What is it and why do you need it?
If you’re doing Strategic ABM, your relationship with the account director and their team is everything; you have to deliver on your promises and earn their trust. This all starts with the way you onboard their account once it has been selected for ABM support.
At Inflexion Group, we recommend using a structured onboarding approach to make sure you’re prepared and get off on the right foot.
How do you use it?
Your ABM colleagues or centre of excellence may already have an account onboarding checklist you can use to prepare. If not, here’s an example of the things we recommend you do as you begin working with your account team for the first time.
Account onboarding checklist
Take some time to plan your first meeting with the team. You’ll need to get them on side fast by explaining:
- ABM in the context of your company’s goals and strategy, and how their account was selected;
- Why ABM is important today to stay competitive, ideally backed up by research on customer expectations and competitor initiatives;
- The advantages of ABM, in terms of the benefits both for them as a team and their customer;
- What you will deliver and what is expected of the account team in return.
Make sure you tailor your approach in terms of time and presentation materials for each person or team. Some will want to go slowly and understand the approach you’re going to take in detail, while others may only have five minutes to spare, so be ready to quickly cover the key points.
This matters more than it might seem. Strategic ABM is typically reserved for your most important customers, and you’ll be working as part of that account team for months, sometimes years. The foundations you lay at the start shape everything that follows.
Read more about onboarding accounts in ‘Account-Based Marketing’ (Burgess, Kogan Page, 2025), or take the on-demand course on Getting Started with Strategic ABM from the ABM Academy.
See how to qualify an account for Pursuit Marketing in our previous toolkit article.
