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Fes Askari (strategicabm) – Hey guys, welcome to an episode of ABM Under the Hood.

I'm Fes, Director of Strategic Accounts here at the Agency, and in these sessions it's informal discussion about all things ABM, with my colleague Josh Weale. Josh, our Director of ABM.

Hey Josh, how you doing? 

Josh Weale (strategicabm) – Hey, Fes. Good to be here. Good stuff. 

Defining Your Target Account List

Fes – And today's topic, Josh, we have identified a hot topic for many teams is development of their target account list, right?

Josh – Yeah, we're going to talk all things target accounts, why you need one, how you build one, and how it's different from maybe traditional lead generation demand, generation efforts, when it comes to ABM programs.

Fes – Yeah, and it's probably one of the biggest subjects that we speak to teams about is the importance of a well-qualified and agreed upon list of target accounts for your ABM program. And that can be at different levels of scale and it can be different things to different stakeholders.

So, it's really important to have that discussion internally. And as you mentioned, we've got a list of questions that we've kind of mapped out to help steer the discussion and these are typically based on some of the discussion points that we hear from teams on our ABM Lunch & Learn sessions or other sessions with clients and that type of feedback. Should I just go through those questions quickly and then we can come back to each point individually? 

Josh – Yeah, sure. Let's go for it. 

What Is a Target Account List?

Fes – Cool. So the first few questions, really, are around why is a target addressable, sorry, a target account list important for ABM and general go-to-market strategy, right?

We also have the difference between a target account list and a target addressable market, which is what I tripped up on a second ago. And then what are the key considerations in building blocks to developing an effective target account list?

Key Components of a Powerful Account List

Who should be involved in developing a list? What kind of data and input should be considered? How often should a target account list be reviewed by teams and stakeholders? Who have you seen do this well – and why? And what are some of the watch-outs and caveats? I think those are the main kind of key topics we wanted to focus on, right?

Josh – Yep. Yeah, it's all good.

Fes – Brilliant. Should we jump into it?

Josh – Yeah, yeah. So I guess we can start with why a target account list is important for an Account-based Marketing program and ultimately, how you build one.

At least from my perspective in the strategy team, it's ultimately the cornerstone of the ABM program itself. So, without an identified target account list, you really don't have any guardrails for what you're doing. And ultimately it means that the strategy is kind of beholden to anyone and everything, and that really goes against the principles of Account-based Marketing. 

So in terms of why you need one, it gives you the focus – especially as ABM is typically associated with kind of higher levels of personalization, which takes higher levels of resource. You want to make sure that you're focusing your efforts, your resource, and really the work that you're doing on the accounts that are going to matter most and more likely to drive the highest impact for your organization.

How It Differs from Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Fes – Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely about alignment and impact, right? The target account list I think can be defined depending on a few criteria – like your commercial objectives, your ABM maturity, and some of those other factors around Sales and Marketing alignment that aren't always obvious when you're just looking at standard kind of ICP, firmographic-type data.

It's more about your organization, your go-to-market approach, and where you can make impact as a revenue team across your Sales, Marketing and other stakeholders who are involved in your go-to-market strategy. Right?

Sales & Marketing Alignment and Input

So, really that is the crux of it. It is having that alignment on what's important to everybody within this group of accounts that you're going to, you know, really turn up the focus on, and spend more time, more resource, more energy to drive that impact with, and therefore you need to justify that increased level of resource with some sort of business case. not just the technical, ICP side of it, right? It's more…

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – ... for me it's much more about the alignment piece.

Josh – Yeah, yeah. Everybody has to bring something to the party, ultimately, to drive a successful ABM program. 

Data-Driven Criteria: Firmographics, Technographics & Contextual Factors

So you take the business objectives, which are set by the leadership team. They feed down into the Sales and Marketing teams. And then from a Marketing point of view, the ABM strategy team can focus on really doing desk research and as you said, identifying the firmographic and the technographic information that can inform ICP and account selection, from a Marketing perspective, of these are the accounts that are best fit based on our analysis of how we've won customers in the past, the best customers to sell to, all of that kind of stuff. 

