Lessons from Standing Up an ABM Motion: A Practical Interview with Will Vasquez

In this interview, I had the privilege of speaking with Will Vasquez, who most recently served as the Global Director of Account-Based GTM Strategies at the HRIS company, HiBob. Will led the charge in standing up an ABM/ABX motion that drove remarkable results, including tripling deal sizes and significantly increasing wins from Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) accounts. With certifications in Account-Based Marketing from LinkedIn and Account-Based Experience from Demandbase, Will shares the hard-earned lessons from aligning sales, marketing, and tech operations to build a scalable, account-focused growth engine. Whether you're starting your ABM journey or looking to refine your approach, Will's insights are invaluable.

Jared: Will, you went through quite a journey trying to stand up an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) motion at your last company. I think there's a lot we can unpack for others attempting similar transitions. Let’s start with what you walked into—what was the existing setup?

Will: I stepped into an environment that was all about lead generation in 2022—specifically, capturing in-market demand with hand-raiser leads. Like most SaaS companies, they were in the process of shifting from a growth-at-all-costs posture, to a predictable and sustainable revenue generation model. Paid search, LinkedIn ads, and content-marketing were the main tactics for driving MQL’s, along with in-person events. Handraiser MQL’s had been what the performance marketing team was focused on, and rightfully so, however leadership understood that more control over the types of companies brought to sales was needed, hence the adoption of ABM (we called it ABX)  at the company.    One key area I noticed was there was an opportunity to not only capture in-market demand via Paid Search, but also seek to create demand at target ICP companies, but this was going to require a sea-state change in our GTM operation. A key challenge for the Marketing team in particular was the lack of understanding (in reporting) about what type of companies we were actually driving MQL’s from - it was all person-based. The tech stack itself had no account-based intelligence, not even an understanding of the companies (domains) visiting the website.

Jared: So it sounds like there was a big gap between demand gen and a real account-based approach. What did you do first to bridge that?

Will: The first step was trying to communicate what ABM actually meant. There was this misconception internally that ABM was just demand gen, but more targeted. They’d say, “Okay, we’re going after certain accounts, and we’re still expecting hand-raiser leads from those accounts.” It was important for me to explain that ABM was about targeted engagement across multiple touchpoints, focusing on account journeys and buying committees, not just getting a single MQL from each account.

One of my key learnings was that you really have to educate the team on what engagement looks like. It’s not just about waiting for people to fill out forms. We needed to build a unified way of tracking engagement across the marketing automation platform, ad tech platforms, and sales CRM—and that was a huge uphill battle.

DO: Start with Clear Education and Small Pilots

Jared: You mentioned there was some pushback on starting small. Can you elaborate on that?

Will: Absolutely. I suggested we begin with a small pilot—one region, a subset of accounts—just to prove the model. But leadership was ready to go big right from the get-go. They wanted a global rollout. My advice here? Start small, even if it's tough to convince others. Pilots give you proof points and make it easier to get buy-in for expansion. When you try to boil the ocean, you end up with muddied results and no clear learnings.  That being said, we executed a staged global rollout, and delivered a new tech-stack architecture that supported account-based intelligence, giving teams their first Dashboard which included both the MQL funnel and the MQA (Marketing Qualified Account) funnel. 

DON’T: Skip the Measurement Architecture

Jared: Let’s talk about measurement. What were the challenges there?

Will: Developing the measurement architecture early is absolutely crucial. I underestimated how challenging it would be to align metrics between such a prominent part of the marketing org, our demand gen team,  and the ABM program. The biggest struggle was around attribution, —demand gen was required to support the targeting of ABM accounts and thus remained focused on MQL production and not account-progression.   Reporting remained largely an MQL:SQL model as there was still no way to attribute all other programs, at the account-level, to an opportunity-created. It led to so much confusion and finger-pointing.

Another significant challenge was the lack of a unified method for measuring engagement across all the different platforms—marketing automation, ad tech, and sales CRM. We struggled to determine whether the engagement occurred before or after an opportunity was created, which led to a lot of debates between marketing and sales about who was driving quality engagement. In hindsight, I would have prioritized developing a cohesive measurement strategy from the beginning, one that clearly defined how we tracked and attributed engagement across these different touchpoints. Eventually we invested in the 6Sense platform which solved a large part of the engagement measurement challenge by connecting all the measurable touch-points in our tech stack, to the ICP account segments we targeted.  

