The promise of account-based go-to-market (GTM) has always been clear:
- Align marketing and sales around the highest-value accounts.
- Deliver personalized engagement.
- Drive measurable revenue impact.
But as the strategy has matured, a new reality has emerged: execution complexity, organizational inertia and outdated success metrics continue to undermine the outcomes ABM is designed to deliver.
Two leaders at the forefront of ABM, Davis Potter, CEO and principal marketing analyst with ForgeX and Elaine Zelby, CRO and co-founder of Tofu, offer complementary perspectives on:
- Where account-based GTM is headed.
- Why execution remains hard.
- How marketing leaders can reclaim their strategic voice in the revenue conversation.
ABM is no longer a subset of marketing. It is marketing.
Davis Potter described the next stage of ABM as the point where the divide between ABM and marketing finally disappears.
“In complex, high-value B2B sales, all marketing should follow account-based principles. Buying groups have always been part of ABM. The problem is vendors pitching it like it’s some new concept,” he said.
In the traditional MQL-based funnel, marketing tries to generate as many leads as possible, scoring them based on engagement activities like form fills or content downloads. Sales then works only on the subset that meets a particular score.
This volume-first approach can create a disconnect, with marketing rewarded for generating activity rather than delivering accounts that are truly ready to buy.
“The infrastructure for account and buying group targeting is still missing,” Potter said. “Even the tools don’t have it right yet.”
By contrast, an account-based approach starts with a total account list (TAL), a carefully curated list of all the companies a business could and should be selling to. This TAL comes from the company’s ideal customer profile (ICP), which defines the types of organizations most likely to deliver long-term value based on:
- Firmographics.
- Technographics.
- Buying triggers.
- Past success patterns.
In Potter’s emerging consulting model, the Account-Based Arrow, the TAL is segmented into strategic tiers.
- Enterprise ABM accounts are in one-to-one or one-to-few programs, where highly tailored outreach justifies the greater investment.
- The often-overlooked one-to-many tier, which he calls growth ABM, applies account-based thinking to a broader group of accounts, but still with targeted messaging and prioritization, not generic mass marketing.
Potter used the analogy of an investment portfolio.
“We should be thinking about accounts like stocks,” he said. “Your one-to-one accounts are your blue chips. Your clusters are mutual funds. You invest differently based on risk and potential return.”
This model makes for the best use of budget and resources because it focuses GTM efforts on accounts most likely to convert and deliver LTV, rather than simply filling the funnel. But while the strategy is sound, the vision often stumbles on execution.
Dig deeper: The hard truth about what AI will do to GTM
Execution: The Achilles’ heel of ABM
Despite years of hype, many organizations struggle to operationalize ABM beyond the pilot stage. Potter sees several recurring pitfalls:
- Over-reliance on technology vendors’ playbooks.
- Gaps in marketing leadership acumen.
- A lack of formal operating models for one-to-many ABM.
“One-to-many ABM never really got an operating model,” he said. “Without it, leaders default to whatever the tech vendor tells them — and that’s biased by the vendor’s own product.”
He also highlighted risk in over-concentrated strategies.
“If your ACV is $400,000–600,000, a full one-to-one might be too risky. You could put all your budget and time into six accounts and be sunk if they don’t close.”
The metrics trap: MQLs vs. real revenue impact
Potter and Zelby agree that the fixation on marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) erodes ABM’s strategic value. Post-MQL account-based metrics such as buying group engagement, stage progression and pipeline influence lack a widely adopted operational standard. Ownership is often unclear between sales, marketing and RevOps.
Potter is blunt: “Marketers need to speak finance. Tie ABM performance to revenue, LTV and investor value, or leadership will default back to asking for more leads.”
Dig deeper: Why the MQL model is failing B2B marketing and what to use instead
AI’s double-edged role in ABM execution
Zelby’s perspective on account-based GTM is rooted in execution enablement.
“Many of our customers have had ABM practices for years, but if they were doing one-to-one, they might pick three to five accounts and that was it because it was so manual. Now with AI, everything becomes scalable,” she said.
Tofu integrates with platforms like 6sense or Demandbase to turn account signals into complete, ready-to-launch campaigns.
“We ingest the account list, do the research and create contextualized assets like landing pages, email sequences and ads,” Zelby said. “This is not personalization as in ‘insert-first-name.’ This is context: why are we reaching out now, what pain point are we addressing and what unique value proposition do we bring?”
AI, she said, should be freeing marketers to be more human. “Every human now gets to be a strategist, not just a workhorse. That is powerful, regardless of what your role is.”
Efficiency without strategy is just faster noise
Zelby also warned that the ease of automation comes with risk. “I’m getting 20 to 30 cold emails a day that are complete AI spam. They’re irrelevant, they’re not good emails and I’m not the right buyer.”
She pointed out that automation without segmentation discipline amplifies bad practices.
“Strategy is where the humans need to play the role. A tool is not going to fix your strategy problem. Companies that chase technology without customer understanding are boiling the ocean with a lighter.”
Why strategy must come first
Both leaders stress that strategy must come first.
For Potter, that means building an account portfolio model grounded in GTM fundamentals.
“Without business fundamentals — knowing the GTM strategy, sales territories, pricing and packaging — marketers can’t execute ABM at scale, no matter how much tech they buy.”
For Zelby, it is about focusing on signals that matter.
“Did they just buy a new tool that is complementary? Did they hire a new champion? Are they about to renew with a competitor? These are the signals that should drive account selection. That is the difference between strategy and spray-and-pray.”
Dig deeper: Adapting your GTM to win the AI-driven buyer
Restoring the marketing leader’s voice
Underneath the operational and technical challenges lies a deeper concern: the erosion of the marketing leader’s strategic authority. The MQL-driven culture, combined with execution bottlenecks, has weakened marketing’s influence in revenue decisions.
Potter believes marketing leaders need to embed themselves in revenue team planning. “Marketing leaders must stop being campaign managers and start being business leaders. That means owning account plans with sales and talking in revenue terms, not lead counts.”
Zelby echoed this: “The reality is people need to be playing with these tools now, not later. AI is elevating marketers to strategist roles. The mindset shift is key: stop worrying about being replaced and start using the tools to drive smarter, faster, more relevant plays.”
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