But, that only adds value if then Sales can kind of hear that, and feed off of that in terms of what they hear directly from the market and, and from their conversations with prospects and target accounts on a day-to-day basis. Because desk research will get you so far, and it's the kind of frontline insights from the Sales team that will really help to validate where we need to focus our time and effort. But, ultimately kind of being able to drive that alignment, as you said. I think that's really where the best target account lists are formed – when there's clear kind of agreement between both Sales and Marketing teams, and then, and a pathway to how this target account list relates back up to that business objective. 

Fes – Yeah, absolutely. And we'll come on to some of the inputs like you mentioned there, the data for ICP building, all that kind of stuff, as we develop the discussion. But it'd be really good just to talk about that alignment piece a bit more, because there's other considerations around why this set of accounts is the right set of accounts. 

It could be, you know, these accounts are good from a product roadmap perspective. You know, we know that these accounts are aligned to where the business is going, where the products are heading, and therefore they're that sweet spot set of accounts. 

It's also about, you know, what teams are investing personally in being involved in – in this, you know, go-to-market program. And that could be driven top-down from CEO level – really getting that CEO and leadership buy-in to the account list. And therefore you also inadvertently get the right level of resources and focus and attention from all the other stakeholder groups. If you have that level of buy-in. 

From a Sales team perspective, it's really about understanding what drives them and where they're going to pick up the baton from Marketing or customer success and vice versa. And how you can make sure that people have the right motivation to deliver on their end of the activation with these accounts. 

From a Marketing perspective, you know, what we don't want is typically what you see in many organizations is Marketing is just given a list. And it's like, "Here's the list, go on! Build some campaigns – heads down, you know, get those leads!" Right? And it's not always as straightforward as that.

There could be many criteria as to why certain accounts aren't a good fit for that additional level of resource and focus and other criteria, and why they are, you know, just one example might be, you know, do we have success stories? Do we have product market fit? Do we have the right level of insights to tell a compelling story to that type of customer?

Yeah. I think, I think it's really interesting, actually. You mentioned kind of about that value piece of which accounts we should focus on. It's not always just about kind of accounts with the shiniest logos or accounts that we think have got the most capability to spend. 

Obviously revenue is a real key driver and ABM is focused on high-value accounts, but value can be defined in different ways. It may be that the ABM program just wants to focus on kind of specific target accounts that you know that if you can win those target accounts, they've got a reputation in the market that kind of precedes them. 

And then if other companies see that you're working with them, that adds additional value to your brand and how you are perceived in the market. So, it is not always just about going for accounts that have the highest spend potential. That's obviously part of it, but also about positioning yourself in the market. What's... what are you seen as today? Particularly when we're working with clients who are kind of moving from a mid-market to a more kind of upstream enterprise motion.

That's really where a good target account list can help kind of bring everybody on that journey of, it's not just about shiny logos, but it's about having a strategic plan for how you're going to position the whole organization in the market and build campaigns that can show that you can work with these enterprise organizations, and you can deliver for these enterprise organizations. Going back to your point around success stories and having that kind of, erm, story and information to share as part of the Sales process.

Fes – No, it's a really good point about shifting perceptions and that can work across new logo and existing customers, right? And there's plenty of times when we've had conversations with clients where they have, you know, have a set of customers that they have acquired through acquisition and those customers know the previous brand for what they did well, but they don't know anything about the new all-encompassing brand, and you need to shift those perceptions. 

Or like you say, moving from SMB or mid-market to enterprise at that customer journey. And that shift in perceptions. So, you know, everything is typically tied back to a revenue objective, but there are those key milestones. 

We talk about the Three Rs of ABM: reputation, relationships and then revenue. Sometimes with reputation, one of the key objectives there is: What do you want to be known for with this set of accounts? How do you shift perceptions, so that you can expand share of wallet within this set of accounts, because they don't really know you for what you want to talk to them about today. 

So that's a key driver around why is there a target account list important for ABM, but also just general go-to-market strategy, and you could have different target account lists for different types of objectives. Right? 

And that kind of leads on to another, the next point and another good point about the difference between your target account list and a TAM or total addressable market.

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – What's your kind of view on that? 

