CloudPay stopped using the word "lead" and adopted "signal" instead. This semantic shift prevents sales reps from chasing a single junior contact and encourages them to research and target the entire buying committee (CFO, CHRO) at the interested account.

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.

To make B2B intent data tangible, use a retail store analogy. A prospect's digital behavior shows which 'section of the store' they are in. Pitching a solution unrelated to their demonstrated interest is like offering a discount on ties to someone looking at shirts—it's jarring and ineffective.

SMB owners are not asking for technologies like AI by name. They are asking for outcomes and efficiency. B2B marketers should position advanced features not as 'AI' or 'video tools,' but as embedded, invisible solutions that make a marketing hour more impactful. The goal is to provide tools that a business owner can naturally use to get a return, without needing to become a technology expert.

Don't force your sales team to learn and sell a completely new product. Instead, integrate the new capability into an existing, successful product, making it "first" or "default" for that channel. This reduces sales friction and complexity, leveraging established momentum for adoption.

Buildots' growth inflection happened when they stopped selling a data platform and started selling proactive risk alerts. The pitch changed from "Here's data to help you" to "If you don't fix this now, your project will fail." This simplified the value proposition and created urgency.

Many firms reduce Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to tactics like direct mail or targeted ads. True success requires treating ABM as a comprehensive go-to-market operating model. This means aligning the core sales process and strategy first, before implementing any technology or specific campaigns.

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.

A startup with a sales-driven pipeline leveraged intent data to identify accounts actively researching their solution category. By targeting these accounts with relevant content and webinars, the marketing team transformed the pipeline to be 56% marketing-driven within a single quarter.