Why 80% of ABM Programs Fail (and How to Build One That Works) w/ Mason Cosby

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Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman flying solo today. My guest today is someone who has become a leading voice on why most account-based marketing programs do not work and what to do about it. Mason Cosby, founder and CEO of Scrappy ABM, joins us to talk about the surprising truth that this is a crazy stat, but 80% of ABM programs launched in the last 5 years have failed. Why companies actually have 75% of what they need already, something I agree with, And how to build a scalable, sustainable ABM growth program without buying new technology. We're going to dig into frameworks, failures, how to identify your best customers with a playbook that works for organizations of any size or stage. So Mason, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to dig into it.

Yeah. So we were talking just before this about the differences in Dallas and Indianapolis weather this time of year. I think wouldn't have been very much different if I was— maybe. Yeah, I don't know. You actually get snow, right? We get sort of snow, but mostly ice.

Hot take, actually. Shockingly cold take. I hate the snow, so I would trade anything to not have snow.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Right. Okay. Well, let's, you know, when you and I talked before, You, you, that's where you, you brought up that statistic, 80% of ABM programs launched since 2020 have failed. Like maybe just like, let's start there. Like why, like where's that come from? Why do you think it's that high?

Yeah.

And so break down a little bit.

There's a couple different stats that I pull from. So, um, if you look back at a Terminus study that was done in 2020, so this was before they were acquired by Demand Science, obviously they outlined that roughly 88% of B2B marketers were building ABM programs. So to look at like 88% of B2B marketers were building ABM programs, I read that as like all of us, like everybody was giving it a shot and trying ABM in 2020. And then when you look at, there was an Ascend2 study that was done and released at the end of 2023 specifically that outlined that roughly 23% of ABM programs were deemed Successful. 23%. So when I looked at those 2 stats combined, I was like, got it. So like pretty much all of us were trying to get in 2020. And then by 2023, uh, the, the data would suggest roughly 20% had been successful. So you put those 2 together, you've got 80% of ABM programs that have not been successful, AKA they failed. So as I've continued to dig into this, What we've consistently found in our own survey data. So we've now hosted over 1,500 different individuals in the past year, and we actually poll our audience, and the audience is roughly still the same that like only roughly 20% of people that are attending our content and workshops even have a program that they have dictated is outside of the pilot stage. So again, we continue to poll our audience to continue to get more data on that front. And we consistently see that it continues to be an 80/20 split. Now, for everyone listening in, we do run a business that helps people launch ABM programs. There is maybe a skew in that data, but even still outside of third-party validated resources, found that data to be true. And this is how we're trying to continue to make sure that that data stays accurate as we make those claims.

Yeah. I mean, just based on what you said about the, maybe the skewing, there's also probably Like how people perceive success might be different too, which could lead to some of that.

But yeah, you know, in short, 80% of people are unhappy with their current ABM program.

Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, that, so call it whatever it is. But, um, so just like maybe high level, what are some of the like big reasons you think that's the case?

Yeah, there's typically 6 core reasons, so I'll run through them super briefly, but in short, First is leadership alignment. So what has often happened is somebody like hears about ABM, they're like, oh, we should go do that. And just kind of throw it at somebody and they're like, go do it. And then like, they don't really know what they signed their team up for.

On top of their day-to-day job, right? Yeah.

Well, you're skipping ahead to reason number 3.

Oh, okay.

So reason number 2 is, uh, lack of sales and marketing alignment, which is fairly standard. So we expect that the lead volume will maintain, but the quality will also be exponentially higher. And like, that's not how that works. But also just ABM takes longer. Third is lack of resourcing. So as we just referenced, it kind of gets thrown at a team. But again, this is now a new thing for them to do. And oftentimes nothing gets removed from their plate. So it often just like doesn't get done or gets done poorly. Or I've seen a lot of people reference ABM. It's just like, well, it's just demand gen 2.0. And it's like, well, It is probably at some organizations because they were just running demand gen and then they just added a target account list to their targeting criteria for everything else that they're already doing. And then they called it ABM. So like, right, fair. Third, or sorry, fourth is specifically they don't know how to measure success. So we don't change anything within the context of the program, which obviously creates a lot of challenges. Fifth is targeting. Uh, so they're actually, this is actually like targeting is actually probably the number one issue, but sorry for how I've ordered these. These are not in priority order. They're just the things that are coming to top of mind, but targeting is another big one because we don't actually know who our best customers are. And the last one is just simply like execution. So we see a lot of teams that get together and like build really cool plans. And then everyone kind of goes back to their desk and doesn't actually do the plan. They just like—

The accountability was not there.

