Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing inverts the usual model: instead of generating leads and finding out which accounts they came from, you choose the accounts and work them. It is a good fit for a narrow set of businesses and an expensive mistake for the rest.

Qualify the model before adopting it

It works when deal sizes are large enough to justify per-account effort, the addressable market is small enough to enumerate, buying groups have several people, and sales cycles are long enough for sustained effort to compound.

It does not work when the deal size cannot carry the cost, when the market is too large to name, or when marketing and sales will not actually coordinate. That last one is the usual failure: the tooling gets bought, the account list gets built, and the program becomes a more expensive way to run the same campaigns.

Run the arithmetic first. Total program cost divided by the number of accounts, against expected deal value and a realistic win rate, tells you the tier structure you can afford, or that you cannot afford this at all.

Build the list from fit and evidence, then hold it still

Start from the accounts that already look like your best customers, not by revenue but by why they bought and whether they stayed. Add observable signals: hiring, technology in use, funding, regulatory pressure, a change in leadership.

Then commit. A list that churns quarterly cannot compound, and compounding is the only reason this model beats broad demand generation. Agree the list with sales and get their explicit acceptance, because a list sales does not believe in is a list sales will not work.

Map the buying group, not the contact

Purchases at this size are made by several people with different concerns: the person with the problem, the person with the budget, the person who will operate it, and whoever can veto on security, legal or procurement grounds.