Josh – Yeah, so I mean, the way that I like to think about it and the way that I describe it – and it comes back to my love of sweets as I was growing up! – is that the TAM is like the pick'n'mix stand, in like the cinema foyer or something. It's all the sweets that you could possibly want are there.

So you could take any of those, but are they all the ones that you actually want? And are they going to be the ones that you enjoy the most? That's kind of how I think about it!

Fes – Yeah, I love that!

Josh – From an ABM point of view that's, TAM is the breadth – it's anybody you could sell to, anybody that you could work with. But the target account list is actually who you really want to focus on, who you really want to kind of work with and what's going to drive value aligned back to those objectives.

And I mean, that's just a nice way of trying to differentiate between the two and obviously, within that you've got different tiers, and different kind of focus areas depending on what you're trying to achieve. But ultimately, that's kind of how I see the difference between the two things.

Fes – Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there's a lot of talk on LinkedIn about demand generation, demand capture, brand marketing – all of these different aspects of the wider part of marketing. 

I mean, we focus on Account-based Marketing at the Agency and there's aspects of brand and, you know, conversion, and relationship development or lead generation – all those different areas that, you know – really, we have a focus on those best fit accounts, those what we call sweet spot accounts, usually. Right? 

Josh – Yep. 

Fes – And for me, the TAM is like you say that broader market, and I think there's definitely a need and some really core marketing principles that talk about reaching buyers that whether they're in or out of, you know, sales readiness, you need to drive awareness with the wider market, so that when customers are sales ready, they, they're aware of your value proposition, aware of your brand, they have some affinity there, right?

But where Account-based Marketing comes into play, it's that subset of accounts where you feel you have an unfair advantage and you want to create and invest more time and resource to win those accounts, whether they're new or existing, and, build more opportunity and relationships within those particular accounts. Right?

So I think there's definitely a value to understanding your TAM, and defining the channels and the tactics and the campaigns that you're running at that level. And the way that we view it is typically, ABM sits above that foundational program, right? And there's existing marketing happening to the TAM and an ABM is really going deeper on certain sets of accounts where you feel like you have stronger product market fit or growth opportunities, whatever that looks like, right?

Josh – Mm-hmm. 

Fes – And I think that's a key point because we're not trying to say, you know, ABM replaces other strong marketing activations. It's more about where you may have a more focused approach on particular subsets of accounts or markets.

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – To drive more value and, and get more data, and build stronger relationships. 

Josh – Yeah, I think that, that's actually a really good point. 'Cause a common misconception is that you have to have one or the other; ABM or demand gen. You really don't.

Fes – Yeah. 

Josh – It's about how the two things can work together and supplement each other. And you can run parallel campaigns – providing that you've got the right guardrails and you've got the right objectives and that the resource is not necessarily being spread too thin, and you've got the right amount of kind of time and energy invested in both programs.

We've seen plenty of clients who have got really successful strong demand gen programs running, and driving growth for the business, but then ABM is brought in to kind of focus in on maybe one to five of their highest value accounts. How can they drive growth just with those accounts? And that's the kind of strategic oversight of an ABM program, of what it can kind of really deliver, in addition to existing marketing efforts. 

Fes – Yeah. And again, I don't want to go too far into the, "What is ABM?" topic today, but there's so many different flavors of Account-based Marketing and Account-based strategy, right? From One-to-many to One-to-one deal-based marketing and all of these different kind of subsets of strategies that you can evolve, depending on your objectives for a set of accounts. 

Building and Refining Your List

Just going back to that key topic about target account lists and thinking about those key considerations, and the building blocks for a good target account list. I mean, that for me starts with your objectives, right? It's not really about ICP and intent data, all that. 

Really, it just goes back to basics and it's like, what are you trying to achieve? Why are you thinking about building a target account list? What are your key objectives here? Maybe you could talk a little bit about how we discuss objective setting at the Agency?

Josh – Yeah, so I mean, ultimately it comes down to looking at the kind of wider business objectives. It's not just, you never want to be setting ABM objectives in a silo. So what is the business trying to achieve in the next 12, 18 and 24 months in terms of net new growth or customer expansion? 

Or competitive displacement, for instance. Any of those could be the catalyst for an ABM program. So it's about understanding kind of what are the drivers for where the business is trying to go, and then being able to link that back to some very specific short-, medium- and long-term objectives for the ABM program. 