Yeah. Like there's, there's no feedback loops to make sure that things actually get done other than when inevitably an executive swoops back in and is like, hey, we've been like running ABM for 6 months. How's it going? And like nothing's changed. Yeah.

Everyone's kind of looking at each other like, yeah. Yeah.

So those are the 6 reasons.

That's interesting. Um, I wanna come back to some of those, but in our, as I said in the intro, and like one of the things we talked about is that Yeah. And I think I've seen this a lot of people, when they say we want to do ABM, they're actually talking about buying new technology. And you were like, and this is something I've seen, like when I was asked to do it as a leader, I'm like, let's try something with what we already have before we go add something new to the tech stack. I'm not opposed to it per se. Like, do you think, like, do you think, you said that you think that the majority of teams probably have tech stack that could support it. What's like, what's your view on that?

Yeah. I mean, we work with clients in the, the lowest we've recently gone is like the $10 million range. And then most of our clients are $20 million to about $200 million. Um, we do have some clients that are larger, but like, we're pretty squarely mid-market. And what we're finding is that so long as you have a CRM, a marketing automation platform, and then some way of doing intentional outbound efforts, like some kind of an outreach software, you're pretty much good to go to actually like get started. So, can you technically do it with spreadsheets and like sheer force of will? For sure. I've been there. But like, in order to make it more repeatable and inevitably scalable, we recommend at minimum CRM, marketing automation, and some form of outreach software.

Gotcha. Yeah, but not necessarily a purpose-built platform for it.

Yeah, I'd argue that, well, sorry, that's going to get into a whole can of worms of like, well, they were, were they really purpose-built or do we just bolt a bunch of things together anyway? But long story short, I don't think you need, I don't think you need an ABM platform or really anything outside of the core 3 things to get started. Now, down the road, you'll need new technology to scale. For example, data fuels all of your programs. So if you only have your CRM, you'll inevitably run out of data and like you need to go get more data from some form of a data enrichment provider. So there is a use case, but to get started, you should use what you got.

Yeah. To start with, it's funny that you bring up spreadsheets because I maybe, because I think the latest, uh, State of the MoPro is out and I haven't looked at it in detail, but if I remember right, the last couple of years, I think when they ask about tech that people, the technology in quotes that are part of martech, spreadsheets actually always comes up higher than you expect because it's still a tool that everybody relies on. So total aside there. Okay. So let's say that we've got people out there who've either maybe had an ABA program that floundered, didn't really get off the ground, or is wanting to start one. Like what, how would you, how would you guide them to start? Like what kind of, is there a framework you have or like we're just kind of getting started?

Yeah. So going back to that, that general mantra that we have, that's like, you have 75% of what you need. I want to be super clear that it's not a data-backed, like I haven't done a research study. What I have done is I've worked with about 100 different organizations in the past 5 years. And what we have found is that That tends to be pretty consistent. Um, they've got roughly 75% of what they need. So in short, um, when I look at how to get started, the first thing is having a core structure because what I've found often is that people don't really have a repeatable structure for how they actually want to engage their target accounts. So we have what we refer to as our account progression model. It's just simply awareness level programming, initial engagement, Meaningful engagement, MQL. Then you've got conversion stage or SQA, opportunity and re-engagement. So it's roughly 7 stages. And what I recommend everybody do is you map out and just like, you literally just make a bulleted list and you say, what is everything we're currently doing to get in front of people? Like, just how do we get in front of people today and just bullet out that list.

Okay.

And then you ask the question, what is the main purpose of this thing? Is it to get people to know we exist? Is it to get them to understand the problem that they have? Is it to help them understand that we could be a solution or like help them explore viable solutions around their problem? Is it product specific? Is it, they now actually understand the ROI story that we can tell? Are they booking a meeting? Or is this a nurture program? And based on the questions you ask for each of these things, you can then actually assign it into the context of the account progression model and say, got it. So like our events, we use events right now as a way of generating awareness. Now that's a larger strategic conversation of should you be using events for awareness or whatever, but like, correct the purpose, right? This is what we're doing. And once you've mapped all that out, you actually can then see Oh, we actually have a lot of stuff that we're doing. Then there's a second framework that we can talk about next of like, how do you then diagnose your gaps? But like, as the starting point, map out what you have today, put a purpose behind it for how you engage your target audiences, and then plot that to then just see your current state or what you could have as a current state should you make a couple of tweaks.

