Unlocking ABM Success: How to Forecast ROI and Gain C-Suite Buy-In
ABM is more than a marketing strategy; it's a strategic Go-to-market shift that requires unwavering support from the C-Suite and sales leadership to achieve its true impact.
ABM, after all, means change.
It’s a fundamental change in mindset.
The way your teams think about success:Moving from volume metrics such as leads to more quality-based measures, such as account engagement and pipeline contribution.
How Sales and Marketing work together:Demanding deeper collaboration and shared ownership of target accounts.
The investment of time and resources:ABM prioritizes long-term gains and deeper personalization over quick wins.
So, for ABM to succeed, you need resources - time, budget, and executive support.
Before those ‘resource gates’ open, there’s one critical question you’ll inevitably be asked by C-suite and Sales leadership teams:
“What can we expect from your ABM strategy?”
It’s a reasonable question. No one gets a ‘free pass’.
But if you're new to ABM, the answer may not be so clear.
Traditional marketing programs often come with a treasure trove of historical data, benchmarks, and well-worn paths to measure success.
In contrast, when building an ABM pilot, you're often stepping into uncharted territory.
Without any historical ‘ABM data’ to reference, how can you credibly forecast success, and set expectations?
Adding to the complexity, ABM isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
Every ABM program is different and uniquely tailored to a company’s specific goals, target accounts, and market conditions.
So how should you approach this?
It starts with modeling out potential ABM Return on Investment (ROI) by analyzing your historical sales data, and exploring how ABM could enhance performance.
Close just one more enterprise deal per quarter
Increase by 20% the Average Contract Value (ACV) of 20% of all new deals.
Accelerate and reduce your average sales cycle by 15%
What would that do for your company’s reputation?
How would that change how you're perceived?
How many additional sales could this lead to?
These are the kinds of questions that forecasting can help to answer, providing an indicator of ABM's potential impact on your bottom line, and your company's future fortunes.
Done right, it provides the evidence you need to gain leadership buy-in, setting the foundation for a program that's both ambitious and realistic.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can approach forecasting for ABM, using data-backed methods to build trust with your leadership team, and so set your pilot program up for long-term success.
Forecasting and ROI modeling isn’t just about numbers, It’s about building a shared understanding of what ABM success looks like - where wins often take longer to materialize, but deliver higher value.
1
Before building your ABM forecast, it's crucial to understand how ABM success is measured.
Unlike lead-generation models, which focus on quick wins such as leads and clicks, ABM measures success through long-term value creation.
To measure the success of your ABM program, you should think about how you can apply the Three Rs Model:
Reputation
Relationships
Revenue
This approach offers a more complete picture of ABM performance, ensuring that both Sales and Marketing are working toward the outcomes that really move the needle.
Let’s take a closer look at each pillar and why they matter:
In ABM, reputation refers to how your target accounts perceive your company and its solutions. Building a strong reputation is critical when dealing with complex and lengthy sales cycles.
This is because your target accounts are not committing to these types of purchases every other month, or anything like that. These are big, strategic investments, sometimes years in the making.
In fact, it’s likely that only 5% of your target market are in a buying motion at any given time.
So, what should you be doing when they’re not buying?
You should be as focused as possible on positioning your business, your solutions and your people as the ‘best fit’ for them.
Building a reputation as thought leaders and as a trusted partner, so that when they are ready to buy, you’re top of mind.
Key metrics for measuring reputation include:
Brand awareness within target accounts
Content engagement rates, such as views, downloads or social shares from stakeholders who are in the decision-making unit, and their influencers
Industry recognition or thought leadership demonstrated by your presence in key discussions that are relevant to your target accounts
Strong, long-term relationships are at the heart of any successful ABM strategy.
Prioritizing deep engagement with decision-makers across the buying committee, ABM is about fostering trust and alignment over time.
Your goal is to develop personalized interactions that resonate with the specific needs of each account.
Success in this area is measured by:
Stakeholder engagement: How often and how deeply are key decision-makers interacting with your brand?
