Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So today I’m joined by Fabiana Brunetti, who’s the Director, Global ABM, Worldwide Strategies at Pure Storage. Fabiana, thanks so much for joining us today. This episode, ABM Strategy: From pilot to scale, will take a deep dive into how you go from scratch to a full-blown ABM strategy and the building blocks to the process.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Thank you so much for having me.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Well, let’s kick off talking about your journey towards ABM and how you arrived there. I think when we were talking previously to this recording, you mentioned that you’d been, or you had rather quite an extensive background in Field Marketing before you transitioned to ABM about three years ago, I think it was?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Tell us, tell us, and you mentioned quite a few things to me, which kind of struck a chord really in terms of the connection between Field Marketing and ABM. So tell us a little bit about how you think that experience in Field Marketing kind of has shaped your view of ABM and kind of the lessons that you brought over from Field Marketing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes, of course. Look, Field Marketing is fundamentally about supporting sales goals, right? Whether we are putting together programs that drive pipeline creation or accelerate deal progression, I think my Field Marketing background, especially the one in Enterprise, has significantly shaped my approach to ABM, I think, I believe Field Marketers make exceptional ABM practitioners because of the deep collaboration with Sales and their shared passion for driving business growth. That is whether, you know, you’re covering for a region or a curated set of accounts.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Hmm. I would say that the three main things that have carried over have been the strong partnership with Sales, the customer-first mindset, right? The ‘outside in’ approach that helps, ensures that, you know, the programs address real customer challenges rather than internal assumptions. And then the cross-functional collaboration, I mean, ABM, it is a team sport and to deliver meaningful account-specific experiences, we have to partner closely with everyone, the Account Executive, Sales Engineers, Customer Success teams, SDR, vertical SMEs, and you name it, to create something really amazing for our accounts.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I think it’s an interesting point there… ‘cause obviously one of the challenges that everyone finds with Account-Based Marketing is that kind of alignment. And almost what you are saying is that Field Marketers already come with that alignment because they’ve had to do it already, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes. We have to partner with Sales. And then, I think the only difference is that in Field Marketing, you tend to cover a region when there’s a list of hundreds of accounts. And with ABM, you tend to have a smaller list of accounts. But the partnership should be the same with Sales.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Yep. And so maybe a career point here, perhaps for anybody listening who’s in a Field Marketing role, what advice would you give them in that kind of transition towards ABM?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): My biggest advice would be to be bold. To take the initiative to pilot maybe a program that demonstrates the value of ABM. You can get certified. If you can get certified, that would be great. It did. I got certified and it taught me a lot more. I think that’s it. It was very important in my transition to learn from mentors because through the certification you get a mentor.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so when I was piloting my One-to-One ABM program, I had a mentor with me, so I didn’t feel like I was doing this alone. Start with partnering with Sales leadership to identify your list, your top account list. And I do feel like that’s also paramount because you need a strong commitment from Sales upfront, as ABM will require a lift on their side as well.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Once you pilot a One-to-One ABM approach with a single account, or maybe you pick three to five accounts and you can have a cluster, a One-to-Few ABM program could help you scale your efforts while maintaining personalization. But it does, it, it all depends if you are ready for a One-to-One or if you need to go after maybe three to five based on, based on where you’re at.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I would also say maybe partner with an Agency, right? That experience. That will be another suggestion. And invest time building those connections with ABM leaders. There’s a lot to learn from their experiences. And I would, yeah, Agency, Sales, ABM leaders, and maybe getting certified and supported by the company where you’re at.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Yeah, I think some great advice there, Fabiana. I think also one thing you were saying to me before, kind of one of the differentiators between a Field Marketer and an ABMer, obviously a Field Marketer may well have hundreds of accounts that they have to sit across, whereas obviously ABM is far more targeted.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): When you’re looking and when you transitioned into your role there at Pure Storage, and you were bringing that kind of Field Marketing expertise with you and your ABM expertise with you, how did you kind of, how did you kind of approach that there when you were looking at ABM to launch or to relaunch at Pure Storage? How did you see perhaps taking the best of both worlds into this new world that you were building?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah. Yeah, great question. We distinguish Field Marketing and ABM based on goals and scope, right? Our Regional Marketing Managers support Sales with regional goals. And like I mentioned, they typically activate One-to-Few activities in key metro areas. They may run ABM-like programs for a list of accounts or provide extra support to top accounts, but ultimately their primary responsibility is to help the region achieve its overall targets.