A COO told me enterprise ABM is a waste without sales alignment first

I was talking to this COO from a mid-sized SaaS company at a conference last month. He said they spent $120k on personalized ad campaigns and custom landing pages for their top 50 accounts. But sales wasn't on board, so most of those leads never got a follow-up call. He told me 'we built a beautiful engine but forgot to connect it to the wheels.' It hit me because I've done the same thing twice now. Has anyone else had sales ignore your ABM targets and chase their own list instead?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_ryan1mo ago

Yeah, "built a beautiful engine but forgot to connect it to the wheels" - that's exactly what I did too. Spent like $80k on custom content and targeted ads for 40 accounts, but the sales team had their own list of 15 accounts they actually wanted to work. They just ignored all my stuff. What @the_john said about making them sign off on the list is the only thing that's worked for me. I've started doing quarterly sessions where we literally put each account name on a whiteboard and sales has to say yes or no before we spend anything. @felixfisher is right too, you gotta drag them in the room first. Marketing spending money without sales buy in is just paying for art projects.

the_john1mo ago

The trick is getting sales to co-own the list with you... make them physically sign off on each account name, then they can't pretend they don't know who to call.

felixfisher1mo ago

Why are you paying for fancy ads before you've even got the sales team to agree on who to call? That's like buying a new truck but not bothering to put gas in it. I've seen this play out with a buddy's company where they spent months building custom videos and white papers for like 30 accounts, but the sales guys kept chasing their own warm leads instead. They were basically working two different lists and wondering why nothing closed. You gotta drag sales into the room first and make them agree on the target list before you spend a dime on marketing. Otherwise you're just burning cash and giving sales an excuse to ignore you.