So, for that kind of growth remit for net new logo acquisition, that the short-term goal may be to kind of starting to build awareness and reputation within a set target account list that's defined by accounts that you, kind of, white space accounts.

And then medium-term it's about building reputations with two or three key members of decision-making units across those target accounts. And then obviously depending on what type of ABM you're doing will affect the scale that you can do that at.

But then the long-term is about how do you then drive pipeline and how does that reputation and the relationships you build feed into commercial opportunities and driving pipeline opportunities, and ultimately revenue.

Fes – Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that there's another layer of that as well. When you think about the, what are the key considerations about building your target account list is also expectation management, right? 

And you touched on it there when you were talking about new logo versus existing customers and you know, building reputation, right? Which is probably something that, you know, if you, talk to Sales teams, they don't typically think about the time it takes to really build a strong reputation and to enhance your credibility in a market or in a space where if you're changing perceptions like we talked about earlier, you may not be known for that. 

And that takes a little bit of time, it takes a bit of convincing of buyers and audiences, to get them to recognize you, to listen to you, to appreciate your thought leadership in this space and then start to engage with you, right? So again, you know, that's where ABM can play in that new logo space. So it can play in existing customers. With existing customers, obviously, you have those potentially existing relationships, you have different levers that you can pull with existing customers versus new logo. 

So when you are building that target account list, you have a different set of criteria that you might be thinking about with new logo versus existing customers. And that's again, where the objectives change, right? Time-to-value could be a lot faster with existing customers than with new logo. And you just got to manage those expectations when you're talking about, you know, a set of accounts and the objectives around it.

Josh – Yeah. And the reality is that depending on whether it's net new logo or existing customer, it completely changes the level of insight that you have into those target accounts as well. If you're working with existing customers, you kind of already know who the key players are; you know, what the cultural kind of nuances are of the business. How do they operate? How do they kind of make decisions? All of that stuff can feed into how you decide which accounts to focus on. 

Whereas with net new acquisition, it's a little bit more third-party, outside perspective using desk research and trying to kind of understand what's worked for some of the customers that you've acquired in the space and trying to replicate that with a kind of external target account list of who should you focus on. But, ultimately that will dictate the kind of approach you take when it comes to defining and really nailing down your target accounts.

Fes – Yeah. And that leads onto the next kind of key question that we'd outlined here, which is what kind of data and inputs should be considered when you are building your ICP and target account lists? Right? And these are, these can be two different topics, right? ICP versus target account list, but they are connected in a very meaningful way. 

I don't know if you want to touch on that briefly, 'cause you do a lot of work with clients, specifically in helping them define their ICP, and then how that influences account selection and scoring. And you've built a pretty robust model around that. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit.

Josh – Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to something we were talking about before, in terms of, like, your ICP should be flexible and it should be relative to the objectives that we're trying to achieve. 'cause I think one of the kind of common misnomers with ABM is that if you are, if you are a kind of enterprise brand or a technology brand, you already kind of know who your ICP is. But that's your brand ICP. 

That's, again, linking back to the point around total addressable market, that's everybody you could sell to. And you have a view of what the ideal customer profile is in terms of we want to sell to these types of customers. But within the next phase of that in an ABM program is applying that kind of strategic objective of, okay, so we know who our broad ICP is in terms of these are our good-fit customers. 

But then these are the actual ones that we want to focus on for the next 12-18 months with this specific ABM program. And when we kind of develop ABM ICPs with our clients, we go through a process of defining really what the insights that we need to gather are, in terms of the data. 

So, talking about things like firmographic data points, technographic data points, what technology solutions do they have in place that we can leverage, either from a partnership point of view, or as a replacement. Or we know that our solution plays nicely with that and has a nice integration, and that makes the conversation a little bit easier – or it makes the value proposition more robust for those types of accounts. 

From the, as I said, from the firmographic point of view, it's specifically what type of organization they are. What size, not just in terms of the actual revenue size of the company or the employee size of the company, but right down to the levels of how many employees do they have in certain departments, or do they have a specific job title in place? 'Cause all of that feeds into whether something, an account is a good fit account. 

