Account-Based Marketing vs Lead Generation: Which One Fits Your Deals?

The starting point. Lead generation starts with a description of a buyer, such as "operations heads at logistics firms", and finds as many matching people as it can. Whoever responds becomes a lead. ABM starts with a decision about which companies you want as customers, then works on each of them: who decides, what changed there this quarter and what each person needs to hear. A lead campaign pointed at a list of logos is still lead generation. What makes it ABM is that the account, not the person, is the thing you plan, message and count.

They cost different things. Lead generation costs data, sending and the time to sort replies, and is easy to price per lead. ABM costs research time per account, content made for an account or a cluster, and patience: an account can take a full sales cycle to show in pipeline. We quote no prices here. Compare what each approach reports back to you, not only what it charges.

When one person can say yes, the deal is small, the market holds thousands of similar buyers and the cycle is a few weeks. Losing one buyer costs little there, so reach matters more than depth. Many good businesses grow this way, and ABM would make them slower.

When three things are true: the deal is large enough that one new customer changes your year, several people on the buyer's side must agree, and you could name most of the companies that could ever buy. If those hold, a lead count tells you little. What matters is whether you are known, and talking, inside the accounts that count.

Yes, and most companies with a mix of deal sizes should. Split the market first. Put the accounts that would change your year on a named list and work them account by account. Run lead generation on the rest. Then add two rules: keep your named accounts out of the lead campaigns, and when a lead arrives from a named account, send it to that account's owner, not to a qualification queue.

ABM warms the account. Account-based selling opens it. ABM makes the account aware of you: the right people have seen your name, read something useful and know why you are relevant. Account-based selling is the next step: a named person approaches named people with a reason that is true for that company, and stays with the account when the first contact goes quiet. Many ABM programmes stall between the two. The account is warm, and nobody asks for the conversation.

Intandemly is an account-based selling company, working this way since April 2017, almost ten years. Each client gets an ABX platform and a dedicated consultant, supported by researchers, working a named list of key accounts agreed with you. We are not an ABM agency. We work the part where named people are approached and conversations open. We do not promise a number of meetings. We report on five KPIs: outreach accounts, coverage rate, active buying committees, active conversations and the value of pipeline generated.