Right. So can I, I want to put it, so if I, Like all the different kinds of tactics you're doing, you're going like, okay, assign it to one of those, I already forgot, account targeting.

Account progression model.

Progression model. And that's really, I mean, that sounds pretty straightforward. It's probably not, like, it feels like there's, it feels like that would be valuable. Forget about the second part, but like just understanding what the purpose is of everything you're doing. Like that by itself could be valuable for a lot of organizations that I've encountered.

Yeah. It's been really fun when we present this at conferences because we actually have some people that are looking at it and they're like, oh, we are missing stages. But then some of our larger clients are like, we found entire programs that actually don't serve a purpose. It's like, oh, that's helpful to understand that. So anyway, there's—

No, that's the reason I'm bringing it up is because I suspect there's a lot of people who are just doing stuff because either It's because we always have done it, right? Or because someone told us to go do it. But there were like, but it goes back to like, what are you measuring too? Like, this is one of my arguments about measurement is like, you should be setting goals for these tactics, right? Even if it's just very like, oh, I expect to get X number of opens and clicks. If you want to keep it to that, whatever that is, right? You should have a goal in mind.

Yeah.

Because then, because if you can't, then there's probably not a purpose for it.

Exactly.

Um, but yeah. Okay. So that makes sense. That makes sense. And then, then you're saying for that will help identify where you might have gaps if you were to go to an ABM, like, okay. Do you think about these in like, uh, I'll call it in quotes, traditional demand gen, lead gen, and ABM? Can they, Do you see more success going from that traditional to an ABM, or do you see more with where people have things in parallel?

Yeah. I'm a big fan of Amber Bogie's perspective on this, which is breadcrumb towards ABM. So if you were to just like shut off all things that were demand gen and say, we're going all ABM, you'd last for about 2 months and you'd get fired because like you, there has to be a transition period. So that is my perspective on it is the other reason I like, so I've learned a lot in the past couple of years trying to build my own business around like risk-adjusted bets. And there's a framing that I've learned, which is more, better, new. So if you already have stuff that's working, why don't you do more of that?

Yeah.

If you have stuff that's working, but it's starting to see diminishing returns, why don't you do that, but better? And then once you've done more and better a lot, then you try new things. And if you're making this pivot to ABM, some people would say like, oh, that's new. And it's like, well, maybe, but I actually view it as better, which is we know who our best customers are. Why don't we just like build a program using our current known proven channels? And just better target our best customers and go get them. So that's how I view ABM. And as a result, it is a natural transition period from we already know who our best customers are because we did really large, broad demand gen programs. Now let's do just very specific programs that are relevant for these 200 accounts, or if you're a larger organization like these 700 accounts, or if you're selling really into the enterprise, like these 10 accounts, and it's just building a program. 'Cause like, forgive me for also putting it this way. There's no new channel that ABM unlocks that like demand gen doesn't have access to.

Right.

It's just a different way of doing the same stuff through more personalization, more research, more intentionality. Yeah, that's really it.

Sorry, just real quick. So when you said more, better, new, those 3 make sense. Uh, it feels like there's an implied stop or cut too. Is there something like that? Yeah. I mean, we've done this thing and it's not working. It just, we don't see how we can make it better. Right.

Yeah. I mean, in short, if you've been doing, I also struggle with that sometimes because sometimes people are like, We've been doing ABM for like 4 weeks and it's not done anything for us. And it's like, well, yeah, like, of course it hasn't. So when we talk about cut, cut in what timeframe?

So, yeah, and I'm thinking more of a, like from a, at a tactic level or a, you know, tactic for that audience kind of level. Yeah. Not necessarily the whole, the whole program.

