Transcript

Unqualified Leads – Episode 011 Highlights

Hosts: Harry Hughes & Dan

Topic: What ABM actually is (and isn’t), why it exists in modern B2B, and the most important ABM lever: building your initial target account lists.

ABM in 2026: Why Everyone Says They Do It (But Most Don’t)

A lot of teams use the acronym, claim they’re “doing ABM,” but are really just doing lightly targeted demand gen.

So the first job is drawing a hard line between ABM theatre and true ABM.

1. What ABM Is Not

• ABM is not running LinkedIn ads to a list of 500 uploaded companies

• ABM is not sending “personalised” emails to 1,000 companies

• ABM is not “enterprise demand gen”

Those are tactics. ABM is something else entirely.

2. What ABM Actually Is

ABM is a revenue system, not a campaign.

The defining trait: Accounts (companies) are the unit of planning, orchestration, execution, and measurement.

Not leads. Not clicks. Not MQLs.

ABM also isn’t “marketing-owned.” It’s an operating system across marketing, sales, and customer-facing teams.

If you’re truly running ABM, the following must be true:

• You can name the target accounts

• Sales is explicitly aligned on those same accounts

• Success is measured as pipeline at the account level

• You can answer: How much pipeline did this account create?

3. Why ABM Exists: B2B Buying Broke Lead-Based Systems

ABM matters more in 2026 because the buying process changed. Lead-based systems focus on one individual taking an action:

• webinar signup

• whitepaper download

• demo request

But enterprise buying doesn’t work like that.

ABM exists because:

• Deals require buying committees (often 5–15 stakeholders)

• Sales cycles are long (3–12+ months)

• Stakeholders rotate in/out mid-cycle (resets)

• Marketing can’t “close” alone — sales + marketing must be tightly integrated

Demand gen tends to optimise for volume, ABM optimises for consensus.

4. ABM Is Not a Replacement for Demand Gen

A key point both hosts reinforce: You don’t throw demand gen away.

In a mature org, you run:

• Evergreen demand gen (baseline motion)

• ABM for enterprise and strategic accounts

Dan introduces the idea of pre-ABM demand gen:

Run an ICP-bound demand gen motion first to reduce the risk of picking the wrong accounts before going fully manual with ABM.

5. Pre-ABM Demand Gen: “Let the Market Reveal the Accounts”

Dan frames pre-ABM as signal collection, not volume generation.

You push one clear POV to a tight ICP and watch for:

• Company-level engagement

• Repeat interactions from the same accounts

• Multiple stakeholders engaging from one company

• Profile views from target accounts (LinkedIn)

• ICP account site visits (via de-anon tools)

Accounts “earn the right” to enter full ABM by showing signals.

6. A Critical Operational Rule: Use ABM Lists as Exclusions

Harry calls out a common mistake:

If you’re running ABM and also running broader demand gen campaigns, you must exclude your tier-1 ABM list from generic campaigns.

You don’t want tier-1 accounts seeing:

• generic TOFU creative

• broad market messaging

• unrelated retargeting

ABM accounts need controlled exposure.

7. The 3 ABM Motions

Harry breaks ABM into the common execution tiers:

1) One-to-Many (Programmatic ABM)

• Hundreds/thousands of accounts

• Light personalisation

• Intent/signal driven

• Works best for lower ACV (~£25k range), PLG or sales-assisted

  
  

2) One-to-Few (Cluster ABM)

• Clusters of accounts with a shared narrative (e.g., regulation, region, category)

• More personalisation

• More sales involvement

• Typically mid ACV (~£25k–£100k)

  
  

3) One-to-One (True Strategic ABM)

• <50 named accounts

• Bespoke research and orchestration

• Predominantly sales-led, marketing-supported

• Higher ACV (often £100k+), long cycles, executive sponsorship

• Non-digital touchpoints matter (events, dinners, in-person)

  
  

8. Why Most ABM Programs Fail

Harry outlines failure points that kill ABM execution:

• Sales and marketing disagree on who matters

• Target list becomes a free-for-all (pet accounts, opinion-driven changes)

• No single owner of the account list

• No documented tiering logic

• Weak or unclear exclusion criteria (often more important than inclusion)

• No consistent governance cadence (weekly review, monthly tier changes, quarterly strategy)

ABM needs alignment, consistency, and revenue accountability.