What I would do differently is in a pilot,  set up separate account lists. Really segment accounts early on and hire an ABM marketer (at a min) who can run engagement programs to target account lists—these are for ABM, these are for demand gen. It allows you to prove the value of each strategy separately, and there’s no overlap or internal competition over credit.

DO: Get Close to Finance and RevOps

Jared: You also mentioned the importance of getting buy-in from finance. Can you expand on that?

Will: I think this is an often overlooked part of standing up an ABM motion. I learned that I needed to get closer to the CFO to demonstrate the value of ABM and help quantify its success. When ABM doesn’t show immediate results, it’s easy for leadership to question whether it’s worth it - remember ABM is a long-game approach but you still have to show short-term gains.. Getting finance onboard early to understand the metrics—like account engagement over time, rather than quick leads—can really help secure sustained support.

Also, RevOps needs to be looped in early. If they don’t understand the strategy and how it aligns with account ownership, you’re setting yourself up for friction. Account ownership assignments are key, and without RevOps alignment, it’s hard to avoid confusion.

DON’T: Ignore the Tech Learning Curve

Jared: You brought in some new technology—how did that go?

Will: We brought in 6sense, which provided a lot of capabilities we needed for prioritization and account intelligence. But the learning curve was huge. The Demand Gen team had to learn how to set up segments, the Marketing Ops team had to ensure the data flowed correctly, and Sales had to adapt to using all this new information. It took almost a year before everyone was comfortable with it. In hindsight, if I do not have dedicated resources to support a large tech platform like 6Sense, I will  probably bring in fewer tools initially and really focus on education and enablement.

Another lesson I learned was the importance of hiring product marketers to deepen our understanding of the personas we were targeting. As part of the ABM implementation, we brought in more product marketers to help refine our personas and create better, more cohesive go-to-market messaging. This helped bridge the gap between sales and marketing and ensured we were reaching our ideal prospect accounts with relevant messaging for each targeted Persona.

DO: Hire Account-Based Marketers

Jared: What would you say is the most important role for making ABM work?

Will: Hiring dedicated Account-Based Marketers who view the business from both the sales lens and the marketing lens - and are focused on account-engagement across the buying committee.  When I joined the company no one in marketing had any visibility into sales accounts or the opportunity funnel. Once we brought in people specifically tasked with bridging marketing and sales, things started to click. You need marketers who understand Salesforce, who can run reports, and stay aligned with sales. It’s a very different skill set from traditional demand gen, but absolutely vital for ABM.

Another thing I’d do is look for ways to leverage AI tools and identify partner-companies who are now employing AI and agents to help automate and personalize at scale - understanding and using AI to support an account-based GTM strategy is a critical skill for ABMers going forward.  6Sense is one company who is focused on providing AI agents for an account-based revenue generation GTM motion, and I’m sure there are other platforms out there to discover. 

DON’T: Convolute Demand Gen and ABM

Jared: What’s the biggest mistake you made that you’d want others to avoid?

Will: Trying to do ABM while simultaneously doing targeted demand gen on the same accounts. It muddied the waters. We were trying to show that marketing was engaging accounts in a deeper, more meaningful way, but demand gen kept saying, “Oh, we’re already targeting them.” It created a lot of noise. In the future, I’d recommend truly separating the efforts—even down to having different teams responsible for engaging different sets of accounts.

Results and Impact

Jared: So after all the struggles and adjustments, what kind of results did you see?

Will: Despite all the challenges, the results were absolutely worth it. By the time I left, we had tripled the average deal size. We also moved from 80% of our pipeline being non-ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) to only 60%, which meant we were targeting and converting better-quality accounts. The ABM strategy helped us focus on high-value accounts, and the alignment between marketing and sales improved significantly. Our efforts also led to deeper engagement within key accounts, which meant higher-quality conversations for the sales team and a more efficient sales process overall.

We learned a lot—how to dive deeper into personas, how to create a more cohesive go-to-market strategy, and how to align messaging between sales and marketing. We also hired product marketers to refine our understanding of our personas, which made our campaigns much more relevant. While we didn’t get to true one-to-one ABM, we made significant strides in our one-to-few approach, which helped us drive meaningful growth.

Takeaways

Standing up an ABM motion requires a mix of education, a focus on measurement, the right technology, and patience. Start small, prove the concept, and get everyone aligned on what success looks like. Hire the right people to bridge marketing and sales, and make sure your technology investments come with a clear enablement plan. And above all, avoid the temptation to blend ABM with lead gen—they are complementary, but different strategies.