Two ABM Metrics to Rule Them All

Why measuring ABM by MQLs is sabotaging your strategy and what to do instead

By: Jake Sorensen

It was the early 2000s. The Disney Channel was dropping some of the hottest original movies that would shape an entire generation. People were still breathing a sigh of relief after surviving Y2K. Amid all this, marketers felt a sudden shift as the digital age began to flourish. SiriusDecisions introduced their Demand Waterfall framework¹. The MQL quickly became widely used and standardized in B2B, and terms like Inquiry, SAL, and SQL soon became the norm for handoffs between marketing and sales.

At this same time, Account-Based Marketing was codified as a distinct discipline by ITSMA² and popularized by practitioners such as Bev Burgess³. ITSMA framed ABM as “treating individual accounts as markets in their own right.” ABM goes back much further than we realize, humans have always tried to make personalized connections to sell things, but that is a conversation for another day.

Volume-based lead gen and Account-Based Marketing will always bump heads. The difference is structural. MQL-driven approaches are lead-centric and optimized for volume and predictable handoffs. ABM is account-centric and optimized for depth of engagement, buying committee coverage, and revenue outcomes at named accounts.

These are two very different strategies. Yet I have seen plenty of ABM programs struggle when a company is running lead gen in one segment, PLG in another, and then asking ABM to do its thing on top of that⁴. No surprise things get messy.

ABM is a GTM strategy. Everyone should align around the same accounts. The biggest issue comes when ABM is measured like lead gen. Tying success to raw MQLs, clicks, or cost-per-lead misaligns measurement with the strategy and undercuts the whole point⁵.

So how should we measure ABM? Keep it simple and realistic. At the end of the day, ABM should support revenue goals and help you reach the entire buyer group. Two metrics matter most:

1. Increasing Contact Engagement

Measure how many contacts you are engaging at each account. Maybe sales is working with a few people but striking out. ABM should expand their pool and warm up the broader buying group. Sometimes sales knows exactly who the 15 key contacts are but cannot reach them all. That is your job. Get a 100% engagement rate with the buyer group, then sort the real buyers from the non-starters.

2. Increasing Pipeline Revenue

This one is straightforward but worth repeating. Stay away from MQL counts and lead gen vanity metrics. Each playbook, campaign, or event will have its own micro-metrics, but ABM’s true success is in pipeline and revenue: pipeline sourced, influenced, or closed-won, and opportunities sourced, influenced, or closed-won⁵,⁴.

By simplifying measurement, you keep ABM focused where it matters. You avoid drowning it in KPIs that belong to another era of marketing. You give it the room to do what it was designed for, drive meaningful engagement and revenue from the right accounts.

Your move: take a hard look at your ABM program. Are you still tying it to lead gen metrics that do not belong there? Or are you measuring what truly matters, account engagement and revenue impact? If you want ABM to work, it’s time to simplify and realign your metrics.

References

1. SiriusDecisions. (2002). The Demand Waterfall framework.

2. ITSMA. (2003). Account-Based Marketing: Treating individual accounts as markets.

3. Burgess, B. (2017). A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing. Kogan Page.

4. Ledger Bennett. (2023). Laying the Foundation for Account-Based Marketing.

5. Demandbase. (2020). ABM Measurement Guidance.