Account mapping: The number of meaningful touchpoints across different stakeholders within an account.
Strength of relationships: Are you deepening trust with the right individuals who have influence over buying decisions?
Ultimately, the long-term goal of ABM is to generate revenue, but in a way that reflects the high value of the accounts you’re targeting.
Unlike traditional lead-gen marketing, where the focus is often on the volume of leads and short-term wins, ABM aims to cultivate fewer, but higher-value deals that drive significant business impact.
Metrics for revenue in ABM typically include:
Pipeline contribution: How much pipeline is generated by ABM accounts?
Win rates: What percentage of targeted accounts convert into closed deals?
Average deal size: Has the value of deals increased, compared to non-ABM accounts?
Deal velocity: Are deals closing faster as a result of deeper relationships and more focused efforts?
Understanding how Reputation, Relationships, and Revenue align is key to articulating the long-term value of ABM to your leadership team.
This approach will help you to build a program that prioritizes sustainable growth with key accounts, rather than just chasing short-term wins.
We do look at, obviously, the number of clients that we are engaging, the number of new relationships we're supporting, the value of the pipeline that's linked to those individuals so that we can show that we're really helping to build relationships with clients who will have a material - or have the potential to have - a material impact on new revenues coming into the business.”
2
As we have discussed already, one of the biggest challenges when launching an ABM pilot is building a credible forecast for it without any prior ABM-specific data.
But, while you may not have direct ABM benchmarks to reference, there are ways to create a baseline using a mix of insights from your historical data, and from generalized industry benchmarks.
Let’s get started.
Look at all your own data from previous marketing activity, specifically focusing on your highest-value deals versus more ‘average’ deals.
The goal here is to identify patterns and leading indicators that have contributed to higher rates of success in your existing accounts.
These insights can help shape your expectations for ABM.
Within the account segment or industry you are looking to target with your program, analyze all of the deals closed-won in the last 12-18 months (maybe shorter, depending on your sales cycle).
From these deals, establish the averages for as many of the following criteria as possible:
Contract value (ACV)
Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Sales cycle length
Win rates
Number of touchpoints in the sales cycle
Number of stakeholders involved in the deal
Try to identify three to five ‘highest value deals’ that match your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
This could be as straightforward as the highest contract values - or it could be the fastest closing, easiest to sell to, etc.
Analyze these deals specifically in comparison to your average, and consider breaking them down to align with the Three Rs.
This will ultimately give you a view of your leading indicators upon which you should build targets around - Reputation and Relationships - as well as your impact on Revenue.
Look at how these customers interacted with your brand before becoming high-value clients.
Did they consume a significant amount of content? What type of content—case studies, webinars, or white-papers—resonated the most? How many stakeholders within the account were engaging with this content, and for how long?
For instance, in your highest-value deals, you may find that multiple stakeholders consumed in-depth content over a longer period, indicating higher engagement and stronger brand perception within the account.
Dig into the relationship-building process within your highest-value accounts. How many key stakeholders were you able to engage with? Did you have multithreaded conversations with decision-makers across departments? How strong were your relationships with champions inside these organizations?
In your top-performing deals, you might notice that success correlated with engaging multiple job titles (e.g. C-suite, department heads) and nurturing a key internal champion who advocated for your solution.
From these baselines you can begin to build a view of the key leading indicators that may be able to inform ABM success.
Because the reality is that these baselines are representative of your marketing motion before implementing a specific ABM focus. Given that a successful Account-based campaign will specifically target building Reputation and Relationships, you can expect more impactful results in this area, helping to build credibility with your leadership team.
3
With clear benchmarks and leading indicators in place, you can now shift your focus to forecasting your ABM program’s potential ROI.
By aligning these targets with your business goals, you’ll have a solid foundation for projecting revenue and pipeline growth.
Building a robust ABM revenue forecast involves careful planning, thoughtful segmentation, and detailed cost estimation.
This process ensures that your ABM program not only aligns with your business goals, but also delivers measurable results that resonate with leadership.