So we'll define that with the client and understand really what are these key, kind of, I call them static data points that help us to kind of build a picture of what makes a good fit account. But then there's the contextual stuff as well. 

So looking at kind of have they, are there any specific events within the market? So have they recently raised funding? Have they recently had some layoffs, for instance? That may be a reason why you may want to engage with certain types of accounts. Obviously, it's not a nice thing for a company to go through, but your solution may be able to support with that. 

So the contextual items there that can help add an additional layer of qualitative, qualification of the target account, and then applying kind of a scoring model to that. So, the way that we approach it is we'll take each of those criteria one by one, and apply a weighting to that that's agreed between Sales and Marketing. And then we'll essentially run all of the target accounts that we've identified in our shortlist through that scoring model, using that kind of weighting.

And the output is ultimately a, an even shorter list of target accounts that we can say to Sales: "Okay, these were the agreed inputs that we decided on, this is how we've weighted it, and this is the target accounts that we think are the best fit." 

And then it's, ultimately it comes down to a conversation between Sales and Marketing because, even with all of those data points in place, there may be a specific reason why the Sales owner thinks that the account may not be, it may not be the right time to target that target account. They may have some kind of more up-to-date information that makes it kind of more realistic that we need to put those accounts into the next quarter's target account list. Or for whatever reason. 

So yeah, ultimately it's about kind of being able to take a data-driven approach, rather than just the kind of finger in the air – we want to win these logos. Which is quite common when it comes to specifically moving from kind of lead gen / demand gen programs into an ABM program for One-to-many, One-to-few. 

Exactly, yeah. And, I think, you know, that data-driven view, I mean we talk about in terms of first-party data, what you have internally as an organization – that might be Sales inputs, it might be CRM data, collecting all of that insight from, you know, your kind of internal infrastructure, and then you have second-party data, which may be partners and other areas that you can identify any signals around. 

I'll come back to that topic of signals and intent in a second. And, and that's really interesting as well, because obviously if you have, you know, more than one data source, you can correlate the fit of an account and the priority of that account for a particular objective or list, right? 

And then the third part of the data is kind of intent data, or what you see nowadays on LinkedIn is signals, I call them triggers, Sales triggers, signals, intent data – it's that third-party data, could be other types of data as well, where you can see that this account may be in market for a particular topic or solution area, and there's other reasons why you might want to target them. Like you say – headcount, hiring, all of that kind of data, right? 

So it is good just to correlate that data, because that helps inform the criteria that you have for your target account list, like you say. And that scoring model. But it also helps justify it, in binary terms. And it's not just a subjective list of accounts that you are bringing to the table and saying, "Oh, I think, you know, I think this is a good set of accounts for, you know, my personal objectives. But actually there's really a robust logic behind it that, you know, you can justify to the business. 

And as we said at the outset, if you're going to run an ABM program, it's that next level of investment, time, resource, people into these particular accounts and you want to show, you may be able to demonstrate why we selected those accounts in a reasonably logical fashion. Right? 

And, some teams are very good at this, some teams have a lot of data, or they know how to collect the data that they don't have. And other teams are on that journey. They're trying to figure out what types of inputs they need. And sometimes it's good to have an external perspective on that kind of stuff.

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – One, one more thing to add that you touched on there is the point of the value proposition, right? And I think this is, for us, it's such a big thing when we talk about Account-based Marketing and how we connect with certain accounts and audiences. And really how you define your target account list is almost the DNA of your value proposition. 

It's almost, like you said earlier, let's imagine that you are targeting a list of companies that have, or you have a certain technology, and either you are looking to augment or displace, or whatever it is, the technology that they have, your kind of brand value proposition needs to evolve to take into consideration that narrative around that particular insight that we have around those accounts. That they have this particular technology and we're trying to wrap your story around that, that existing footprint in their account. 

So, that can sometimes get overlooked when you just build a target account list. You know, "Okay! Well there's our accounts, let's take some existing content, let's go-to-market, let's generate some leads, let's get some... " But you haven't really connected the dots between your list and your value proposition, and why you are targeting these accounts. 