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): With ABM practitioners, they have account-specific goals, right? They work from a defined list of accounts and focus on driving not only revenue growth but also strengthening the relationships and enhancing our reputation within those top accounts. We have integrated best practices across both disciplines to elevate the results.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): For example, our ABM team supports specific verticals and creates vertical-specific content that can be easily personalized at the account or persona level. So we frequently share those templates with the Field teams to amplify their efforts. Another example is account intelligence. In ABM, we rely heavily on insights from specialized tools to better understand key accounts and inform our strategy.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So we ensure that these insights and the tools are shared with Field Marketing. We have created a process. It’s based on a ticket support system where they can tap into our tools. Not everyone has, we don’t have that many licenses, right? So we try to find ways to share those insights with others through a ticket process.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I think that’s quite a novel way. I haven’t actually heard about that before. So I just, it’s great to kind of get that definition in terms of Field Marketing. You think about it as more helping a region achieve its goals, whereas obviously with Account-Based Marketing, you’re thinking specifically about helping, for want of a better word, helping accounts achieve their goals, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Right.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Whether that’s, you know, how you’re trying to grow them. One of the things, when we were chatting previously to this recording, one of the things you said to me that I absolutely loved, you said to me that when you joined Pure Storage, you had to “kill ABM.”
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I think that’s, you know, made me kind of make feverish notes when you were telling me that. And I think what you were saying was that you had to kill ABM in order to rebuild it from the ground up. That in essence, what you found perhaps wasn’t fit for purpose. So, tell us a little bit about what was behind that decision and perhaps a little bit about how you restarted or, to use the term, you resurrected ABM.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah. Yes. I love telling this story because it is a story that the team is very proud of. When I joined—and by the way, my background is in Field Marketing—ABM was part of the job description, but when I was interviewing, it seemed like the team was over-rotated on ABM, and there were some conflicts in terms of expectations with Sales.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so when I joined, it became clear that it was the expectations from Sales and Marketing leadership that didn’t align with the ABM plans that the team at the time had in place. The primary expectation was, again, to grow the regions, right? Not just individual accounts.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Now, while growing individual accounts definitely could help you contribute to the regional growth, ABM is inherently a long-term account-specific strategy. So, if those were not the expectations of a long-term goal and there were short-term goals that needed to be achieved, there was misalignment there.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So, we needed a balanced approach. Field Marketing wants to support broader regional objectives, and ABM should have been selected for key strategic accounts and set the right expectations right from the beginning.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So I did pause a lot, like, for example, Folloze boards that were being created with little to no outreach strategy. And I began rebuilding our ABM strategy for the Americas from the ground up, for just the Americas.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The following year, I partnered with EMEA and APJ to launch our first-ever global ABM program, ensuring alignment across regions that had a clear definition of what ABM is and what it is not. Because the problem was that ABM was a buzzword, and many people thought of ABM in different ways.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so we wanted to ensure that if we were building a program, that key definitions were defined, and we have unified KPIs that we can measure ABM success on.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The momentum did pay off, obviously with strong support from leadership, including our CMO. We wouldn’t be able to just do this ourselves. I was able to expand the team by hiring two additional ABM practitioners.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So, the ABM team started growing. Today, the Americas not only has… we have both, we have a robust Enterprise Field Marketing team, but also a dedicated ABM team with a dedicated ABM budget.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So, when I joined to support the Enterprise Marketing, we had to put together a balanced approach versus just relying just on ABM. Actually, the program was successful. They highlighted the program at SKO.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): They used a couple of the accounts that we have supported as the accounts for enablement from Sales at those sessions. And so that’s a testament of the program’s relevance and impact at the company level. And that had to do with the collaboration that we did across other geos like EMEA and APJ as well.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So, it’s quite a story of resurrection from the dead, so to speak. Fabiana, would you recommend that approach to other people if they were going to come into a company and they see that the program isn’t quite right? Would you recommend that approach of killing it and starting from scratch?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s what they need at the moment. We needed a drastic change because all we were doing was ABM, and we were forgetting about other things. So, I had to put a pause, like I said, to a lot of the things and rebuild it to ensure that the right expectations were set and in place.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So, I don’t know other situations. I would say if you are not starting small and you haven’t proven value with one small pilot, then yes, maybe that’s what you need to do first.