Here is a step-by-step guide to creating an ABM revenue forecast, integrating revenue segmentation, account prioritization, resource planning, and ROI calculation.
The first step in building an ABM revenue forecast is to understand your business objectives and align your revenue goals to how you are going to impact the overall objective.
To do this, segment your revenue goals across various streams, such as:
New logo acquisition: Attracting and closing new clients
Expansion: Increasing revenue from existing accounts
Pipeline acceleration: Speeding up the closing process for accounts already in the pipeline
Renewals: Retaining and renewing contracts with current clients
Each segment will likely have different objectives, challenges, and resource requirements.
This segmentation allows you to focus your efforts on the right areas, ensuring that each revenue stream is addressed within your ABM strategy.
For instance, you might allocate more resources toward expansion in a year where increasing wallet share from existing clients is a strategic priority.
Meanwhile, in another year you might focus heavily on new logo acquisition if growth through securing new customers is a key organizational goal.
Once revenue goals are segmented, the next step is to align these revenue goals to your target account tiers.
If you haven’t already, you should have tiered and prioritized your account list, based on alignment with your ICP and identified revenue potential.
This segmentation typically involves:
Tier 1: High-value accounts that receive the most personalized and resource-intensive focus. These accounts have the highest potential for significant revenue gains and require dedicated attention and highly customized engagements, most commonly delivered through One-to-one or One-to-few ABM campaigns.
Tier 2: Mid-value accounts with solid growth potential, but not as high a priority as Tier 1. These accounts receive cluster-personalized content and engagement strategies delivered through a One-to-few program.
Tier 3: Lower-value accounts, which still hold opportunities for growth, but receive more scalable, automated engagement tactics, mostly delivered through programmatic One-to-many ABM.
The aim is to ensure your resources, effort and strategies align to the expected potential return of each tier.
With revenue and account segmentation complete, the next step is to assess your capacity—both in terms of the size of your ABM team, and your budget.
Capacity planning ensures that you have the right amount of resources available to meet your ABM goals. The key here is to prioritize your efforts and investments based on the expected return from each tier of accounts.
For example, the most time-consuming and resource-intensive efforts (such as personalized content creation, bespoke events, and direct outreach) should be directed toward Tier 1 accounts. These accounts will likely deliver the largest deal sizes and greatest revenue impact.
Whereas, lower-tier accounts can be engaged through more scalable marketing efforts that require less manual intervention. This balance ensures that you maximize the efficiency of your resources while still driving meaningful engagement across your entire account list.
Capacity planning also involves determining whether your current resources are sufficient, or if you need to scale up in terms of investing in new technology, extra team members, or additional content creation capabilities.
Without proper resource allocation, even the most well-designed ABM strategy can fall flat; under-resourcing can lead to delays, missed opportunities, or disappointing engagement with key accounts.
Once your capacity is planned, the next logical step is to estimate the costs associated with your ABM strategy. This involves understanding both fixed costs and variable costs.
Fixed costs typically include technology and tools, such as CRM systems and ABM platforms, and the salaries of your ABM team. These costs remain relatively constant, regardless of how many accounts you’re targeting.
Variable costs fluctuate based on the scale and scope of your campaigns. For example, expenses related to personalized content creation, direct mail, advertising, and event sponsorships will vary, depending on how many accounts you’re targeting and how personalized your approach needs to be for each tier.
For Tier 1 accounts, variable costs will likely be higher due to the need for more personalized and high-touch engagements.
In contrast, Tier 3 accounts might only require basic automation tools and digital marketing efforts, which are less resource-intensive. By estimating these costs, you can more accurately calculate the total investment needed for each account tier.
With your cost estimates and capacity plan in place, you can now begin projecting the expected revenue from each account tier. Revenue projection involves making informed assumptions about how ABM will impact key metrics, such as:
Increase in Average Contract Value (ACV): For example, you might assume that with ABM, you could increase deal sizes for Tier 1 accounts by 15%, and Tier 2 accounts by 20%.
