Build a High-Impact ABM Strategy for Today’s Buying Committees
Your buyers are moving faster, involving more stakeholders, and doing most of their evaluation before they ever talk to sales. In this webinar, New Breed’s Jonathan Burg and Erin DiVincenzo break down what “modern ABM” really means—and why treating ABM like a tactic, a static target list, or a single intent tool is holding teams back.
You’ll learn how to build an ABM strategy that combines people, process, data, and technology to surround the right accounts with timely, relevant, personalized experiences—across the full buyer journey. The session walks through three readiness pillars (ICP, CRM + integrated tech, and content + activation), plus real examples of how teams improved pipeline contribution, win rates, and account engagement by operationalizing ABM the right way.
What you’ll learn:
- How changing buyer behavior impacts ABM (larger committees, longer cycles, more “no decision”)
- What best-in-class ABM looks like (holistic, omnichannel, aligned across teams)
- The 3 areas that make or break ABM success: ICP, integrated systems, and content activation
- Practical ways to get closer to customers, improve personalization, and measure ABM by account
TOC
Table of Contents
1 The Modern B2B Buying Reality (and Why ABM is Back)
2 What ABM is—and What it isn’t
3 The ABM Readiness Blueprint: ICP, Systems, and Content Activation
1The Modern B2B Buying Reality (and Why ABM is Back)
The pace of change is accelerating, buyers expect more, and competition is intense, often including “no decision” as the real competitor.
There are several buying dynamics driving the need for ABM:
- Buying committees are larger and create longer sales cycles, increasing risk of stalled deals.
- Buyers do much of their decision-making before contacting vendors, and they trust indirect sources (peers, communities, analysts, review sites) more than vendor materials.
- When buyers do reach out, the first vendor they proactively contact has a major advantage—making it critical to show up earlier with helpful, personalized experiences (not spammy outbound).
This context sets up ABM as a response to a tougher buying environment—especially as confidence in traditional lead-driven models (like MQLs) continues to erode.
2What ABM is—and What it isn’t
A key theme: ABM isn’t a tactic. It’s not just:
- a static target account list
- a siloed outbound motion
- a single intent data tool
- or a set of disconnected campaigns
We define ABM as a go-to-market strategy that combines:
- People (aligned teams across marketing, sales, CS, product)
- Process (clear workflows and roles)
- Data (ICP + intent/predictive signals)
- Technology (integrated systems that enable personalization and measurement)
The goal is to surround the accounts most likely to buy, and most likely to retain, with timely, relevant, personalized content that helps buying committees make better decisions.
3The ABM Readiness Blueprint: ICP, Systems, and Content Activation
Three readiness pillars to consider:
A) Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): alignment before activation
Documenting an ICP isn’t the hard part: operationalizing it cross-functionally is. ABM readiness starts with clarity on:
- the segments and attributes that lead to the highest-converting accounts and longest-retaining customers
- buying committees and personas (who they are, when they show up, what they need)
- where buyers actually go to learn and research
Best-practice takeaways:
- Refresh your ICP with real customer and frontline input (customer conversations, call reviews, win/loss patterns).
- Treat ICP as a living system, not a one-time worksheet.
- Train and operationalize the ICP into everything you do.
Case study (Vesta):
To support entry into new geographies, Vesta needed ICP alignment and content foundations. New Breed facilitated a cross-functional growth strategy workshop to align marketing, sales, and ops—revealing that ICPs didn’t translate 1:1 across markets. From there, the team built personalized enterprise content, account-based reporting, and a 3-month omnichannel activation (paid social + sales playbooks), contributing meaningful pipeline impact.
B) CRM + integrated technology: make ABM measurable and scalable
The second pillar focuses on how ABM breaks down without integrated systems and clean processes.
This requires:
- tight integration (or a unified system) across marketing automation, CRM, sales, and customer success
- account-based measurement (accounts + contacts vs. leads)
- intent/predictive tools aligned to the ICP (and clear criteria for account prioritization)
- personalization tools (CMS/web personalization + activation)
- sales productivity support (sequencing, enrichment, AI-enabled workflows)
Best-practice takeaways:
- Align strategy/process/goals before selecting tools.