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Okay. So, we’ll make sure that goes out on the publicity for this episode. In terms of the program that you then… the new program, the new approach to ABM that you took there, you mentioned that I think you started in the Americas, is that right? You started in Americas first and then went global, is that correct?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah. Well, the EMEA team, they were all… they were all having their own ABM approach and practice in their own regions. And so obviously, I was looking after the Americas, and that’s where I focused on.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And the following year was where we all got together, actually in person during SKO, and collaborated into building one unified program that had the same approach and the same definitions.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And so, I’m guessing, Fabiana, that one of the first things you kind of looked at was how do you, you know, the account selection and what accounts would go into this program as opposed to going to any other program you’re doing. And then also how you would prioritize those accounts to go into whether it’s going to be One-to-One, One-to-Few, or One-to-Many ABM. Can you talk a little bit about that kind of prioritization? What were you thinking about? Well, this account, these accounts warrant a One-to-One approach or a One-to-Few? What was your thinking there?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah. And we have learned a lot. What we’re doing today is not what we did two years ago, so keep that in mind. But when prioritizing accounts, we initially focused on TAM and sales readiness.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We also had, at the moment, a ‘big bet’ list that Sales was prioritizing in the Americas, not in other regions. For example, now we have a global approach to prioritization. There’s a special team that handles the top accounts, so it is becoming easier for all of us to make those decisions.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): This year, I’m excited—we’re piloting a new ABM scoring model that takes more of a data-driven approach. The model evaluates accounts across five key dimensions: strategic fit, revenue potential, engagement opportunity, operational readiness, and influence potential.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So, each category is weighted differently to reflect its relative importance, enabling us to let the data guide our decisions versus anecdotal or assumptions that usually come from either Sales or Marketing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Once this model is telling us the difference on how we should be segmenting the accounts, we are going to validate this approach with Sales, obviously, to ensure alignment before launching any new account segmentation.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But it is going to be a data-first approach, which will help us prioritize effectively. Because even though we now have, let’s say, a top 50 list within Pure Storage—50 is still a big, large account list. 50 accounts, those are across different verticals. And so, and our team is mighty, so we have to still segment the list based on what the data is going to be telling us.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Yeah. So let’s just… let’s just run through those again for the audience. Strategic fit is the first one. Revenue potential, I think you said, is the second one. Is that correct?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Engagement opportunity, was that right? Is that the third one?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Engagement opportunity, yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): The fourth one you said was…?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Operational readiness, huge—operational readiness.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And then the last one was influence potential.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah, potential. Yeah. See if the account could be a reference in the future—the brand value, right? If it’s a well-known name, would it make a difference when we mention this account, you know, just highlight them as a customer and highlight their experience with us?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): No, no. It’s interesting. It reminds me of a recent guest on the Let’s Talk ABM podcast—Nora Conklin, who’s an Analyst over at Forrester. And some of the research that they’re seeing by talking to people like you and the market is that many people with their account selection are going “beyond ICP.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And so a little bit of what you’re sharing here is actually kind of sharing very similar to what she’s been saying in terms of your best accounts. It’s much more than just a binary “Is it ICP or is it not ICP?” It’s also, “Will there be a good fit for my organization? Will there be a good fit in three years’ time for my organization? Will they, you know, will they be, to come back to your point around influence potential, will they be advocates in the future of our business?” et cetera.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So it’s great to see that what you’re thinking and what some of the research that Forrester has been showing is also quite aligned. So it’s great to see.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): You touched Fabiana there… You touched on success, and this is obviously sometimes a difficult area for a lot of ABMers. They’ll talk about their programs, they’ll talk about everything, but when you ask them, “Well, tell me about the success,” sometimes it can be a difficult conversation because sometimes the attribution is difficult. What you can say actually is attributable to yourself and your business.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): What’s your… you talked here about the kind of the five from the data-driven point of view, but how would you define success over the course of the last three years in terms of what you’re doing there? And obviously, looking to—we’re in 2025 now—so talk to me a little bit about success.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah. Beyond pipeline and bookings, I would say engagement level with key stakeholders at the C-level, C-level minus one.