Improvement in Win Rates: ABM typically improves win rates by enabling stronger, more personalized engagements with key decision-makers. You could assume an increase in win rates from 20% to 25% for high-value accounts.
Reduction in Sales Cycle Length: ABM can also accelerate the sales process, especially for accounts where you’ve built strong relationships over time. You might project a 10% reduction in the sales cycle for Tier 1 accounts, given the targeted, personalized nature of ABM.
Once you’ve set these assumptions, calculate the projected revenue for each tier by multiplying the number of accounts in each tier by the average deal size. This gives you a clear picture of the revenue potential from your ABM efforts.
The final step in your ABM forecast is to calculate the potential ROI of your ABM program. This involves comparing the total expected revenue against the total cost of executing your ABM strategy.
This calculation gives you a percentage return on investment, which can then be used to present multiple forecast scenarios—best-case, expected, and worst-case.
These scenarios will then provide your leadership with a clear understanding of the potential return from the ABM program, while also accounting for variability and risk.
By following this comprehensive approach, you can create a data-driven ABM revenue forecast that aligns your business goals with account segmentation, resource allocation, cost estimation, and ROI calculations.
This framework will not only help set realistic expectations for your leadership but also provide the foundation for continuous optimization and improvement, as your ABM program matures.
With clearly defined revenue goals, resource plans, and calculated ROI, you’re in a stronger position to demonstrate the long-term value of ABM and to secure the necessary buy-in for success.
4
Once you’ve established your baselines, and your ROI forecast, it’s important to understand how an ABM program evolves over time.
ROI doesn’t happen overnight—it’s a process that grows as your program matures.
By understanding the different stages of ABM ROI maturity, you can set realistic expectations for leadership, and ensure long-term buy-in.
However, there are some caveats and it's important to be realistic with your leadership team.
We have a standardized process across all regions and the ABM Center of Excellence of how we identify and we look at our numbers. And you know, we primarily look at influence, because we realize the reality is, if we try to do it as sourced with the accounts that we're choosing, it's always going to be a battle to defend that number.”
From the outset, make it clear that ABM is a marathon, not a sprint. Emphasize that it’s about building sustained relationships with high-value accounts, which often leads to higher deal sizes and long-term revenue growth.
As outlined earlier, focus on the Three Rs - Reputation, Relationships, and Revenue.
In the early stages of your ABM pilot, success is more likely to be tied to reputation-building and the deepening of relationships within key accounts. Pipeline contribution and revenue will come later, but it’s important to track engagement and relationship metrics from the start.
The success of an ABM program hinges on strong alignment between Sales and Marketing teams.
The members of both must collaborate closely, with Marketing driving personalized campaigns, and Sales following up with multithreaded conversations in target accounts. Without clear communication and shared objectives, misalignment can lead to missed opportunities and stalled engagement—limiting your program’s potential to build meaningful relationships
ABM requires dedicated resources—both personnel and technology—in order to be effective. Under-resourcing can delay execution and limit program success, especially since ABM relies on highly personalized campaigns that demand more time and effort than traditional marketing tactics.
Strategy should always come first, but without the right team, content, or effort, ROI may take longer to materialize, and opportunities to engage with high-value accounts can be missed.
Lastly, while ABM can deliver some quick wins, true, sustainable success takes time. An ABM program benefits when it's able to develop organically, with the early stages focused on learning and refining strategies.
By maintaining clear guardrails to keep the program aligned with your business goals, and by continuously evolving your methods and processes, you can gradually transform your ABM initiative into a Center of Excellence.
Building your ABM Forecast and setting goals is just the beginning.
Understanding how your ABM program will evolve over time is crucial for setting realistic expectations and achieving long-term success. That’s where the ABM Maturity Model comes into play.
In part 2, we’ll delve into this model - exploring the stages that an ABM program goes through as it matures and you are able to build the right team, develop ABM skills, and define repeatable & scalable processes.
Find out more in the next edition of DashDot!