Most people that we're working with or talking to about building out an ABM program, have stuff that's already working and has been working for like years. So I don't think about it through the lens of cut unless we get into it and we're like, wow, you've been doing this for like 4 years and your conversion on this is like 2%. Got it. Like that when you've got years of data. But I actually don't talk that much about cutting because people lean really heavy into cut and they cut too quick. But like, It's really hard to argue if we went after our best customers for a year, highly intentionally, that we'd make less money from them. Really hard to argue that. You just got to get here.

Yeah. And I was really thinking more about, um, it's kind of like the part of the, like a variation of the sunk cost fallacy, you know, like we've, we've, yeah, we've, we feel like we've thrown so much money at I'll pick, I'll pick on a channel, right? Paid search. Yeah.

Right.

Which is becoming more expensive and poorer performing. It feels like every day. And like, do we, like, do we keep doing that? Do we scale it back? Like, I think, I think that's really what I'm thinking about. Not necessarily like, should we try ABM and only give it a month or even a few months? I think like, to me that makes sense, right? That you wouldn't just make that wholesale change. that quickly. You've got to have an organization that has a little bit of patience, which maybe that gets— because, so you mentioned stuff about that one of the 6 characteristics when they fail is the misalignment between marketing and sales. Like, is that the kind of thing where you see like the patience is missing? What's your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, I speak about this on a fairly frequent basis because the time horizons for marketing and sales are very different. So marketing typically thinks in like months, quarters, and years, and sales typically thinks in days, weeks, and quarters. And that's not, that's not because they're bad at their jobs. It's actually because they're really good at their jobs. And like, if you're a salesperson and you wake up on a Monday and you have zero meetings on your calendar, you're losing your mind. But if you're a marketer and you wake up on a Monday and you have zero meetings on your calendar, you're like, I have so much room and time to create. Yeah.

Yeah.

So the ways in which we engage with our calendar is such a great insight.

Yeah.

And when sales has zero things on their calendar and they look at marketing and see an empty calendar, they're like, what are you even doing? And again, we just, so that's where the misalignment comes in. So my perspective has always generally been create some things. And this sounds so easy to do in practice. I'll walk like, or in theory, I'll walk through how to do it in practice. But like build a couple repeatable playbooks that get your sales team with pipeline, set the expectation that these are intentionally short-term programs to feed pipeline, and then go build longer-term programs to actually build your brand. And there's a lot of research and data from Peter Fields and Les Bennett that's from the book, The Long and Short of It, that actually outlines the appropriate balance for a brand building versus sales activation program. And it's 60% towards brand building for budget allocation and 40% towards sales activation. So when I talk with a lot of marketers, They're like all brand or all activation. It's like, well, no, there is a balance. Like there is a blend. You should do both, but make sure pipeline is full. And then marketers don't get questioned as often on their current programs from a delivery of pipeline because the pipeline's full.

So interesting. I've thought for a long time that your point, like, I'm still like kind of rattling around my head here, this idea of like the calendar differences between a sales and a marketing person. And what they can, it's the mindset difference. Such a great, and like, I've never even thought about it that way. And I mean, I've talked about how important it is to, if you're a marketer, to understand the mindset of a salesperson. That's like a, that's a great way of thinking about it, right? Because I tend to like, I don't look for meetings, right? When I have 'em, I want 'em to be really productive, but it's a different, yeah. Okay. Wow. That's a big insight right there for me. I hadn't even thought about that. So talking about this patience bit of it as well, when you and I talked before, you said that what you do with a lot of your clients is look for like a 12 to 24 month kind of initiative to start with. I forget what you called it, but I mean, is that the timeframe people should be thinking about to really launch ABM and see how it's effective or? Are there points along the way in that timeframe that you could make it better? Just like make some informed decisions.

So I think about it through, again, that actual, like that lens of brand building versus sales activation. Um, we don't have the chart that's, that's pulled up, but if you go Google brand building versus sales activation, while you listen to this, a chart will come up that shows a gigantic spike in up that goes up and down that is sales activation. And then a steady incline that is brand building.

Okay.

And if you have no pipeline right now, it is unwise for me to tell you, yeah, I just like, give it time, go build the brand. Because like the long-term doesn't get here if we don't deliver in the short-term. So if you need pipeline, you should go do sales activation, which feeds pipeline today. The core challenge I think most marketers run up against is they don't set the expectation that like, this is a short-term program and then their goals get raised the next quarter. And it's like, well, no, like we shot the shot. Like we only have so many closed lost opportunities we can reengage. We only have so many lost customers we can go back after. There's only so many people we can engage at one event. There's only so many people that come to our website that we can then go after. Like that's capturing existing demand or reopening past demand. Like those are the options for sales activation.