And the shift in perceptions, or the... Yeah. ...the change in relationship that you're trying to create with these accounts. I think that is often a step that's quite looked over, and for me that's the crux of ABM – it's that insights and value proposition connected to the DNA of that list.

Josh – Yeah, no, it's a great point. I think it speaks to that need that of ABM; is a, it's not just a Marketing initiative, or it's not just a single-time campaign. It's a mindset shift and it's creating an ecosystem and foundations that are all interconnected and all kind of relevant to one another. 

Like there's no point creating a target account list, as you said, if you then don't have the value proposition that can speak to those target accounts. Equally, there's no point kind of working on a load of insights at an account level if you then know that you can't actually engage with those accounts for whatever reason. 

It's about actually building this kind of ecosystem where all of the foundations interplay and work together to kind of drive that overall shift in how you go-to-market. 

Fes – Yeah. And that kind of leads on nicely – we've talked about building the list, and Sales and Marketing alignment, and the kind of inputs to develop that list. And the, "Why" behind it, essentially, right?

Continuous Review and Optimization

Let's say you've deployed that list now and you're, you know, engaging accounts. I won't go into the whole ABM journey about what you do with the list, but let's say you've built your ABM program around targeting that set of accounts, at whatever scale that is. I mean, how often should you review that list and, you know, from what perspectives should you review it? For me, there's a couple of perspectives in terms of dynamic account promotion / demotion – and also just generally, your value proposition. Is it landing with impact? Maybe you could talk about those two angles. 

Josh – Yeah. Yeah, I think you kind of touched on what I was going to say there. I think there are two elements to it. You need to have your, kind of, as, we've discussed, your static kind of ICP – your static target account list guardrails that say "These are the target accounts that we want to, that we would consider as part of the ABM program at any given time". 

But then in terms of prioritization and account promotion and demotion, you've got to have a dynamic view. You can't just run a campaign for 3-6 months and then think, "All right, well, that's not worked! Let's change the accounts out!" It's more, it's got to be more fluid than that. And that's really the sign of a good ABM program is that there's the capability to be able to shift those accounts through different levels of prioritization. 

And ultimately the way that you do that is by having good data, good feedback loops from the campaign – as you said, understanding is the message landed with impact? Are we driving reputation? Are we building relationships? And being able to kind of have those guardrails that give you the total kind of list of accounts that you can engage with, actually means that you stay focused and you stay narrow. 

Because the risk is when you get into that dynamic conversation is that, there's always a risk that from a Sales perspective this often happens is, "Okay, so can we not just put another 10 accounts into the ABM program? Can we not just put more accounts in?" And the problem with that is that adding more accounts doesn't necessarily mean more ROI, or more revenue back. It's 'cause, ultimately, all it does is spread your resources even thinner. 

So it's about having an ideal number of accounts in mind that you can resource, that you have the capacity to service and then being able to move accounts around as they respond to the ABM program.

Fes – Yeah. And that comes back to that point with alignment, right? It needs to be aligned with your sales cycle, or you're trying to reduce the sales cycle. It's a reasonable time to invest in the set of accounts and measure whether that sales cycle has reduced or not, right? You can't want to campaign for a month that you spent, you know, a good couple of months strategizing and building for, and then you turn it off after a month 'cause you know, nothing's worked. 

Really, I think you need to select the accounts that are a fit for that type of ABM investment and that you're trying to make a real impact there, either from an opportunity, size, average deal value, or reduction in sales cycle, or expansion, whatever that is. You know, you're really thinking about what are those metrics that you want to impact, what type of accounts should we include in this program? 

But also, you know, when we talked about promotion and demotion, and having the program, you know, in a frame of where you have it running long enough to actually deliver some results and some value from it. Having longevity in that as well. Unless it's framed as like, we're going to test it and see what works and what doesn't work. But actually, if you are building for the longer term, you want something where you can, like you say, add new accounts in at the right time with the right business case. 

We're going to take these accounts out, we're going to add some more in, and we're going to give them enough time to go through the process properly. But also just making sure that when you do add accounts in, they're there for the right reasons. 

You know, I have no issue with adding more accounts in if they are, you know, at the right level of buy-in from the rest of the stakeholder group. And we're not just, like you say, adding another account in just 'cause one individual wants this account added; it needs to have the right criteria around it. 