- Map “jobs to be done” across teams to expose real tech gaps.
- Build a tech blueprint + implementation roadmap.
- Prioritize tools that meaningfully embed AI for speed, precision, and personalization.
- Invest in training to drive adoption and outcomes.
Case study (Teamwork.com):
After rapid growth, Teamwork.com faced reporting pain, poor visibility, and a stack that couldn’t support a key-account motion. New Breed helped consolidate technology around a scalable CRM that supported account-based focus, implemented lead scoring/distribution for personalized account follow-up, and used AI to recommend the most appropriate content for accounts (not “AI writing emails”). Outcomes included major gains in sales effectiveness, win rates, and selling price—enabled by cross-functional collabora
C) Content + activation: stop writing for Google, start enabling buyers
The third pillar focuses on content that supports real buying committees—not just awareness content.
Readiness questions include:
- Do you know what content performs best with target accounts?
- Do you have content for different buying committee roles and stages?
- Is your content truly high-quality—and do your buyers agree?
- Can you create and activate personalized content across the buying cycle?
Best-practice takeaways:
- Write for buyers and decision-making, not just search engines.
- Put content where buyers are (the webinar cites paid social as a commonly effective ABM tactic, but emphasizes validating channels for your audience).
- Build a real community around your content—an audience that learns, engages, and returns because you have a point of view and deliver value.
Case study (Material Logic):
Material Logic had accurate but product-heavy content that didn’t deliver value or convert well. They also had contact-centric lead scoring and generic experiences across personas. New Breed helped define and align ICPs, build a strategic content plan to attract and convert high-potential accounts, and implement targeted workflows to deliver relevant email + advertising campaigns—supporting improvements in acquisition, conversion, and revenue impact from website traffic.
One of the fastest ways to identify AEO opportunities is by analyzing AI bot traffic.
By reviewing logs or analytics data, teams can uncover:
- Which AI models are visiting the site
- Which pages receive the most AI crawler attention
- Whether bots are training, retrieving, or evaluating content
Pages already attracting AI bot traffic are strong candidates for deeper optimization.
Frequently Asked Questions about ABM Blueprints
Who should make technology decisions for an ABM program?
ABM tech decisions work best when led by Revenue Operations / Operations as the accountable owner, with a cross-functional evaluation group (marketing, sales, and anyone executing the ABM motion). The key is mapping your ABM process first, then selecting tech that supports the strategy—rather than buying tools in isolation.
Is paid social really the top channel for ABM?
Practitioners report paid social as a highly effective ABM tactic across multiple ABM approaches. That said, the right channel depends on where your buyers research and learn—so channel selection should be based on audience behavior, not trends alone.
How can we bring non-revenue stakeholders (like CFO or CTO) into deals earlier?
Start by mapping the buying committee based on real deal data (wins/losses) and interviews. Then build role-specific content and outreach that addresses what those stakeholders need to evaluate (risk, security, finance, implementation, ROI), and deliver it at the trigger points when they typically get involved.
What does “content aligned to the buying committee” actually mean?
It means your content strategy is built around:
- distinct roles in the buying group (not just the champion)
- the stage each role is in (early research vs. evaluation vs. validation)
- what each role needs to reduce risk and make a decision
What does it look like to align Customer Success to ABM?
Alignment starts at the beginning: Customer Success should be included in ICP definition so you target customers who will retain and expand—not just close. From there, ABM becomes a lifecycle strategy: identifying account opportunities, supporting adoption and value delivery, and driving net revenue retention through renewals + expansion.
What’s the biggest ABM mistake teams make?
Treating ABM as a tactic—like a target list, one tool, or outbound sequences—rather than a coordinated go-to-market strategy integrating people, process, data, and technology to deliver timely, personalized experiences.