Um, and it's even harder if the sale, if the sales cycle is long, right?

Yes. So when I then think about what's the timeline, I actually, depending on where the organization is now, if the organization's like flush with pipeline, they're like, we don't actually need anything to deliver for 6 months. It's like, awesome. Let's start at the awareness stage then, because brand recall takes on average 3 to 6 months. So with dedicated awareness level programming, it's going to take anywhere, again, like a quarter to 2 quarters for someone to remember that your brand exists. Much less than buy from you. So as we then think about how do we then build a program, if you've got full pipeline, you don't need something for like 2, 3 quarters, start at the awareness stage. If you have very low pipeline and you need something to deliver this quarter or next quarter, then I would start at the sales activation, which is, or the sales activation stage, which is going to be more of your conversion stage programming or your closed loss re-engagement type programming. If you start there, you can do 2 things. One, you can actually test out offers and content pieces to see what gets these accounts to engage. And I would focus on accounts that look like the people that don't know you exist, that you do want to know you exist. And from there, you actually have a, essentially a proving ground for if we were to take this piece of content or this style of offer to new accounts that have never heard of us, We know with confidence that it will likely convert because it converted on these accounts that look just like them that did know we existed. So starting with closed lost builds quicker pipeline, also validates your content in your message and your offer. And then you move to conversion stage, which are people that are already engaged with your brand, but have not entered into pipeline, you convert them. And then you go back to awareness and then you build the pieces together because I look at these as individual, um, programs or playbooks at every stage of your overall ABM program.

Mm-hmm.

And then you just stack them together to build a full customer journey.

Got it. Okay, so a lot of this, that makes sense. The thing that I, one of the things I've run into, why I think I told you, I tell other people, like I haven't done ABM, like I call it properly, any place I've been, not because there wasn't interest, because I like, I mean, my pushback would be like, give us your target accounts, right? And that wasn't done. So we didn't get very far in that. So it feels to me, it feels like targeting is a really key part of this. So, and you kind of hinted, I mean, it sounds like it may be the only— how do you think about targeting? Like, why do you think it, am I on the right track? That's maybe the most important part of this to get started.

Yeah. When you nail targeting, everything else becomes a lot easier. Like leadership buy-in is a lot easier when you show them a list of accounts and say, hey, These are the kinds of companies we'd like to go get. And it's like, oh yeah. And like our, so fun fact, I, I think and do ABM a lot and I have talked with our teams about it and talked with a lot of people about it, but I actually had our team run our business through our own process and they developed a target account list separately from me. And then they brought it to me and I was like, oh, this is awesome. So like I got to experience for the first time, like as a leader, what it's like to get their buy-in on a target account list. Because my immediate thought was, oh, like I actually, I'm already starting to think of ways to break into these accounts based on existing relationships or like we've had these people come through our site. So like it helped me actually experience it from a leadership perspective, which was really fun. And my buy-in was immediate because I was like, I do want these companies. Let's go get them.

Yeah.

And then from a sales perspective, what I would recommend doing is obviously We want to go get customers that are actually not just high dollar or high revenue, but are actually good for the business. And that's more like high profit. So when I think about it, I think about it primarily through how much money do they make us for the cost that it costs to acquire them? And you want to go find customers where their relative cost of acquisition is super cheap as compared to the amount of value we get for the lifetime that they're with us. That's more finance. So I often don't see finance brought up in like the ICP type conversation. But if you actually work with finance and say like, so who actually makes us the most money for the money that we invested in them? Like that's a business level conversation.

Yeah.

So if you do targeting based on that, and then you take that to sales as well, you, to put it bluntly, you can actually then get really creative with your SPIFs because you actually better understand the margins that you have for these customers. And if you find your highest profit customers, your finance team is more likely to approve higher bonuses and commissions for sales, which then actually gets sales more easily bought in because it's now just a math equation versus a list of logos.