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): At the beginning of supporting Sales, we must understand who are the key stakeholders that we need to go after to make a difference. It could be decision-makers, but also influencers, champions, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And for us, it’s important to understand the engagement level for all of them at the moment that we’re initiating the support and measuring that engagement level throughout our time together.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So I would say engagement level with key stakeholders. Portfolio expansion—I love working with accounts where they only have one product, and then in a year or two-year timeframe, like we have with one account, you see their expansion and portfolio to other products that are important for growth and the overall partnership.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And also, the other one would be business unit expansion. So we’re in one business unit, and now we are in two or three.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And with that will come the account reputation, right? Reputation is really hard to measure at the account level, but we curated a survey for Sales to help us measure reputation.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But I would say if we are growing in relationships, if we are expanding the portfolio, and if we are expanding business units, we are gaining reputation at the account as well as the partnership is growing.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): No, I definitely agree. I think just made some notes here in terms of engagement level within the stakeholders, as you mentioned—the DMU, influencers, champions. Portfolio expansion is a huge one. Expansion to the business units, as you mentioned there.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And finally, the direct impact on reputation is huge. And I think all those are messages that would speak very clearly with the leadership of any company. If you said to them, “This is what you’re… this is how you’re moving the dial. This is how you’re changing the impact on those accounts.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And with those accounts that you mentioned about, you know, whether you’re running a One-to-One or One-to-Few or One-to-Many, et cetera, how much does it vary? Is your One-to-Many much more of a digital play, and your One-to-One is a bit more white glove? Is that how you…?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes. Yeah, the One-to-Many. So the One-to-One is so easy, right? It’s the easiest to understand. Fully customizable plans. Actually, we have a deck just for that account that goes over everything—messaging, stakeholders, objectives, initiatives, the actual marketing plan, all of it for just that one account.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Now, the One-to-Few is another one, you know, that most people understand is a cluster marketing approach. You’re looking for growth across the group of accounts.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So if I am putting a goal to the ABMer who is handling these accounts, I want to see the growth for this. If you’re doing One-to-One, I want to see the growth for that one account. If you’re doing One-to-Few, I want to see the growth across the five. I don’t care if one didn’t grow and the other one did—like across all of these accounts, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The One-to-Many I don’t like… is changing a bit this year. It used to be… it’s still a list of accounts because then it’s not ABM, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The benefit from what we built for the One-to-One and One-to-Few. And then you’re like, but where is the line in terms of what’s vertical marketing and what’s One-to-Many ABM?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so that’s why it was never… It was really hard to measure. And now, you know, with the great leadership we have, it is more of a company approach now. Everyone in the company should be applying One-to-Many strategies and be relevant on their message to the group of accounts that we’re targeting.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so it’s changing. I’m no longer creating a One-to-Many list within my Worldwide Strategic, which is a segment of the top accounts at Pure Storage.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I’m creating a new tier that is going to be called “ABM Support.” Like I mentioned, you know, even though it’s a small list of accounts, not all of them are going to… because of the mighty team, not all of them are going to get One-to-One or One-to-Few support.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so ABM Support will be for those that don’t fall under the One-to-One or One-to-Few. It’s not going to be as proactive, but it’s still going to be integrated with Sales.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): You know, we’re still going to be close to them and know what they need to achieve. And wherever we can scale, we will scale. If we have to do something ad hoc, we will.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But the true, true Sales and Marketing collaboration for specific accounts will happen at the One-to-One and One-to-Few programs.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so the way I like to set expectations from the beginning is building out a playbook and defining what each tier really means and what package each tier will get from a service perspective from us.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so that is clear on the differences and so that we are validating which accounts should fall under each tier.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): They could validate the accounts based on what they know that they want to get.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Yeah, yeah. On that point about how you’re approaching One-to-One, One-to-Few, which is basically your ABM approach, and then this ABM Support is almost like a catch-all for everybody else.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): What’s your take on personalization? I mean, personalization, particularly into the obviously One-to-One and One-to-Few accounts.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): What lengths are you going to personalize? Whether it’s through insights, whether it’s through messaging, whether it’s through events. What level are you going to personalize into those accounts?