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – Or you're going to add something? 

Josh – Yeah, I think that point that you made really around adding accounts and demoting accounts, really that's why we would ultimately advocate for having a blended ABM campaign running, or a blended ABM motion running. Because that's what gives you the opportunity and the scale to be able to move accounts up and down in terms of level of personalization. 

So, you may build a One-to-few ABM campaign that's targeting 15 of your key accounts, and you may find that after 3-6 months that five of those accounts just aren't engaging whatsoever. You may want to move them out sooner, but let's just say six months, they're not engaging at all. They've maybe had some kind of visits to the website, but they're not really doing anything. 

So you think, okay, we don't want to focus on these accounts anymore. If you just take the approach of we're just going to remove those accounts. All of that effort of the last six months that you've put in on kind of staying front-of-mind and staying visible with those accounts then just becomes wasted effort, because you're not continuing that kind of connection with them, and staying visible with them. 

So, the point of having a blended ABM motion is that you have this kind of layer of always-on One-to-many reputation-building activity, so that if those accounts that are in the One-to-few are not engaging, you can demote them into a One-to-many funnel where they're still seeing your brand activity, they're still seeing your ABM content, but they're maybe not necessarily getting as much in terms of higher levels of engagement and personalized outreach from Sales teams, and because they don't justify that investment. 

But it means that perhaps when they do become, when the right time comes, if they become more interested in, say, another six months, if they have a reason to then go and start their buying journey. All of that effort that you've put in in staying kind of front-of-mind with them, is there, it's built up a level of reputation and you'll be one of the first companies that they think of when they realize they've got a need. 

Fes – Exactly. Yeah. And you know, one of the last questions we have here is, you know, some of the watch-outs and caveats, and that kind of considers what you've talked about there for the blended ABM approach, which is something that we think about a lot. 

Because there's definitely a need to have that flexibility in your programs, whether you're going from One-to-few to One-to-one, or One-to-many into One-to-few, or whatever that kind of model looks like for you, giving yourself a little bit of flexibility to say, look, these, these are the accounts that we think are a good fit based on all the analysis that we've done, but obviously you can't control bias. 

They go in and out of market and, you know, some, sometimes people leave jobs and the process dies with them for whatever reason. They look really strong at the beginning, but shift happens, companies get acquired, all of that kind of stuff, right? What are some of the watch-outs you think there should be? I mean, I've got a couple in mind, but what kind of watch-outs do you have for teams... 

Josh – Yeah. 

Fes – ... building a target account list, or thinking about how to evolve theirs? 

Josh – Yeah, I think there's there's a couple that come to mind, which we've kind of touched on already, but it's around kind of siloed communication and how you actually manage the process of kind of nurturing and safeguarding your target account list is about having proper documentation that explains why the accounts are included, what the criteria is for adding new accounts, and just making sure that everybody's clear on that; so that cross-departmental alignment. 

But the second one – and I think this is probably the biggest one that comes to my mind – and I've seen it with some companies in the past, is there's an over-reliance on technology, or having too much of a focus on just taking the data at face value, and then using that and implementing it into your ABM program, but then actually finding that that data is maybe not as up to date as you thought it was. Or it's not as relevant as you thought it was. 

And just relying on technology to make those decisions. And particularly... I guess, it's a whole other subject! Is AI. But how you use tools like Generative AI to help you with your segmentation, really, I would still advocate that there needs to be that human judgment and that representation of kind of a human understands the relationships that you already have within those target accounts, which technology just simply can't pick up on. Because it's not a proper data signal as such. 

So yeah, I would say avoid having too much of a reliance on technology to make the decision for you. It's an enabler for how you build the account list, but it shouldn't be really automating the process of moving accounts around. 

Fes – Absolutely. And for anyone listening to this, I definitely recommend that if you are thinking about how you use Gen AI to support your ABM program or account selection, definitely send some questions to Josh. If he has time, he'll try and respond, because he's done a lot of work on validating this – you know: what works, what doesn't work, with Gen AI at some level, right? And, you know, I'm playing around with myself, everybody in the Agency is, and you can see where the gaps are; you can see where you need to question things and double-check things, and we still need that element of human input in the process. 

