Input
Sales territories
The account structure Sales used to manage ownership and customer relationships.
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Account based growth · Sales and Marketing alignment
Turning Account Lists into Growth.
The hard part was not building a large account list. It was creating one governed account foundation from competing sources, then requiring Sales validation before an account priority counted.
The operating problem
Every list had a reason. None could govern the whole system.
IBM AI Applications brought together a broad portfolio, multiple business units, routes to market, geographies, sales teams, and existing account lists.
Input
Strategic accounts
Existing key and strategic account priorities across the portfolio.
Input
Business units and regions
Target lists and market knowledge from business units, countries, and geographic teams.
Input
Marketing systems
The more detailed account records needed to activate programs and measure engagement.
Each source reflected a legitimate operating need, but the definitions and levels did not always line up. A sales territory could group accounts differently from a business unit. A strategic account list could conflict with regional priorities. Marketing systems often needed more detailed records than the structure Sales used to manage the relationship.
I led the work to consolidate those inputs into a governed foundation of 6,005 accounts. The goal was not to erase local knowledge. It was to create a common starting point that leaders could manage and teams could use.
The decision rule
An account did not become a priority until Sales validated it.
A list created by Marketing alone would not change how the company worked. Sales leaders and sellers had to confirm the priority, the customer objective, and the relationship context.
That validation step made the account foundation a shared commercial commitment. It also surfaced disagreements early, before teams invested in content, events, digital programs, or seller support that did not match the account's real situation.
Sales owned the customer relationship. Portfolio, field, digital, content, analytics, regional, and agency teams contributed the expertise and execution needed to activate the plan.
My role was to design the framework and establish the management cadence. I connected account selection to the decisions leaders needed to make about focus, investment, activation, and progression.
The operating model gave the organization one place to start while preserving the judgment of the people closest to the customer and market.
How the model worked
Match the motion to the account's need.
Once priorities were governed and validated, 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many became practical ways to decide how much adaptation, coordination, and human attention each motion required.
Account motion
1:1
A focused plan for a specific account, business objective, buying group, seller relationship, and next step.
Account motion
1:few
A coordinated motion for a small group of accounts that shared an industry, portfolio, geography, or business need.
Account motion
1:many
Broader activation using common account definitions and engagement signals to show where deeper investment might be useful.
The account structure used by Sales and the detailed records used by marketing automation remained connected, even though they served different purposes. Recurring reviews helped leaders see engagement, opportunity creation, progression, forecast, and revenue without treating participation in an ABM program as success by itself.
What the system supported
Move from a large universe to commercial focus.
The governed portfolio was associated with approximately $520 million in pipeline that had passed IBM's validation stage. A focused motion for 40 accounts produced 11 opportunities and approximately $4 million in pipeline.
accounts in the consolidated and governed starting foundation
approximately, in portfolio pipeline that had passed IBM's validation stage
accounts in one focused motion
opportunities producing approximately $4M in pipeline
These were IBM results created by a wider commercial system. My contribution was designing the framework, building the management cadence, and helping the teams turn many account inputs into a shared way to choose and act.
What mattered most
Account based marketing starts with a shared choice.
The value is not in naming thousands of accounts. It comes from deciding where to focus, how deeply to engage, which teams and sellers need to participate, and what the customer should experience next.
At enterprise scale, the foundation has to connect the account view Sales uses to manage relationships with the detailed records Marketing needs to execute. When those views share definitions, validation, and cadence, ABM becomes part of the growth system instead of a collection of account themed campaigns.
Connected perspective: How I Build an Integrated Demand Engine