That is so huge. Like, I'm a big advocate for people in marketing to, well, in marketing ops in particular to, and really anybody, like I've got my own kids this way. Like, Even if you don't practice finance, like you need to understand it because I think it just forces, it makes you think differently. And like, the analogy I have, so my wife does a lot of nonprofit work and fundraising, and so a big thing that they do are fundraising events, right? And you want people to have a good time, but ultimately the goal is to have a profitable event, meaning you raise more than you spent on Producing it and having it and all that. And I have seen in that world people who like throw a great event and then maybe even top line, like we raised X amount of dollars, but when it was net is not where they really needed it to be. Now, like, just because we're in for, like the majority of people listening are probably in for-profit businesses, right? You've, like the same should apply And I love the idea of like, I was waiting to hear what you said. I mean, I was waiting to go like, I think that idea of like tying the, um, the cost to what you expect the revenue to be is interesting because then like if you get a higher revenue one, right, then you could spend more potentially like within some, I assume there's some target margin.

So I, I learned this also from a company called acquisition.com, but just like, what's the lifetime gross profit?

Yeah.

Up against the customer acquisition cost. So this is very much so in the finance world. I don't hear many marketers or sellers talking about it, but like, if you understand, again, we generate this much profit. So like the easy math is if there is a kind of customer where we get $10 for every dollar we spent in gross profit, and there's another kind of customer where we get $3 in gross profit for every dollar we spent, we should go get more of the $10 because even in our worst case scenario, if we spent twice as much as expected, we are still getting a 5-to-1 return on a gross profit margin.

Yeah.

So in that context, it's like, well, yeah, we should totally make sure we go get these customers. So that's, that's the framing. I've not heard anyone in the ABM space talk about it from that lens because I didn't learn that until like a year and a half ago or 2 years ago, that framing, but it has been a very significant unlock for me and our clients because it shifts the conversation to these are literally our best customers that are happiest. They're the most profitable. They stick around. And then the other thing that you get is this compounding effect because they typically are in cohorts of industries or company sizes or growth stages. And when you acquire a bunch of logos that look like your best customers and you get more and more and more, logos look like your best customers, it actually becomes this virtuous cycle where it's easier to then acquire more of those best customers versus spreading yourself out across anyone that will come to you.

Yeah. I mean, your reputation is spread across the similar kinds of people. I mean, that's, uh, so how you mentioned best customers, uh, like how do you, I mean, I think I guessed, but what, like, how do you think of best customers?

Yeah. So I've tried to develop like a 10-question set. Um, this is still being tinkered, but in short, it's who is most profitable? Who is happiest? Who has stayed the longest? Who sends more referrals? Like that's customer success. And then the last one on kind of the customer success side is like, who, what businesses are easy to work with? And that's a, that's a very, unfortunately, that's a large question, but it's like, do they actually pay on time? Do they like escalate to leadership? Like who's actually easy to work with? So those are the first 5. From there on the sales side, it's, um, who came through repeatable sources? So like, you go to like one event and like, we only went to that one event and we don't have a whole event program and it's just like a one-off. And then we got a bunch of like, do they come through repeatable sources? What is the initial contract value? And then how quickly do they move through the sales cycle? And then the last 2 are, are there more customers like them?

Oh yeah.

And, and how easy are they to reach? That's it. Because when I look at it from a marketing perspective, we want market size and ease of access. Like that's really it.

Yeah. Uh, so quick, quick, you mentioned that, uh, how fast do they move through the sales cycle? Uh, is that a, just a, um, an overall timeframe or is it compared to Um, the average that you see when you—

So it would be, it would be in comparison.

So ideal situation relative to some other baseline.

Yes. So all of these are typically, so the, the reason it's in that structure is you can answer all of these questions once you've established your baseline. So who's happiest? You could measure that by a lot of different ways. So you could measure it based on NPS, CSAT, Um, you could ask your team and then you set a baseline and then if they are below average, they get 0 points. If they are at average, they get 1 point. If they're above average, they get 2 points.

Yeah.

And then through that, you just do that for all 10 questions. And by the end of the 10-question set, you then have a point-based approach to saying these customers are based on the metrics that we set to answer these 10 questions, the top 20% of our customers. What are the similarities? Then we use that as the filtering criteria to then identify how to go get more of those kinds of customers.

What, how, so how is this different or similar to ICP?