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Level? When you say level, well, obviously for the One-to-Ones, we’re always personalizing. For the One-to-Few, we’re always personalizing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): If there is an account under ABM Support that falls under the verticals, it will just be very easy to just go ahead and personalize as well.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I think as a company, with the great CMO that we have, we are trying personalization across the web as well, across nurtures, right? Beyond what my team is doing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so it’s hard for me to answer that question with a percentage, right? Because it depends. It depends.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I could tell you that the accounts in the One-to-One and One-to-Few will have that proactive approach where we’re looking… like to me, it’s easy to personalize with a name or with vertical content.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The true personalization comes when you speak in their language and when you’re mentioning in the content some of their imperatives and some of their business objectives as a company.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): That is the true personalization, and that could only happen when you’re engaged with the account team.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And that is just hard to scale sometimes, right? We are leveraging AI to scale personalization.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so we are working on building out our workflows, our internal workflows, and that will help us increase that level, if you will.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Well, I think I might ask you a little bit more about that a little bit later.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Something that a lot of… when companies become more and more mature with their approach to ABM, which obviously you are clearly on that journey, they then decide, “Well, we need to create a Center of Excellence.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Is that something that is on your list, and is that something that you’ve got in place or are looking to have in place?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah, it’s funny because ever since we started engaging globally and building out a unified approach and having the support of our CMO as, “This is the one definition for Pure Storage for what ABM is,” we have been the COE informally, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So I think a COE can start informally as you’re building an ABM program. Often, someone is already leading that charge by creating a playbook and driving best practices.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): At Pure Storage, it has been the ABM team, and the primary goal of a COE is to ensure consistency and share learnings across the practice, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So we have been doing that informally. I think to formalize it and maximize its impact, you need strong leadership support and a clear understanding of the value it brings.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): If you’re going to hire a dedicated COE Manager, right, that could help with operational aspects because I think at a certain point it’s hard to scale.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): You want to share, and you want to maintain the momentum, but there are other things that you have to do, and you can be leaving off some of the key things that you could do for the COE.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But maintaining the frameworks, measurements, resource sharing—that, prioritizing a dedicated headcount for that could definitely help with scale.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So I would say that we’re in that process.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): But I think it’s interesting what you said there, Fabiana, in terms of starting informally. I think it’s great advice, actually, in terms of you’re already doing it in a way.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): You’re already pushing out information and guides and best practices, you said playbooks, and people are coming to you to say, “Hey, how do I help? How can you help me with this account? Or how should I approach this account?”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And your background, obviously in Field Marketing, you’d have Field Marketers potentially asking you for help as well, right? So I think having that informal approach is a good one.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Just, you mentioned there about Sales and Sales buy-in and Leadership buy-in.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Based on what you’ve achieved there over the last three years at Pure, what’s that one piece of advice you would give around that kind of getting that kind of building the credibility for what you’re doing there?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Because obviously if you have credibility, then that obviously will help build trust, and obviously with trust comes support.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So what’s that piece of advice you have about that credibility piece?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah, I would say secure and buy-in started—it was key, it was paramount to start proving value, right? And building champions within the Sales teams.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I focused on working with the Sales leaders who understood how to leverage Marketing resources, value collaboration—not everyone does.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I was fortunate to choose an account for my ABM certification that had a highly engaged Sales team, but even that team was a little skeptical about ABM because of previous experiences.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so we had to demonstrate. You know, we had to demonstrate, and that just—to me, that becomes part of you really becoming the student of the account, proving that you know what the account needs and using your marketing hat to help fill the gap wherever it’s needed, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And then once you have one champion, then you can start highlighting the story.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We built an inspirational story about the account, and we used that inspirational story for a lot of conversations.