Every programme has a strategy document, a stack and a set of KPIs. What is harder to capture is the judgement of the person running it: the arguments they have to win internally, the calls they make when the data runs out, and the instincts that separate a programme that is tolerated from one that is trusted. This series exists to bring this judgement to life.
Across our work with ABM Leadership Forum members and clients around the world, we keep having the same conversation – the difference between a good ABM programme and a great one rarely comes down to methodology. Most experienced practitioners are working from a similar playbook. What varies enormously is leadership: how programme leaders earn a seat at the table, where they choose to spend their limited attention, and how they hold their nerve when the business wants something faster or shinier than they can currently deliver.
We started this series to surface that leadership perspective directly, in the words of the people doing the job, rather than filtered through case studies or award submissions.
Why we asked programme leaders, not just practitioners
There is no shortage of content on ABM tactics: account selection models, orchestration platforms, messaging frameworks. There is far less first-hand material on ABM leadership – the part of the job that is hardest to teach and slowest to learn.
We chose programme leaders specifically because they sit at the intersection of three pressures that rarely get discussed together:
- proving commercial value in a language the business accepts,
- protecting a long-term, relationship-led discipline from short-term pipeline pressure, and
- building teams with a genuinely different skill set to generalist marketing.
Every leader in this series is managing that intersection in real time, often across global, matrixed organisations with long and complex sales cycles.
What we ask, every time
To make the interviews genuinely comparable – and to let patterns emerge across very different businesses and markets – we ask each leader the same seven questions:
- When ABM is making an impact, what is different about the way it is being led?
- What did it take to move ABM from a programme to a business priority?
- Where do you have to make the most important strategic decisions as an ABM leader?
- What has stretched you most in leading ABM, and how have you navigated it?
- What role does ABM play in shaping business strategy and decision-making, and where has it had the most unexpected impact?
- Looking ahead, how do you see ABM evolving? What will be different?
- What skills and capabilities will define a great ABM leader and team in the next few years?
We do not steer the answers. What is striking, interview after interview, is how differently experienced leaders answer the same question – and how often they arrive at similar conclusions by very different routes.
What is already emerging across the series
A few themes are recurring often enough in our interviews, across different companies, sectors and geographies, that we think they are worth naming.
Earning ABM’s place is proof plus patience, not proof alone. Leaders describe having to demonstrate pipeline influence and revenue impact in terms the business cannot dispute, while simultaneously holding their nerve against pressure to chase volume metrics that ABM was never designed to deliver.
The hardest decisions are about attention, not tactics. With finite time and a small number of genuinely important accounts, leadership judgement is less about which channel or content to use, and more about where to focus at all – and having the confidence to say no to opportunities that do not serve top accounts or the business.
AI is changing the pace of ABM, not its purpose. Every leader we have spoken to expects AI to compress onboarding, sharpen signal intelligence and speed up how programmes react. None of them believe it changes what ABM is for. If anything, they argue the opposite: as AI makes personalisation cheap and universal, the leaders who protect genuine relationship-building will be the ones who differentiate.
ABM’s remit is about more than pipeline. Several leaders describe ABM’s influence on retention, expansion, advocacy and even business strategy – well beyond the deals many companies use it to support.
We expect this list to grow, and to be tested, as the series continues.
If you lead an ABM programme and would like to take part, get in touch.
For more on the thinking behind ABM leadership, see ‘Account-Based Marketing’ (Burgess, Kogan Page, 2025).
