Twelve events, roughly $30,000 to $40,000 all-in, and a plan that fell apart at the first conference.

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On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby sits down with Jim Gilkey to break down what happened when the pre-booked meeting play stopped working. When you're not a sponsor you don't get the registration list. Vendor-class tickets can lock you out of the attendee directory entirely, and the event app often doesn't open until the day before.

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The fix came from reading the target account list differently. At one conference, about 10% of a 350-account list was sponsoring the event, so Mason and Jim stopped chasing attendees and started walking the show floor. They cover the plays that came out of it: logo-printed lattes at Forrester B2B, a plate of buffet food at Gartner that turned into a CMO meeting, and a $250 taco night that produced four booked meetings. Even with the original plan dead, the year still produced over 40 opportunities.

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👤 Guest Bio

Jim Gilkey is Head of Sales at Scrappy ABM and the only seller on the team, as he points out in the first 30 seconds. Before joining, he spent nearly four years at Terminus across enterprise sales, customer success, and account management, and he started his career as a Salesforce BDR. He also hosts Account Based Beverages, a short-format ABM interview show he launched in 2022. He's based in Indianapolis.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why a $30,000 to $40,000 event budget bought a plan that didn't survive the first conference
• The structural problem: no sponsorship means no registration list, and vendor tickets can hide the attendee directory
• Nobody reads event app messages, including the people sending them
• The shift from attendees to sponsors, and the 350-account list where 10% were sponsoring
• The opening line at a booth: "Hey, do you have a marketer here that is helping run the show?"
• Logo-printed lattes, a plate of lunch at Gartner, and the $250 taco night that booked four meetings
• Why targeting sponsors lets you go where your ICP is, from ed tech to HR tech, instead of only marketing conferences
• Networkers, offerers, and setters, plus why the setter should hold the first meeting
• Building measurement layers so a weak offer doesn't get an entire channel killed

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Events: B2BMX, SaaStr, Demand & Expand, ANA, Gartner, Salesforce Connections, Forrester B2B
• Tools: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ChatGPT, Claude, Canva
• Data Axle
• Taco night landing page

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Resources:

Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.

Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM.

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If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

Most advice on building a target account list assumes you have the time to build one properly. Amanda Oles has a second answer for everyone else, and it starts with the accounts that already know who you are.

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Mason Cosby and Amanda work through both paths on Scrappy ABM: the fully structured ICP approach for when ABM is your whole role, and the two programs to run when it isn't. Pipeline acceleration and closed lost. Her case is that those two lists define themselves, so you skip signals and orchestration and get straight to doing.

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From there they get into channels for long enterprise sales cycles, why Stensul's most influential combination is trade show plus email plus paid social, the two-minute pitch rule that makes customer dinners convert, and how Amanda knows she has momentum before pipeline shows up. Her closing lesson: simple is better.

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👤 Guest Bio

Amanda Oles is Director of Revenue Marketing at Stensul, the governed creation platform for enterprise marketing teams. She stepped into the role in 2025 after two and a half years leading demand generation there, and came up through demand gen at Datto and WordStream. Her programs sell into large, highly regulated enterprises where sales cycles run long and compliance limits what marketing can say. She's active in the ForgeX ABM community.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why sales and marketing "need to be like best friends" before a target account list exists
• The two programs Amanda recommends when the company treats ABM as a tactic: pipeline acceleration and closed lost
• Using AI to analyze the past 100 Gong calls instead of relying on philosophical intent at the account level
• Getting target contacts into Salesforce and tagged so the motion can scale
• Stensul's most influential channel combination: trade show plus email plus paid social
• Mason's split of digital for existence and in-person for acceleration
• The two-minute pitch rule at customer dinners, and using an anchor customer to fill the room
• Owning your own account score instead of being married to a platform's version
• Why the procurement one-pager came out of finding where deals stall the longest

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Stensul
• ForgeX
• Marketo, Salesforce, Gong
• Influ2 study presented at Gartner on ABM success metrics
• Amanda Oles on LinkedIn

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Resources:

Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.

Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM.

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If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!

Most target account lists get built backwards. Someone writes an ICP, sales adds the logos they've always wanted, and nobody checks it against a single closed deal. On this episode of Scrappy ABM, Mason Cosby talks with Christy Behnke, VP of Marketing at Terryberry, about where that list should actually come from.

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Christy starts with Salesforce reports on closed won and closed lost, and pays close attention to the stage where lost deals fell out. From there she grades accounts A through D, loops in product to see where the roadmap is headed, and tests messaging on 10% of the target account list instead of half of it.

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The conversation also covers content mapped to funnel stage, ChatGPT ads as a new test channel, and why she treats ABM as part of demand gen rather than a separate program. Plus the measurement that happens before the MQL, her 25% of contract value rule for acquisition cost, and what she wishes she'd known before her first ABM campaign.

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👤 Guest Bio

Christy Behnke is VP of Marketing at Terryberry, an employee recognition and engagement company founded in 1918 and headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She's built ABM at multiple organizations, with prior revenue marketing leadership roles at SMG (Service Management Group), Omnigo Software, and Rittal North America. At Terryberry she led the migration onto HubSpot and pulled the company's ABM launch forward to March, grading the ICP and building the target account list from CRM data.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why pulling closed won and closed lost comes before anything else in building a target account list
• What the stage a deal died at tells you about product fit versus a test segment worth running
• ICP grading with A, B, C, and D tiers, and why a bloated C tier is a signal to investigate
• Mapping the product roadmap against firmographics when there's no historical closed won data
• Using content syndication and 10% of target accounts to test messaging without risking budget
• Why ABM is a play for demand gen rather than a separate program
• The Engagement Maturity Map, and mapping content to top, middle, and bottom of funnel
• Top-of-funnel measurement, cost per lead, the 25% of contract value rule, and three to one CAC

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Salesforce (closed won and closed lost reporting)
• HubSpot, including the smart content feature for personalized landing pages
• Forrester and Gartner analyst reports
• ChatGPT ads, Bing, and Google paid search
• Terryberry's Engagement Maturity Map
• Christy Behnke on LinkedIn

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Resources:

Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.

Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM.

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If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!