Like you say, I think, I don't think we're at that stage yet where you could just fully rely on the data without some double-checks, right? From my point of view, you know, the watch-outs for me is be careful about when you go too narrow One-to-one. Or when, how broad you go One-to-many. 

You know, when you go too broad in your list, you dilute the value of having some sort of laser focus on your most important accounts. You know, there is a need sometimes to go a bit broader and, you know, collect data about a set of accounts so then you can consider which accounts you want to move forward into that more personalized program, One-to-few or One-to-one. But when you start to go too broad, you start to dilute the value of doing any kind of real focused messaging, value proposition insights work. 

And then you're moving into demand generation territory, which has a different aspect to it. You know, we touched on it earlier, but you know, demand gen has a great value and I think it is connected to deal value and ROI at some level. Some teams have different views on that. 

But I definitely think when you start to up that level of investment, you know, less is more, to be honest, right? And you want more concentrated focus on fewer accounts that gives you greater impacts at a certain level in the market. At the One-to-one level. You also want to be really careful about when you select accounts into that One-to-one mode. 

Because, you know it, there's risk versus reward and you need to think about putting all your eggs in one basket, and you just have a really strong business justification to run that One-to-one program – typically for existing customer expansion. 

But you know, if it's not that, then you might have a deal-based scenario and there's different types of One-to-one models as well. You can have quite a broad footprint in a single account. And that can be a One-to-one program, almost One-to-many into One-to-one. 

So there's different scenarios there, but the main point is, you know, having a really robust account selection criteria can – based on your business objectives – can then help you define the number of accounts that make sense. And also align that where you are in your ABM maturity, and, you know, what kind of level of resource you have to manage a certain volume of accounts. Anything else you wanted to add to the discussion today? 

Josh – No, I think that's a pretty good discussion actually. I think we've covered a lot of ground and there's probably a lot more areas that we could, could go into detail. But I mean, we've covered quite a lot there. So... Yeah! Good stuff! 

Fes – Thanks, mate. As usual, I've got to jump onto another call! Hopefully that's enough for this episode of Under the Hood, and we'll be doing these much more often between myself and Josh, so stay tuned! 

Josh – Yep. Cheers, Fes. 

Fes – Cheers, Josh.

Key takeaways from this episode

1. Target Account List is the Cornerstone:

A well-qualified target account list is essential for focusing ABM efforts. It narrows the broad total addressable market (TAM) to the accounts that truly drive revenue and strategic value.

2. Alignment is Critical:

Success begins with Sales and Marketing collaborating closely to define, validate, and continually refine the target account list. This alignment ensures that the list supports overall business objectives and maintains consistency across teams.

3. Data-Driven Selection:

Build your list using firmographic and technographic criteria, combined with contextual data (e.g., recent funding or market events). Use a scoring model—with agreed-upon weightings—to objectively rank accounts and prioritize the highest-value targets.

4. Differentiate Between TAM and Target Account List:

TAM represents all potential accounts; the target account list is a curated subset that best aligns with your product-market fit and strategic objectives. Clearly distinguishing these helps avoid overinflation and misallocation of resources.

5. Dynamic Management & Regular Reviews:

Your target account list isn’t static. Regularly review and update it—using feedback from Sales and performance metrics—to promote high-engagement accounts and demote those that aren’t delivering results.

6. Integration with Value Proposition:

The target account list should be intrinsically linked to your value proposition. Ensure that the reasons for targeting specific accounts are clearly connected to your messaging and strategic narrative.

7. Leverage Multiple Data Sources:

Combine internal insights, Sales feedback, and third‑party data (including intent signals) to refine your list. This blended approach reinforces the robustness of your account selection process.

8. Plan for Expansion:

Once your core target account list is established, consider using lookalike modeling to scale. This approach allows you to extend successful tactics to new segments without starting from scratch.

9. Next Steps:

Review your current target account list with all key stakeholders, assess the quality and alignment of your data inputs, and explore tools that can support dynamic list management. For further guidance, explore our additional ABM resources or contact our team for a personalized consultation.

Check out all episodes of ABM under the Hood here.