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We used it as our key example so much that they’re like, “Okay, another account, please,” because you’re using the same account.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so it was hard to replicate because then you’re dealing with another Sales team that has a different take, right? And the account is at a different stage.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But I would say just like making diaries of what you’re doing to prove exactly where you were able to support and where you were able to actually make an impact and tell the story like you’re telling any other story, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Make it inspiring so that people are like, “Wow,” motivated, and they want a little bit more of it, and it becomes like a drug where they can’t get off of it, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so I would say also your CMO—I’ve pitched the ABM strategy. We have had three CMOs in my time, and each time the conversation has strengthened the program foundation.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And I’m grateful that our current CMO is an incredible supporter of ABM.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And her advocacy really has further elevated the program’s visibility and impact across the company.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So once you have a story and a playbook and something valuable to share, I would say just be bold and pitch your ideas to executives.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I think some great advice there. Just—I love that whole thing around inspirational story.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Salespeople get hooked on those things, and obviously you need to show them the path, really, and show them what the end journey looks like.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And then they’ll jump on board, but they need a little bit of convincing, really, because as you said, they’re skeptical, they’ve been burnt.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I used to look after Sales and Marketing teams before, so I used to run large Sales teams and Marketing teams at the same time.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And, you know, salespeople would say, “Oh God, not another bloody Marketing proposal.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And, you know, the word Marketing was almost like saying the word Black Death, and, “Oh God,” you know?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So you’ve got to—you know, depending on which culture you come from, depending on what the organization’s culture is like, and the approach to Marketing or whether it’s more of a Sales-led company, more of a Marketing-led company, you need to play that carefully.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And yeah, it’s great to hear that your current CMO is a great advocate. Let’s hope they stay a bit longer than the previous two.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Sure.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): But we’ll make sure she listens to this podcast as well.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): You mentioned before we were just talking about scaling personalization, and you mentioned AI.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So let’s just touch on AI now properly, because obviously I think I’m right in saying that you’ve been doing a fair bit of talking about AI and using AI to scale ABM.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I think you’ve been doing a few conference keynotes, et cetera.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Can you share a little bit about what your thinking is on AI at the moment?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Obviously, you know, if I ask you tomorrow, it’ll probably be a different answer to today because things are moving so quickly.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): But what kind of applications have you seen for AI, and what’s your overall thinking for 2025?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah, so again, what I know now is not what I knew a year ago.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We actually started leveraging a tool—an AI-based tool.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And the tool allows us to upload our files, and it has a chatbot component, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so as we are making prompts, the system is looking at public data but also at our own files and popping up the results of the prompts based on what we’re asking.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We are now trying to move that process internally and building our own workflows.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And again, there are several champions within Pure Storage in AI, and we have started a little community, and we’re all helping each other with the different use cases that we’re all leveraging and using AI.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so there has been great support into ensuring that we’re taking the right steps.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And we are piloting, right? So everything should start with a pilot.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We’re doing a pilot for a One-to-one for one account, and we’re doing a pilot for a cluster where we’re collecting information.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So mainly AI—we’re using it for personalization.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So as we are collecting data insights from the account teams on the account and from the vertical itself, then we’re able to build a series of prompts and start building out manifestos and other types of key assets that will help us scale with that.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I think in the future, with this scoring model that I’m doing, I would love to also be able to leverage AI for account segmentation, but that’s just a vision at the moment.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So mainly for personalization, we have been using it.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Well, I think it’s a great example.