection is an investment decision

I would start by agreeing what the programme is meant to change. Winning a new customer, helping an existing customer expand and moving a stalled evaluation forward call for different work. A target list should reflect that objective.

An ideal customer profile describes the kind of organisation we can serve well. The account list names the organisations we have chosen to pursue now. I would expect the team to explain the difference, including why an attractive company might still be a poor priority this quarter.

The decision needs more than potential contract value. Consider the problem we can solve, the evidence of need, existing relationships, likely timing and our ability to support a successful customer. Then account for the effort the approach requires.

A large account with no clear problem, weak fit and no route to a conversation can absorb a lot of attention. A smaller account with a specific need and a credible path to value may deserve more of it. Account selection should make those trade offs visible.

Match the effort to the opportunity

The CIM course covers Strategic, Scaled and Programmatic ABM. They offer different ways to organise the depth and reach of the work. CIM ABM Masterclass

• Strategic ABM, one to one: build the research, account plan and activity around an individual organisation.
• Scaled ABM, one to few: group accounts around a shared problem or context, with relevant differences reflected in the approach.
• Programmatic ABM, one to many: use data and technology to coordinate activity across a broader, selected account set.

I would use these as planning choices. A team does not need to pass through them in order, and an account's size should not automatically determine its treatment.

Decide how much research and account attention your team can sustain. If an individual account plan has no named sales owner, no time for research and no review rhythm, calling it strategic ABM does not fix the gap.

Help the buying group reach a decision

An account can look engaged while the purchase is still blocked. A product champion may be enthusiastic, while someone responsible for technical risk or commercial approval has not received the evidence they need.

I would map the buying roles, the relationships we actually have and the questions still unresolved. Job titles are a starting point. They do not establish a person's influence, authority or willingness to support the purchase.

Consider a fictional business evaluating a work management platform. A team lead wants to know whether daily coordination will improve. A technical reviewer needs to understand access and data handling. A commercial reviewer needs clear terms and a credible view of the full cost. The person sponsoring the purchase needs a reason to prioritise it.

The same case study may help several people, but each needs a different part of the evidence. Personalisation should make that evidence easier to find. It should not imply that we know private concerns which the person has never shared.

I would also record the gaps honestly. A blank space in the account plan is a research task. Filling it with an assumed buyer or an AI generated description creates false confidence.

Turn a signal into an agreed next step

Repeated activity around a topic can justify closer attention. It does not establish who made the decision, whether there is a budget or whether a conversation is wanted. Account level activity also should not be presented as proof of an individual person's behaviour.

In the fictional example, interest in a technical guide could prompt the account owner to review the context. If a buyer has explicitly asked for a security discussion, that request deserves a clear response. Those two situations should not create the same automatic sequence.

This is where marketing operations has a specific job. Connect contacts to the right account, make ownership clear and define what the signal changes. Agree which messages should pause when a sales conversation begins, which should continue and how the outcome gets recorded.

Bring sales and marketing together regularly to review priority accounts, agree the next action and name its owner. Customer success should be involved where the objective concerns an existing customer. Every alert needs a purpose beyond appearing on a dashboard.

ABX keeps the relationship connected

Account based experience, or ABX, puts the experience across the account relationship at the centre of the work. Demandbase describes an approach that uses shared insight to coordinate relevant interactions across marketing, sales and customer success, including after the purchase. Demandbase on ABX

I would be careful about claiming this replaces ABM. Established descriptions of ABM already include retention and growth within existing accounts. Optimizely on ABM

What interests me about ABX is the expectation that the account plan stays useful throughout the relationship. The reason a customer bought, the commitments made during evaluation and the outcome they want should carry into onboarding, product use, support and renewal. Changing the label achieves little if that context disappears between teams.

In the fictional work management example, the customer buys to improve coordination across its teams. Sales records that goal. Customer success uses it to shape onboarding. Marketing provides guidance relevant to the tasks people need to complete. Product and support feedback then help the account team understand whether the customer is getting the value they expected.

If adoption stalls or a serious support issue remains open, I would review the planned expansion message and prioritise the unresolved need. A positive result could support a conversation about another use case. Neither response should follow automatically from an engagement score.

This needs shared account and contact records, clear permissions, agreed measures and a named owner for the next action. Teams also need to record what happened so the next person can act on it. The information may sit across several systems. The working agreement should make clear which records and decisions each team relies on.

My starting point would be one break in the relationship, such as the move from an agreed sale to onboarding. Check whether the customer goal survives that handover, whether someone owns it and whether the customer has to explain it again. That gives the ABX discussion a specific problem to solve.

Measure progress without overstating the result

For the first review, I would look at whether we have reached the right people and resolved useful questions. That could include access to an important stakeholder, a completed evaluation step or an agreed next meeting. Define the evidence for each stage before counting it as progress.

Over a longer period, look at accepted opportunities, conversion, sales cycle length, contract value and customer expansion where those measures fit the objective. For the continuing relationship, include adoption of the intended use, progress towards the customer's agreed outcome and retention. Keep the account cohort and time window consistent so the comparison means something.

Engagement helps explain what is happening. Influenced pipeline shows an association under the reporting rules we have chosen. Neither, on its own, proves that ABM caused additional revenue.

Comparing target accounts with every other account can also mislead. We selected the targets because we expected them to be different. Where practical, use a comparable group or a planned test. With a small set of strategic accounts, be open about the limits and examine the account evidence alongside the totals.

I would include the cost of research, content, sales attention and ongoing delivery in the review. More activity or a larger attributed pipeline figure is not enough to establish a return.

Use AI to support the account plan

Start by testing AI on approved account research. Ask it to summarise the evidence, flag missing information and draft questions for a salesperson to review. Each summary should retain its sources and make uncertainty visible.

I would keep invented customer problems, unverified buying roles and automatic commercial commitments outside that workflow. Faster preparation is useful only if the checking and correction effort does not cancel the benefit.

The account plan gives AI a defined task and a way to judge the output. The people responsible for the relationship still decide whether the evidence is good enough to act on.

The account brief I would write first

Before building the campaign, I would put one priority account in front of the team and ask for a short, shared brief:

• Why this account deserves attention now, including the evidence and the gaps.
• The customer problem we believe we can help resolve.
• The buying roles we know, the relationships we have and the questions still open.
• The level of effort we can support and the people responsible for it.
• The next useful action, its owner and what would make us pause.
• Who carries the customer goal and commitments into onboarding and later reviews.
• The evidence we will use to judge progress and the date of the next review.

If that brief is hard to write, the difficulty is useful. It shows what needs resolving before more activity is launched. I would rather have a smaller account set with plans the team can use than a longer list that nobody owns.

For the wider customer journey, I explore how account context and product signals can work together in PLG and sales should share the customer.

Course acknowledgement

These reflections draw on the CIM ABM masterclass material by Sarah Jones and The Chartered Institute of Marketing, alongside the ABX sources linked above. The recommendations, diagrams and fictional example are my own interpretation. CIM course overview