The New ABM: When Everyone Can Target, Trust Wins

I have been spending quite a bit of time recently thinking about Account-Based Marketing.

And the more I work on it, the more I feel that one part of the traditional ABM playbook is becoming outdated.

We still behave as if finding the right account is the difficult part.

I don't think it is anymore.

If I am selling enterprise cybersecurity, cloud, SaaS, data platforms or almost any B2B software category, I can identify my target companies relatively easily.

AI can help me understand their industry, size, technology environment, likely challenges, recent developments and even potential buying signals.

It can help identify the CIO, CISO, CTO, CFO and other stakeholders.

It can research them.

It can create personalized messaging for them.

And it can do most of this in minutes.

My competitors can do exactly the same thing.

So if everybody can identify the same accounts and reach the same people, where does the competitive advantage come from?

That is the question I believe ABM needs to answer now.

For the last several years, a lot of B2B marketing technology has been built around finding, targeting and engaging the right accounts.

That remains useful.

But AI is rapidly turning much of this capability into table stakes.

The interesting consequence is that AI doesn't just make sellers more powerful.

It makes buyers more powerful too.

Before talking to a vendor, an enterprise buyer can now ask AI to explain a market, identify leading providers, compare technologies, summarize reviews, evaluate architectures and even help build an RFP.

Forrester says 94% of business buyers are already using AI somewhere in their buying process.

This means the buyer increasingly doesn't need us for information.

They need us for something AI cannot easily provide:

Confidence.

Confidence that we understand their problem.

Confidence that our solution will work.

Confidence that other companies like them have successfully adopted it.

Confidence that we can support the implementation.

Confidence that the promised business outcome is real.

That changes ABM considerably.

One piece of research really changed the way I look at this.

6sense's 2025 study of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers found that 95% of winning vendors were already on the buyer's Day One shortlist.

Even more interestingly, the vendor buyers preferred before speaking with sales went on to win roughly four out of five deals.

Think about what that means.

By the time we receive the RFP, see the intent signal or celebrate a new opportunity in CRM, a significant part of the buying decision may already have happened.

The traditional ABM question is:

How do we get a meeting with this account?

I think the better question is:

How do we become one of the companies this account already trusts when the buying journey begins?

That's a very different objective.

It moves ABM from account engagement to account preference.

I would simplify the AI-era ABM journey like this:

Known → Relevant → Trusted → Proven → Preferred

First, the account must know that you exist.

Then they need to associate you with a problem relevant to them.

Then they need reasons to trust you.

Then they need evidence that you can actually deliver.

Only then do you have a realistic chance of becoming a preferred vendor.

AI can dramatically accelerate the first two.

The last three are much harder.

And that is where I believe B2B marketers should spend more of their energy.

This is an area I believe we underestimate.

In enterprise B2B software, selling the product is only the beginning.

The real question is:

Did the customer adopt it and achieve the outcome we promised?

A customer announcement saying that ABC Ltd. selected our software has limited value.

A much stronger story is:

ABC had this business problem.

This is how they were managing it earlier.

This is what changed.

This is how quickly the solution was implemented.

This is how people actually adopted it.

And this is the measurable outcome they achieved.

That is not merely a customer-success story.

That is an ABM asset.

Every successful deployment should ideally create evidence for the next enterprise account.

The strongest marketing organization of the future may therefore have to work much more closely with customer success, delivery and product teams.

Because the best marketing claim is not something marketing creates.

It is something a customer has already proved.

I used to think of LinkedIn, newsletters, articles, webinars, events, email campaigns and other digital activities mainly as supporting activities around sales.

I would refine that view now.

They are extremely important.

But their primary job should not simply be generating another MQL.

Their job is to distribute trust.

An enterprise buyer may read an article from your founder.

A technical stakeholder may watch an architecture session.

Someone from procurement may find an independent review.

A CISO may hear one of your customers speaking at an event.

Another stakeholder might ask ChatGPT or another AI system about your company.

Months later, when the buying cycle begins, all of these interactions start to matter.

This is particularly important because enterprise buying is no longer about convincing one person.

Forrester reports that today's business purchase can involve an average of 13 internal stakeholders and nine external participants.

Some of those people may never meet your salesperson.

But they may still influence whether you win.

Research from Edelman and LinkedIn found that these less-visible "hidden buyers" consume thought leadership almost as much as the primary target buyers themselves.

So ABM cannot simply mean reaching the CIO.

It means building confidence inside the account.

There is another uncomfortable reality marketers need to consider.

If AI allows me to create a highly personalized email for a prospect in 30 seconds, it allows thousands of other companies to do the same thing.

Very quickly, "personalized" stops feeling personal.

The inbox simply becomes filled with better-written automated messages.

This is why I don't think the future of ABM is about sending 10X more personalized outreach.

It may actually be the opposite.

Less outreach. More relevance.

Fewer generic campaigns.

More customer evidence.

More genuine domain expertise.

More executive relationships.

More useful content.

More opportunities for customers and prospects to learn from each other.

And more proof that what we sell actually works.

AI will undoubtedly make ABM much more efficient.

We should use it aggressively for research, prioritization, intent analysis, account intelligence, content creation, personalization and sales enablement.

But those capabilities will become available to almost everybody.

They will make a good ABM strategy faster.

They will not create the strategy.

The real moat will still be difficult things:

Reputation.
Relationships.
Customer outcomes.
Domain expertise.
Trust.

And perhaps most importantly:

the ability to prove adoption.

Instead of only asking:

How many target accounts did we reach?

How many emails were opened?

How many leads did marketing generate?

How many meetings did SDRs book?

I would increasingly want to know:

Are we becoming a preferred company inside the accounts that matter to us?

Do they know us?

Do they understand what we stand for?

Are multiple stakeholders engaging with us?

Can they find credible customer evidence?

Do they hear about us from people they trust?

When sales finally meets them, are we introducing ourselves from zero, or are we already familiar?

That may be a much better measure of whether ABM is actually working.

My current thinking is therefore quite simple.

AI will make targeting easier.

AI will make research easier.

AI will make personalization easier.

AI will make outreach easier.

But easier outreach also means more noise.

And more noise makes genuine trust more valuable.

So perhaps the next generation of ABM will not be won by the company with the biggest database, the smartest sequence or the highest number of touches.

It will be won by the company that earns enough trust and proves enough value to become a preferred vendor before the buyer raises their hand.

That is the shift I believe we need to make:

From Account-Based Marketing to Account-Based Preference.

Because in the AI era, reaching an account is becoming easier.

Being trusted by that account is becoming the real competitive advantage.

If one of our top target accounts decided to buy tomorrow, would we already be on their shortlist?

If the answer is no, sending them another personalized email probably isn't the solution.

Building preference is.