9. The Most Important Part of ABM: The List

Harry’s main thesis:

ABM succeeds or fails based on list quality.

And list quality depends on your ICP being a gate, not a description.

If your ICP sounds like:

• “companies who could benefit”

• “anyone sales wants to chase”

• “a broad industry + wide headcount range”

That’s not an ICP, it’s a permission slip that destroys sales capacity.

Dan gives an example:

“IT firms with 10–1000 employees” is meaningless, it could describe a local shop or a major enterprise vendor. ABM needs specificity.

10. The 4-Layer ICP Gate

Harry breaks ICP into four non-negotiable layers.

Layer 1: Firmographic Fit

Can they buy?

• Industry

• Revenue band

• Employee count band

• Geography / serviceability

If they fail here, they’re removed regardless of intent.

Layer 2: Technographic / Operational Fit

Can they implement?

• Tech stack alignment

• Maturity

• Constraints (security, integrations, competing tools)

This is often where deals die late, so validate early where possible.

Layer 3: Triggers & Contextual Signals

Why now?

• Hiring velocity shifts

• Funding events

• Regulatory pressure

• New product launches

• Tech stack changes

• Intent (Sixth Sense / Demandbase / Bombora / first-party signals)

This changes priority and speed, not baseline eligibility.

Layer 4: Commercial Reality

Should we sell?

• Minimum ACV threshold

• Unit economics for ABM effort

• Support burden vs payoff

• Expansion potential

Dan highlights the unit economics point:

ABM generally needs a meaningful ACV floor (he suggests ~£30k+) because the motion is labour-intensive.

11. ICP Scoring: Make It Mechanical

Once the gate criteria exists, you need a scoring model:

• Define dimensions (industry, size, geo, tech fit, maturity, viability)

• Assign weights (e.g., industry 25%, tech 20%, etc.)

• Score each dimension (0–100)

• Create pass/fail logic:

  
  

  • 70+ = eligible

  • 60–69 = conditional (often tier 3)

  • <60 = exclude

Important: Add hard exclusion rules outside the score

(e.g., unsupported integration, public sector, wrong territory). High score doesn’t override a hard stop.

12. Validate the ICP Model Before You Use It

Harry recommends a practical test:

Take the last 12–18 months of closed-won deals and score them.

• If your best deals score low → your model is wrong

• If everything scores high → your model is too broad

• You want a clear separation: top deals score high, weak deals score low

13. Governance & Data: ABM Breaks Without a Clean System

Harry briefly touches the operational plumbing that prevents chaos:

• Lead-to-account matching (avoid duplicates)

• Account hierarchies (parent vs buying entity)

• Single source of truth across CRM + marketing + intent tools

• Field architecture:

  
  

  • Account: ICP score, status, tier, owner, parent info

  • Contact: role in committee, seniority, persona, consent, account ID

  
  

Dan adds: you can do a lot of this without an ABM platform early on.

14. Building the Account List

Golden rule:

Each account must be sourced, justified, scored, reviewable, and reversible.

Process outline:

1. Build a raw list (Sales Nav, CRM, intent tools, BuiltWith, etc.)

2. Enrich (e.g., Clay) for employee count, revenue, tech stack, etc.

3. Apply scoring + exclusion rules

4. Deduplicate and tier the list

5. Upload tiers into CRM

15. The Sales Review: Removal Only

Harry emphasises a critical governance rule:

The list review is not a free-for-all.

It’s removal only, based on justified reasons (not opinions), e.g.:

• already in active opportunity

• territory mismatch

• conflicts

• strategic exclusions

This prevents ABM from becoming “everyone’s pet account list.”

Final Takeaways

• ABM is a revenue system, not a campaign

• Accounts are the unit of measurement: pipeline per account

• ABM exists because buying committees + long cycles break lead-based models

• ABM ≠ replacing demand gen — mature teams run both

• The list is the strategy: strict ICP gate → scoring → tiering → governance

• ABM fails when lists become subjective, dynamic, and ownerless

• If you can’t explain why an account is on the list, it shouldn’t be there