How successful teams think about ABM vs ABS

I’m a marketing guy. Raised by Brian Halligan, Rand Fishkin and Seth Godin.

And yet, I’m obsessed with the problem of account-based selling and not account-based marketing.

Why? Because I think ABS with its true 1:1 account work is closer to what ABM should be. And to me, most think about this ABS vs ABM thing wrong.

Even saying ABS vs ABM frames the problem. It’s an inside-out question. It describes which department runs the play, nothing else.

The account looking at you could not care less.

They see an ad. Get an invitation to a webinar. Click a 1:1 landing page. Get a bespoke pitch deck. Talk to a sales rep that frames their problem.

Their experience doesn’t care about ABM vs ABS. Just that it’s connected and feels like one true experience. They care just as much about your org chart as what you had for breakfast yesterday.

The successful teams don’t look at ABS vs ABM. They think in Account-Based Go-to-market. One motion serving all their accounts.

Even knowing this I have also failed to operate by it.

As CMO at a PaaS company, I led building a webinar series to warm up a new market: stadiums. Marketing was preparing leads, lining up the accounts, doing exactly what the plan said. Meanwhile the sales reps were mid-chase in a completely different segment. To them, our stadium push wasn't perceived as other than noise. "I'm chasing these four accounts over here and you want me to reach out to those three I never heard of?"

Both sides were right by their own plan. And that was the problem. There were two plans.

What was missing wasn't better ABM or better ABS. It was one connected strategy to win the 800 accounts we had on the list.

The practical version is simpler than the name suggests. Take your list. Say it's 200 accounts. Now one question drives the next quarter: how does every account on this list see and hear from us in the next three months? What does marketing do? What does sales do? What does customer success do, and which current customers can open doors on our behalf? Cluster the accounts by the problem they're in. Outline the work so everyone knows exactly what they're doing, on the same accounts, at the same time.

Be real transparent on progress with each other and start working as one team to close those 200 accounts instead of fighting about department credit.

So is that marketing or sales? It’s both. And that's how we should be thinking about it. As Account-Based GTM instead. I bet that would make my marketing heroes Brian, Rand and Seth proud.

But more importantly, it would make your Account Based Motion much more effective.