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I Built the ABM Category. It's Broken, So I'm Back. · GTM Made Simple

• I haven't made a video about ABM in 5 years. 5 years. And there's a reason for that. In 2025 when I go founded Terminus, we helped build the entire ABM category, wrote the book or the books on it. Account-Based Marketing for Dummies by Wiley's ABM is B2B. They became one of the best-selling books out there. Thousands and thousands of copies were sold and companies are [music] were transforming on on the idea of ABM and how to sell to mid-market enterprises. And it was incredible. I started the Flip My Funnel movement [music] uh with thousand episodes on the podcast, events all over the the city and the and US and even world. [music] And over 100,000 marketers joined. We flipped literally the traditional funnel upside [music] down and said, "Stop generating leads and start targeting accounts." We anchored on this idea that less than 1% of the leads are turning into customers. [music] We are better than that. And every company needs to do better than that. On the backs of it, we built Terminus that had an $100 million plus exit value [music] and and we proved the model worked. And then I literally stepped back. [music] You know, I moved on to something new. Go to Market Partners. We built the whole Go to Market operating system. We wrote the book Move which became a Wall Street Journal bestseller and got quoted by Geoffrey Moore, the guy who wrote Crossing the [music] Chasm. And I stopped talking about ABM because I thought the category has grown up. People get it. People [music] are doing fine. We don't I don't need to be talking about ABM because there is 20, 30 agencies that are implementing ABM across hundreds of thousands of companies. There are [music] competitors now growing and building $100 million plus businesses. My job is done. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs getting created with account-based [music] marketing as their title in their title and they're becoming ABM directors, and now VP of ABM and CML focused on account-based marketing. And I thought, well, job well done. We're good. Got an exit from the company, wrote [music] books, jobs are getting created, companies are getting formed around it. I'm good to go. Well, I was wrong. Because recently, [music] I saw research that showed me that 78% of the ABM programs are [music] still failing. That's 78% and after a decade of tools, conferences, certification, billions of dollars in software spent, 78% of ABM programs still not working? That was not an easy news for [music] me to see in that research. And so today, I'm coming back. This is my first ABM video in 5 years. And I'm going to tell you [music] what's actually working in 2026 based on all the research and work. Because I ended up talking to hundreds of folks, learning and getting back into like, hey, what happened? What's working? Where [music] are we moving in the world of AI? What's happening with ABM? So here's what I'm going to do with you. I'm going to share with you the current state of ABM because the data tells a very clear story. Then I'm going to share with you five different mega shifts that you have to think about if you're implementing ABM, building an ABM program, or have or vendor trying to build an ABM tech. You need to really look at these five shifts that are changing the world of account-based marketing and that is a subset of go-to-market. And then, if you're ready, I'm going to give you six clear steps on moving it forward. I've just done everything everything I do, if you know me enough, you know, it's going to be framework-based, data-backed, [music] and research-focused based on what works. So here we go. 80% of B2B organizations now run ABM programs. That's a fact. That's what the data suggest. That's [music] probably up like 50% from the time we started the terminus in 2014-2015. So ABM has gone mainstream. But, here's the problem. Only 23% of those programs [music] are exceeding expectations. And that's that's a heartbreak for me because 52% just [music] meet expectations, which actually means we're doing stuff, but we can't really prove the ROI that it works. And 10% say literally this, [music] "Greatly exceeded expectations." So, so we now have 80% adoption and maybe 25% success rate. That's [music] a problem. 40% say that proving ROI is the number one challenge when it comes to ABM. And almost half of ABM practitioners can prove that the program actually works. 43% say sales and marketing alignment is still broken, and a decade later, [music] it's still broken. And 40% say they can scale. They can't go beyond the pilot program that they have. They [music] can't expand to a different persona or a different segment. That is literally the state of ABM right now in 2026. [music] Bluntly speaking, it's widespread adoption, so that's awesome, but it's also widespread failure. And that's not funny. That's actually sad. [music] And and there got to be a better way to do. And and when I dig into this one, here's what's really interesting. 22% that work, [music] they are crushing it. 208% as a matter of fact, let me just pull up I'll pull up the stats that I was just reading. Here are the stats that are really interesting. The 22% that say that it's that it works, they're saying it's crushing. [music] 208% more marketing generated revenue from signal-driven ABM [music] programs. Think about that. About 117% a higher contract value compared to non-ABM programs. So obviously, there's a comparison done for the ones that are working. 32 days faster [music] in deal velocity. The deals over 500K, it's about 58 days faster. 