Yeah, what a great question. I get this asked, I get asked this fairly often and my simple answer is it shouldn't be, but for many organizations, what I just outlined is a more data-backed approach than how they've approach their ICP. What I thought is that depending on the organization, ICPs are often set by a board or an executive team and then pushed down. And they, sometimes there are great executives and boards that are like super data-backed. Other times, I'll just give you a quick anecdote of like the CEO promised the board, we'll go get these 5 logos for the next 12 months. And then like that becomes the target account list. It's like, well, I made a promise to the board, but you gotta go go get these companies so we can put them on our website. And it's like, okay, but like we serve the mid-market and that's Google. So like, it's gonna be really hard to go get Google when we have zero historical context for why we'd ever want to work with Google.

Right.

Other than it's a cool logo. So again, that's how I think about it is ideal situation. What I outlined is your ICP. For many people, that's not their reality. So like this approach helps you identify what we refer to as the best customer profile. And the ideal situation is you identify the overlap between your ideal client profile, which I typically think is more future state. Because like, what we just outlined actually takes zero into account, like market trends or like, it's actually not forward-looking at all. It's entirely based in existing first-party data.

Sure.

Of historically who's been your best. So if you overlap who has historically been your best, plus where your business is going from a market trend perspective, That overlap then creates what we refer to as the target account profile, which is then these are the exact customers we actually want to go after. So it satisfies that these are ICP fit while also being based in historical data that we have product market fit and these are customers that would be happy.

Yeah. I mean, some of this that my only sort of maybe small pushback on this is that you're calling it data-based. I think it's highly structured and it tries, like, I think it's an attempt to It's kind of the way I like the variation I think of is how I try to look at when I'm like choosing vendors, right? Whether it's an agency or technology, right? I'll try to go like do some sort of scoring model that does something similar, right? To try to take some of that bias, like try to get the bias out of it that I can. It feels like it's some of that, right? To your point, like some of these are a little bit subjective. Right. So you try to make them more objective. Um, and you can try to do even more so by doing surveys or whatever, but—

Yeah. I mean, I do other methods for identifying target accounts, but for the purposes of a podcast, they are far more technical and like spreadsheet-based. So the 10 questions is like, this is baseline. Anybody can do this. Um, if you, so like, hopefully that's a helpful starting point. If you want to learn more about that, shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Yeah.

Yeah. I suspect your other ones also get into like, oh, maybe you have different best customers for different products or different tiers of products or different industries, right? That kind of, I'm assuming that's where your other model's going to go a little deeper into stuff like that, which makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, so let's say somebody gets past that part. They actually get the targeting right. They understand the best customers. They've got that target list. Yeah, we still see all these people, like I assume that 80% that didn't succeed, right? Many of them got past that to some, like, what other pitfalls, what are the other major pitfalls that get in the way of being successful?

So one of the things I'm seeing often is, again, we come back to execution. So we feel like we need this like crazy new one-to-one program idea. And it's like, well, maybe, but like, maybe not. Like maybe if you focus your content and you call out the industry that you're targeting, or you call out the growth stage that you're targeting, and you actually make the language specific to that growth stage, you can get away with like a one-to-few type program. And it doesn't have to be completely custom every step of the way. So I, I, I think you'll get really caught up in the one-to-many, one-to-few, and one-to-one conversation because then they end up spending 6 months building out a one-to-one program for 10 accounts that have never heard of them. So I actually think of that component of ABM as a continuum. So I don't actually typically do one-to-one programming to people that have never engaged with our brand.

Yeah.

Just as a general principle. Because it will be, it may work, but I have no data to support that it would work. So if you're going to do that, that type of approach, I think of awareness as like always one-to-few and one-to-many. Initial engagement's probably going to be one-to-few and one-to-many. Meaningful engagement is where you may introduce a one-to-one type program.

Sure.

And then at the MQA, SQA stages, like that's where you're getting one-to-one in nature. And then all of your opportunity pipelines should probably be one-to-one and one-to-few. So I view it as a continuum versus a strategy.

Yeah. Do you think, because I've definitely seen this in other areas, not just ABM, but like, do you think there's teams are overthinking some of this stuff a little bit?

