In this episode of Unqualified Leads, we kick off a 2026 ABM series by getting brutally clear on what ABM actually is and what it definitely isn’t. ABM isn’t “targeted LinkedIn ads to a list” or “personalised outbound at scale”. It’s a company-wide revenue system where accounts (not leads) are the unit of planning, execution, and measurement, and success is defined by account-level pipeline.

We cover why ABM is becoming more important as B2B buying committees grow, sales cycles lengthen, and lead-based systems break down. Then we go deep on the most important part of ABM: building your target account lists. You’ll learn how to define a strict ICP gate (built to exclude, not include), how to structure tiers (one-to-many, one-to-few, one-to-one), and how to score accounts across firmographic fit, technographic fit, contextual triggers, and commercial viability, plus the hard-stop exclusion rules that prevent wasted sales capacity.

We also touch on governance: why ABM fails without sales and marketing alignment, how to avoid pet accounts ruining the list, and why a clean CRM account structure is non-negotiable. This is the foundation episode. Next we’ll get into the marketing execution: paid and organic plays, sequencing, retargeting, outbound integration, and how to orchestrate ABM across channels.

Hosts:

Daniel Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-771904141/

Harry Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-hughes-6409b163/

https://www.mayfair-mediagroup.com/