3.4 times [music] higher engagement lift for tier one accounts, which means the top 100 accounts that you need to be focused on if you want to get high engagement, [music] it's actually working better for higher value, more complex deal, more people in the decision-making process, more [music] bigger deals. They They are actually having a better engagement rate at that tier one level. Same strategy, completely different execution. So, what's the difference? What's the difference doing what's happening with this 22% that are crushing it and about 78% that are barely scraping by? Let me walk you through the five shifts that separate ABM that works [music] and ABM that doesn't in 2026 and hopefully beyond whenever you're watching this video. I think these are a evergreen [music] principles that you need to really take hold of. The shift number one. From new logos to existing accounts. This is by far the biggest shift and the one most companies still are missing. [music] We started the ABM movement because it was all about landing new logos. We need to target, we need to engage them, we need to convert them, and land new bigger logos. [music] That's not where the winners are focused on anymore. 91% of high-performing ABM programs now prioritize growing existing accounts, not new logos, which means about 63% rank in existing account growth, [music] that's the number one objective. And above that, if you do not have new acquisition, most companies look at ABM as a failure. Why? Because your best ABM targets are actually not new customers, it's actually already your customers. They know you. They trust you. They're already bought into [music] whatever it is you're selling in your brand, the sales cycles are way shorter on those and the contract value are much [music] higher. Your win rates are better. So, this ties directly in what I've been teaching and talking about in for the last 5 years, [music] which is NRR, net revenue retention. The companies with 110, 120% NRR, they are growing way faster than the companies who are just generating new logos. They're growing with expansion. [music] So, in ABM, right now, it's it's not the reason to do your acquisition strategy ABM, it's all about expansion strategy. [music] Your best accounts aren't the ones you're trying to land, they're the ones you already have. So, the shift, the big shift, is stop running ABM only for new logos, run ABM for your existing targets, your exist- existing accounts, and target other departments, target other business units, expand your footprint. That's where the real businesses and outcome is because retention and expansion [music] beats acquisition every time, every day, and that's what the best businesses, the fast-moving businesses in ABM, are [music] doing. Shift number two. From static list to real-time signals. Now, this wasn't possible back in the day. Most companies, when when we started ABM in 2014, 2015, they were like, "Here's a list of target accounts, go do something with it." Right? Like, so [music] it was very transactional, very static. Right now, [music] here's what most companies are doing ABM. Once a year, they build a target list of accounts, maybe [music] it's it's based on firmographics, maybe company size, and you might be doing this right now, where it's industries, revenue, and they load it up in an ABM platform, and you're probably running ABM [music] campaigns against it for the next 12 months. Well, that's not ABM in 2026. That's advertising with a fancy name. The winners are doing something completely different. They're running, right now, signal-based ABM. So, what's a signal? So, so [music] I've really dug into this and I'm trying to go trying to make this as simplified as possible because I want you to really implement [music] this thing. It's what works. It's a real-time indicator that an account is ready to engage. Remember, 95% of the folks you're talking to are not going to buy from you right now. They're just getting warmed up. It's really the battle of the 5% that are ready [music] to buy. So, a signal is things like the funding round just closed, they're hiring a new role that used to be for a different product, a new [music] executive has joined the board or the executive team, they're evaluating competitors and so you can see traffic going around, they they the tech stack [music] just changed so they're launching new tools or onboarding new tools so that means they're growing in certain areas and they're showing intent on topics you sought. The data, [music] the companies using real-time signals report 208% more marketing generated revenue. And when I say marketing generated revenue, I just mean that they're generating more revenue, which [music] is phenomenal. The problem is that 56% of opportunities handed to sales still fail to close. Now, you may ask why? Well, here's what I found out. The signals were [music] stale. The timing was off. Sales called 3 months later after the buying window was closed. Remember, [music] 5% ready to buy, you got to jump on it. ABM without signals is quite frankly just advertising going back to 2015. The winners are acting on signals within days, not months. They're building what I call signal-to-action [music] loop. Signal detection, which is identifying the accounts and and their demand state, content [music] adaptation, which is really personalizing it by the hours, not in week, channel orchestration, which is focusing on the right channel [music] in the right time frame, and then sales action, which is sales acts on the signal immediately. [music] So, if your ABM program does not have this loop that I just talked about, you're probably running in circles, and you're running your 2026 program as 2016, [music] and that's why it's not working, and it's not going to work. Which brings [music] me to shift number three. From big list to small [music] focused tiers. This one is going to be very uncomfortable for a lot