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So in effect, you’re using data—third-party, first-party—you’re using a Generative AI model to interrogate that data and to produce, as you mentioned, some types of account manifestos or something similar, which you can use to personalize the messaging into the account and also to—I’m guessing also to enable the Sales team, right? Probably.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes, yeah, yeah. Right, right.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): At the moment, they’re enabling us! But yes, that’s the vision for the future.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Well, I have no doubt that your scoring model—I’m sure you’ll have that up and running very, very soon, and you can come back on the show and share it then!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): A couple of very quick questions to finish off with, Fabiana.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): One thing that you said to me, which I thought was really interesting—I think you said to me that the acronym ABM can be a little bit intimidating for some people.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I think also you mentioned there before about Salespeople being potentially having been burnt by previous instances of previous exposure to ABM.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Tell me, how do you define it there, and how do you demystify ABM when you’re talking to people, either inside your company or outside your company? What’s your take?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yeah, I love this question because when someone is confused, I always say, let’s take ABM out of the equation. Let’s take the word ABM out of the conversation for a moment.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Because at its core, ABM is simply about prioritizing and personalizing, having a personalizing, imperative-based marketing approach, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So take away the marketing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): It’s not one thing—it’s an approach, it’s a strategy.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And it starts—and the conversations I’ve had with Field Marketers, right, because they’re covering a region—it starts with identifying your list of accounts.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Everyone, usually in Enterprise, where you start doing ABM, you have a list of named accounts, whether it’s 50, 100, 500, 1,000, and segmenting them into tiers that receive different levels of support based on the strategic importance and growth potential—that’s the main thing.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The one thing and the first thing that you do with ABM, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So you’re not even doing marketing yet. You’re just applying the strategy of segmenting your accounts.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And then once you have that understanding, it’s important to know that it’s not a one-off campaign sometimes or a handoff thing that you give to Sales, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): It’s an ongoing strategy.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So you have to think about that.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): It’s not, you know, that ABC is a top account, and you’re inviting them to an executive event, and that’s it—you did your ABM.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So the practice is about deeply understanding your most valuable accounts and collaborating across the Sales teams to deliver experiences that resonate with the key stakeholders at every stage of the journey.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So prioritization, long-term strategy, key stakeholders—it’s having those things in connection that could help somebody understand.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But when—that’s for Field Marketing—that’s usually how I approach it, because they want to do ABM, and they don’t know where to start.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Like look at your list, prioritize, and know that with each prioritization, each tier, they will get different types of support.
Would you like the concluding portion or additional refinement?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): For Sales, when they’re confused, what do you say to them?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I say, imagine your account was the only account at the company.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): There’s no other—this is our first account.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Everyone is working together to help you grow that account.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And they’re like, “Oh, I’m the only one. I have eyes from everyone.”
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Yes, that’s One-to-one.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): All right, now imagine you have five accounts—they are the five accounts, and those are the only five accounts in the company.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We’re all going to now start understanding what are the similarities, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): On these five accounts—the similar challenges, the similar opportunities.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Now we can put a plan together that targets all of those five.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so, that helps—I feel like that helps when I frame it.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so, yeah, I think taking the buzzword out and it starts to become less intimidating because people do tend to get intimidated by the word, depending on what team you are in—Marketing or Sales.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Yeah, and also, we marketers, we haven’t done ourselves a favor with another acronym because obviously we’re famous for creating lots of acronyms, right?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So ABM is just another acronym that we’ve done to kind of disguise something.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I think, as you said, demystifying it is a really important thing.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I mean, the way I like to—go ahead, Fabiana.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): No, I wanted to add, I had a senior, a very senior Sales rep, after I’m explaining, he’s like, “But with what? What, what is it that you’re going to do?”
