Account-based marketing has its own vocabulary. If you're new to ABM or new to your organization's ABM practice, this glossary covers the key terms and concepts you'll encounter.
Account-Level Definitions
Account: In ABM context, a named company you're targeting. Not a prospect person; the organization itself.
Target Account List (TAL): The curated list of accounts your company plans to pursue. Typically 20 to 500 accounts, selected based on fit and value.
Account Fit Score: A ranking or rating of how well an account matches your ideal customer profile. Factors might include company size, industry, revenue, technology stack, or growth stage.
Account Hierarchy: The organizational structure within your target account, including departments, teams, reporting lines, and decision-making authority.
Account Mapping: The process of researching and documenting the structure, stakeholders, and relationships within a target account. Creates a visual or documented representation of who's who and who influences whom.
Buying Committee: The group of people within an account who are involved in evaluating and purchasing a solution. May include users, influencers, technical evaluators, financial decision-makers, and executive sponsors.
Economic Buyer: The person with budget authority who must approve the purchase. Often a CFO, VP Finance, or department head. Not always the person who uses the product.
Champion: The person within the account most enthusiastic about your solution. Often has influence with other stakeholders. Sometimes also called an "advocate" or "sponsor."
Influencer: A person in the account who influences the decision but doesn't have final approval authority. Often a technical person who evaluates fit or a user who will rely on the solution.
Blocker: A stakeholder likely to oppose your solution. Might be based on technical concerns, cost objections, preference for a competitor, or organizational politics.
Marketing and Sales Terms
Account-Based Marketing (ABM): A B2B marketing strategy that aligns sales and marketing to target specific named accounts with personalized campaigns.
Multi-Threading: Building relationships with multiple people in the same account. Reduces deal risk because the sale doesn't depend on a single contact.
Dark Funnel: Activity and conversations happening outside your visibility. Prospects discussing your solution in Slack, email, or meetings you're not part of. Buying decisions often happen in the dark funnel.
Dark Funnel Signals: Indirect indicators that buying activity is happening in an account: increased website visits, content downloads, job postings, funding announcements, or attendance at your events.
Intent Data: Signals indicating that an account is actively researching a solution you sell. May include search behavior, content consumption, competitor mentions, or third-party intent signals.
Firmographic Data: Information about a company's attributes: size, industry, revenue, location, technology stack, funding status, growth rate, employee count. Used to evaluate fit and segment accounts.
Technographic Data: Information about the technology and tools a company uses. Used to understand their current solutions, pain points, and buying readiness.
Account Intelligence: Research and data about a target account. May include news, job postings, financial metrics, organizational structure, and technographic information.
Account Engagement Score: A metric tracking how much engagement an account is showing with your marketing and sales efforts. May measure email opens, website visits, content downloads, event attendance, or sales interactions.
Pipeline Velocity: How quickly an account moves through the sales cycle from initial contact to close. Measured in days or weeks.
---Sales and Revenue Terms
Account-Based Sales: Sales approach that aligns with ABM marketing. Sales teams focus on the same target account list and coordinate their outreach with marketing.
Account Executive (AE): Sales representative responsible for closing deals at target accounts.
Sales Development Representative (SDR): Sales representative responsible for initial outreach and qualifying opportunities at target accounts.
Account Expansion: Selling additional products, services, or expanded scope to existing customers.
Net New: Revenue from new customers. Distinguished from expansion revenue (additional revenue from existing customers).
Account Close Rate: The percentage of target accounts that become customers. Important ABM metric.
Annual Contract Value (ACV): The annual value of a customer contract. In ABM, often higher than non-ABM average because you're targeting larger companies.
Deal Velocity: Speed of a deal's progression through the sales cycle. ABM typically improves deal velocity because of early engagement and alignment across the buying committee.
Account Retention: The percentage of accounts that renew their contracts. An ABM benefit often neglected: because you've built multi-threaded relationships and understand customer needs, retention is often higher.
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Account-Based Metrics: Success metrics focused on accounts rather than individuals. Examples: accounts engaged, pipeline from target accounts, account close rate.
Lead-Based Metrics: Traditional metrics focused on individual leads. Examples: leads generated, lead cost, lead-to-opportunity conversion.
Attribution: Assigning credit for a closed deal to the marketing and sales activities that contributed to it. In ABM, often account-level or multi-touch attribution.
Pipeline: Opportunities in progress, not yet closed. In ABM, "pipeline from ABM" is a key metric.
Organizational Terms
Sales-Marketing Alignment: The degree to which sales and marketing teams work together, share metrics, and coordinate on strategy. Essential for ABM success.
Account Team: The cross-functional group responsible for landing and expanding a target account. May include AE, SDR, sales engineer, customer success, and marketing representative.
Buying Experience: The overall experience the prospect has during the evaluation and sales process. In ABM, this is highly orchestrated and personalized.
---Getting Up to Speed
If you're new to ABM, the most important terms to understand first are:
- Target Account List
- Buying Committee
- Champion and Blocker
- Multi-Threading
- Intent Data
- Account Engagement
- Pipeline Velocity
- Sales-Marketing Alignment
Start there, then deepen your knowledge of other terms as you participate in account planning, mapping, and execution.
Using This Glossary
Bookmark this page for quick reference. When you're in a meeting and someone mentions "firmographic fit" or "dark funnel signals," you'll know what they're talking about. ABM vocabulary becomes natural as you practice it; this glossary is a starting point.
Need to align your team on ABM strategy and language? Abmatic AI helps teams define their approach and execute with shared vocabulary. Book a demo to get started.
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