of people. I know it was when I was reading it, I'm like, "Whoa, that's different. That will [music] That is going to make some people really worry, especially if you're not closing a lot of deals or if your revenue is lagging behind." I was talking to a CEO all the time, and and a lot of time [music] they say, "Well, we're doing ABM right now with 500 accounts." And I say to them, "No, you're not. You're doing demand gen with account name [music] attached to it." And that makes real some people really, really mad, by the way. Here's what the data actually shows. Tier one accounts, [music] let's say under 100, they're refreshed quarterly, 3.4% high engagement lift, and 18% opportunity creation rate. [music] If you're looking at tier two accounts, typically there are 7% opportunity creation. Tier three accounts [music] have 3% opportunity creation, and list over 200 accounts, that engagement drops to 1.6x. [music] So, what I'm trying to say here is that the math is very clear. Small list wins, big list dilutes. [music] When you try to do ABM on 500 accounts, you end up doing nothing at all. [music] You spread your budget too thin, your personalization becomes too generic, and your sales teams [music] really can't keep up, and therefore you lose deals. So, no matter how well you do on the top of the funnel, your bottom of the funnel is going to leak. But, when When focus on 50 accounts, [music] like really focus, you can go deep. You can personalize at the buying committee level. You can coordinate [music] every channel. You can align sales, marketing, and customer success on every single account. This shift will cut your tier one list in half, then cut it half again. In In one of my CEO round tables, we were talking about ABM, and one of them said to me that, "Hey, we cut our ABM list from 500 accounts to 47, and our pipeline [music] went up 3x." Same budget, completely different results. And this doesn't happen by accident. It's not just an act of like, "Well, let's just cut the losses and move." No, no, no. This is about focus. The difference wasn't the tools. [music] It was literally the focus. Which brings me to shift number four, from MQLs. And you have probably heard this before and seen so much written about it. You got to move from MQLs to account [music] penetration. This is the measurement problem that's killing ABM right now. Most companies still measure ABM the same way they measure demand gen, like leads [music] and MQLs and form fills and downloads. And that's not how ABM works. Here's the reality. The average B2B business or it has a buying committee of about 13 people [music] now. 89% of B2B purchases involve two or more functions and departments. [music] So, think about that. So, if you are celebrating because you got one lead from that one account, you're missing about 12 people who actually are able to help you make that decision or at least influence that decision. So, ABM isn't about generating leads. It was never about that. It is about penetrating accounts that matter, that in the 5% that are ready to buy. So, the question isn't how many leads did we get? The question is, how many people in the buying community are engaged? [music] How deep are we in that account? Are we talking to procurement? Are we talking to legal? Are we Do we have the end users in it? Do we have executive sponsor? The shift is really about stop measuring leads and actually start measuring account penetration. [music] So, so you need to look at things like how many how many contacts do we have per account? How many departments are engaged? What percentage of the buying committee [music] have we reached? And then what's our engagement score at the account level? Not just at the lead level. [music] If you're measuring MQLs, you're you're really not doing ABM at all. Even if you're measuring, let's say MQAs, which is marketing qualified accounts, you're not measuring A You're not doing ABM. What you're doing is demand gen with a fancy title of ABM. And that's going to suck and [music] make you feel like, man, what are we talking about? But this is the real thing. You got to stop talking about ABM as a demand gen tool and actually really do ABM. Which brings me to shift number five, which is probably where you are right now. [music] From tool stacks to operating systems. This is the one that connects everything and I've been [music] I've been teaching and focused on that and probably the most valuable of all. Most companies think ABM is [music] a tool problem and you might be thinking the same thing. Well, the new tools are not working the way these [music] things aren't working. There's a lot changing in the world. So, what you do? You go buy tools. Lots of tools. Small tools, big tools, all over the place. Intent data platform, ABM account list advertising platform, personalization platform, orchestration platform, analytics platform. [music] All of these and the average ABM program now has nine different tools based on the research I looked at. So, here's what happens. None of them actually talk to each other. The data doesn't flow and the signals don't trigger actions and marketing does their thing and sales is still waiting and they have their own prioritized list and nobody's aligned and what happens next is this. 43% of the ABM practitioners say that the martech [music] integration is their biggest barrier. Can you think about it? You bought it and now you're saying it doesn't work. Why? Because it's not working together. The problem isn't the tool [music] and you know it. The problem is that you don't have a system. [music] This is why I built the go-to-market operating system which is again, I'm not just trying to sell a tool. It's not even a tool, it's a framework. Just like the move framework for [music] for helping companies