Emilio GarciaManaging Partner, Boundify · Demand Gen Advisor

Tradeoff of ABMs Time Investment

7 Aug 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:17

In this monologue, Emilio Garcia explains a core trade‑off in account‑based marketing (ABM). He argues that regardless of whether a marketer targets 100 or 10,000 accounts, only a tiny fraction will be “in‑market” at any given time—often just a handful per year. Concentrating heavy resources on a very small list means most of those resources are spent on accounts that are not actively buying, which is economically unsustainable for most firms. Consequently, a broader demand‑generation approach that expands the account pool, while reducing per‑account intensity, increases the likelihood of catching accounts as they enter the market. The overall message is that a balanced strategy—recognizing the low in‑market yield of narrow ABM lists and leveraging broader demand generation—offers a more realistic, cost‑effective path to revenue.

Chapters

because we know that it doesn't matter if you select 100 accounts or if you select 10,000 accounts, most of those accounts that you select will not be in market and they will trickle down into market over the next weeks and months. So if you select 100 accounts in a year at most, 5 of them will be, to put a number, right? Maybe 10, depends on your industry, in market, not even buying from you, just in market. So you will put a ton of resources into a handful, onto a very small list of which a very small fraction will be in market at any given time. And that's an effort that very few companies are willing to sustain economically. So that's why sometimes demand generation will make, or something broader will make more sense because you pretty much increase the, you broaden in the list. Or the number of accounts, yes, you lower the resolution, right? The energy that you can put on each of those accounts. But you have a better chance of identifying people that is getting in-market than when the list is very small.