Yes, absolutely. I think the benefit that I have had in anything that I have been doing is I'm not that sophisticated of a person. I am very focused on just like, what is the minimum viable to get the work done and get the result? And like, there are people that are complete optimizers and maximizers, and we need those people in the world, but like to get started, just like figure out how do I get our best accounts to know we exist? That is step one. And if they know we exist, then we could do the rest of it from there. But just like getting started and simple is the best way to get it rolling.

Yeah. I, I think, um, I see a lot of people who do things what I would classify as they're clever, but like they're just overcomplicated. And like, I see that in technology. I see it in, I'm dealing with that with some other stuff on a project. I'm like, it's just, it's just like we're overdoing it, right?

Yes.

We can make this a lot simpler. Mason, I think we're kind of running short on time here. So let's like maybe wrap up with like, if there's, first off, I guess, is there any one thing, anything that we didn't cover that you think is an important piece? But then maybe like any like last final practical recommendations for people who are either stuck in the one that's, you know, a program that's not working or getting started on one. Yeah.

The only thing that I don't think we covered off on was framework 2, which is then how we move from strategy to tactics. So I'm going to breeze through this. Um, but we refer to this as our 4D framework. Um, so you want to have these 4 Ds present at every stage of your program. So it's data. Data is a mix of targets plus triggers. And then based on your targeting and your triggers, you can actually create personalized, nuanced, specific messaging. And like, you can do that one-to-one and one-to— or sorry, you can do that one-to-many and one-to-few. Like, it can be still nuanced and personalized at the cohort level versus like individually the company level. So just throw that out there. Next is in distribution, which is like, how do we get in front of people? From there, it's destination, which is what are we sending them to? So we lean pretty heavy into content-led outbound and ABM programs because what I have found Crazy thought. Most people don't need help booking a call. Like they go to your website, there's a link right there. Click it. Pretty easy to book a call most of the time. What they need help with is having reasons to be convinced that they should book a call with you.

Yeah.

So all of our programming is focused on problem content, product content, or what we refer to as proof content. It's like, Is this the proof that we are actually the right fit for you? So it's really content heavy. And then like sell with your signature. So like book a call should be in the signature link for your SDRs, but like, I don't actually typically even recommend book a call as a CTA ever. It's really easy to book a call.

It's there, but it's not a highlight. Yeah. Yeah.

And the last thing is then direction, which is just how do you plan to track it? So in short, if you know who you're going after, why you're reaching out, what you're saying to them, how you're getting in front of them, where you're sending them to, and how you plan to track it. You have a repeatable playbook you can run over and over and over again, and you map all of that out at every stage of your program. And as you do that, 2 things will become apparent. One, you will realize you have missing aspects to your 4D framework, and that is okay. Like, that's step one. What you're likely missing is awareness and initial engagement level tracking capabilities to trigger downstream programs.

Mm-hmm.

That's like, 95% of where people struggle. The second thing is you will find you're either way overdoing it or you're underdoing it in certain stages, at which point you should then either add new programs or change the purpose of existing programs. Once you've mapped all that out, then do it. Like just run it with what you got today. There will be 1,000 new problems that come up, but then you can systematically solve those problems by greatest priority. and consistently improve your program over time. That is the play. That is how we build ABM programs.

It works. Yeah. Sounds good. So because we're short on time, this has been great. I would love to continue, but I know we can't. What, you know, if people want to continue the conversation or connect with you on this, like what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, I don't want to push people to my LinkedIn, but Uh, if you go to scrappyabm.com/newsletter, we actually publish lots of content on exactly how to do everything we talk about. So if you want to just learn, um, that'd be awesome. So go to scrappyabm.com/newsletter, or if you want to like come to a workshop, um, go to scrappyabm.com/workshop and we actually host once a month, uh, starting January 14th. So once a month.

Okay.

Uh, we're doing a 7-hour workshop, uh, that teaches everybody how to do everything I just talked through in excruciating levels of detail. We've already had 600 people come through it in the past 6 months, and the average rating is a 9.7 out of 10 on the content. So I promise it'll be worth your time.

That's awesome. Well, that sounds good. Um, and right in time for people who are kicking off the new year. Mason, thank you. It's been awesome.

Thank you.

I appreciate you making the time and thank you to our rest of our audience for ongoing support. And if you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest like Mason, then reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me. We'd be really glad to get that ball rolling. Until next time, bye everybody.