think about how do they move forward, GT MOS is a framework. You don't need more tools, you need an operating system that connects strategy to execution. The winners [music] aren't the ones with the most tools. They are the ones with the tightest integration. They're the ones [music] where the signal triggers a play, the play triggers the content, the content triggers the sales action, the sales action triggers the measurement all in one connected loop. And that's not a tool stack by the way. That's That's not a go-to-market stack either. What is [music] it? It's a operating system. Stop buying more tools, start building a system that connects. So ask yourself, when a signal fires, what happens next? Is it automated? Is the sales notified real time? Does the content adapt? Does the channel change? Does the action happen that you want to happen in order for the deal to move forward? If you can't answer those tools, you do not have ABM [music] program. What you have is a collection of tools that don't really talk to each other and you [music] remain frustrated. And let me talk about AI for a minute because everyone is asking, what about AI and ABM? Well, here's the data again. 29% of ABM programs use AI for content personalization at scale. [music] About 23% use AI for account selection and profiling a bunch of accounts. 19% use AI for content creation and delivery. An average effectiveness rating is about [music] 7.3 out of 10. Good, not great. Now, here's the big reality check. AI doesn't fix bad ABM, it multiplies it. So, if your targeting is wrong, AI [music] will help you target the wrong accounts faster. If your messaging is generic, AI will help you produce more generic content at scale. And if your signals are stale, AI will help you act on the stale signals more efficiently. So, AI is a multiplier for sure, but it multiplies whatever is already working. Bad ABM, bad results. Good ABM, you'll get phenomenal results. [music] So, let me give you the framework. I went through all of this because I wanted to talk through ABM, the state of ABM, the shifts that are happening, so you can actually understand how and what to change. But I'm about to share with you six things that separate ABM that [music] works and from ABM that doesn't. And I'm going to give you in a fast rapid-fire thing, so you can literally make notes, come back and watch this again, do [music] this. Look, I've been spending more than a decade, wrote two books, helped [music] thousands of companies to run ABM, and now I want every company to win at ABM. No longer stay in your place and say that you do ABM. I want you to really do ABM because ABM works. The data shows you that ABM [music] works really, really well. So, I want you to take this seriously and actually drive your business and make it [music] profitable. All right? So, step number one, start with existing accounts. 91% of the winning programs that I looked at, they all prioritize expansion over acquisition. Your best ABM targets are already your customers. Boom. Number two, keep [music] tier one small, under 100 accounts, refresh it quarterly. Small list wins, big list dilutes. [music] Number three, act on real-time signals. Funding, hiring, leadership change, intent. If you're not acting on signals, you're just advertising. [music] Number four, measure account penetration. How many of the 13 buyers [music] are engaged right now is very important question. So, stop counting the leads and start measuring the depth in each account that you're trying to close a deal [music] with. Five, building signal to action loop, which means you got to be able to do detection, content, [music] channel, sales action. That loop needs to be one connected system, not seven or nine disconnected tools. Detection, [music] content, channel, and sales action. Which brings me to number six, layer AI on top [music] after the systems are built. AI multiplies whatever you have. So, make sure that you're doing [music] whatever you're doing, have a system so that you can multiply. That's ABM, and that's what works. So, I want to close on a personal note. I helped build this whole category of [music] ABM. I take this personally. I stepped away because I thought the category has matured. I thought people got it. But, 78% of ABM programs still failing after a decade? That's like losing billions of dollars in software and all the conferences and certifications and all of that done and 78% still say they don't get this right? I don't think it's complicated. I don't think [music] it's too heavy. I think we just lost focus. We're not We're not here to sell software. [music] I don't have an ABM platform anymore, just so you know. Um I don't even have a stock in Terminus that actually is going to do anything [music] anymore. But, to remind you that ABM was supposed to be the best way B2B grows. ABM was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to target the right accounts, engage the whole buying committee, align sales and marketing and customer success, [music] measure what matters. That's it. The tools serve that mission. [music] The AI um yeah, you should serve that mission. The data that you have should serve that mission. So, if your ABM program is complicated, it's a go-to-market problem. It's a business problem. So, you need to simplify, you need to focus, and you need to execute on it. So, if this connects for you and you want to do better at this, I really ask you to go to runongtmos.com/move. Take the assessment. Over 3,000 companies have already done it. It will show you exactly what stage of the business you are in, what's broken, what's not broken, where do you need to create systems so that it will make you stronger, and it will help you get unstuck from wherever you're stuck. So, if you're ready, let's get moving.