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And so if I tell him, “Oh, we could do an event here, or we can do this content,” that didn’t resonate.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So again, using my one story, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I said, well, think about—so the business is trying to achieve something, and I’m not going to even put a name, but they want to be known as the software innovator.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): They want to be known as this across their industry.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And we want to prove that we were those partners that helped them achieve that.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): We’re going to give them awards, we’re going to do PR.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): That will not happen right now. That will happen in two or three years, right?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): But that’s what we can do.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): At the end of the day, that’s my goal for you for that account.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And that started clicking a little bit more because it’s not about that one thing that we’re going to do today.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): It’s about—and I don’t even care about us.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I care about making sure the account is shining across their industry.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So that’s another way to get them excited.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): No, that’s great. Great, great.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I think the one thing I say to people very often is, if you think about the origins of ABM and where, why it was created and how, in a sense, they were trying to put a CMO—because these companies had already had Account Directors who were specifically working on very large companies, very large customers.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And so it was accepted practice to have Account Directors, Account Managers, all working on one account.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): But nobody thought to do the same thing with Marketing and have marketers working on one account.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And so I almost see it very often as imagine putting a CMO into your most important account.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So each one of your most important accounts, you drop a CMO in there.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And when you say that to people, people say, “Oh, oh.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So that’s how important it is that you’re going to put that much resource into one account.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And I think that helps people kind of paint the picture.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Very quick, rapid-fire questions.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I always ask these questions at the end of the show to every single guest.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So I’ve got four rapid-fire questions for you just to finish off this episode.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Fabiana, first question for you—what has been your greatest ABM learning?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): The importance of understanding the account’s long-term objectives, not just Sales objectives.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Love that. Very simple, very effective.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): What’s the hardest part of ABM?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Measuring results. Hands down.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Boom!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Third question, yeah, very true.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Third question—what do you think, and it may go back to what we were just talking about then, but what’s the greatest misconception about ABM?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): That anything with a business and a company logo or any one-off program with a target list of accounts qualifies as ABM.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Good answer, good answer.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Last question.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Now we’re recording this on a Wednesday evening for me and a Wednesday morning for you.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): But let’s fast forward to Friday.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): You’ve had a hard week.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And obviously with the holiday season just behind us, it’s been a long, long, long week.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And you want to shut down that laptop, grab a Coke, grab a coffee, grab a beer, grab a glass of wine—whatever your favorite tipple is.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): And you get a phone call from an old friend saying, “Hey, Fabiana, I need some help.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): “You’ve got to help me with the presentation I’m delivering on Monday to my CEO.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): “He or she has asked me to present an ABM strategy.”
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): So what’s that one thing you say to them?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Oh, wow.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): I would say make sure you include what ABM is—the definition, the objectives.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): How are you going to measure it?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): How are you going to measure your approach, and how you’re going to measure it?
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Make sure that you are pitching for a pilot, so you’re starting small.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And that even though ABM is a long-term strategy, that you do have some short-term goals included because Sales love short-term outcomes.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And they have QSRs or QBRs all the time, and those are the right forums for you to update with the short-term goals.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): So I would say clear definitions, your objectives, your approach, and how you’re going to measure it.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): And the actual plan of starting small and having those short-term goals that you will be able to prove value on a quarterly basis.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Fantastic.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I think that’s a great set of bullet points to put onto the presentation that your friend will give.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Fabiana, thanks so much.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Thanks so much for sharing your ABM journey with us today.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): I wish you and the team there at Pure Storage every success this year in 2025.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): Thank you so much for inviting me.
Fabiana Brunetti (Pure Storage): It has been fun. Thank you.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm): Thank you.