The "Marketing" in ABM creates resistance from non-marketing teams, pigeonholing the initiative. Using broader terms like "Account-Based Strategy" or "Account-Based Engagement" repositions it as a company-wide GTM motion, dramatically improving adoption across sales, customer success, and leadership.

Qualcomm's CMO argues that the distinction between brand and performance marketing is a false dichotomy. All marketing must perform by driving resonance that leads to action and measurable business results. The goal is to prove how brand value directly drives business value, a concept supported by data showing top brands outperform market indices.

The speaker coins "technoplasmosis" for when tech vendors persuade a company's finance department to adopt marketing metrics that favor selling tech stacks (e.g., click-through rates). This shifts focus to short-term, transactional activities and away from long-term brand building, which is more valuable.

The battle over attribution isn't a personality conflict but a systemic issue. It's caused by measuring marketing on MQLs and sales on closed revenue. Unifying both teams under a single, shared revenue goal eliminates this friction and fosters collaboration.

Shift the mindset from a brand vs. performance dichotomy. All marketing should be measured for performance. For brand initiatives, use metrics like branded search volume per dollar spent to quantify impact and tie "fluffy" activities to tangible growth outcomes.

Position marketing as the engine for future quarters' growth, while sales focuses on closing current-quarter deals. This reframes marketing's long-term investments (like brand building) as essential for sustainable revenue, justifying budgets that don't show immediate, direct ROI to a CFO.

To overcome the perception that ABM is just a marketing initiative, leadership considered renaming it "Account-Based Selling." This simple change in terminology helps position the strategy as a sales-centric approach, emphasizing that the AE is in the driver's seat, not just receiving leads.

By changing the lexicon from an adversarial "versus" to a complementary "generation and capture," Ally's marketing team created a shared language. This simple reframe aligns disparate functions toward a common goal, dissolving internal friction and fostering collaboration.

Effective marketers speak the language of the C-suite. Instead of focusing only on customer empathy and brand resonance, they must translate those goals into concrete business metrics like a higher sales baseline or lower customer acquisition costs to gain internal alignment and budget.