How RevOps Brings Your ABM Strategy to Life
With ABM tech stack examples for start-ups or enterprises
In this Substack, you will learn:
What are the best practices of Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
The function of RevOps and their role in the go-to-market strategy
How to set up ABM tech stack, even if you are just starting out
Account-Based Marketing is a highly targeted go-to-market motion where businesses focus their marketing efforts on specific high-value accounts or organizations, rather than on broader audiences.
We didn’t cover ABM in-depth yet, so I invited Haris Odobasic, co-founder at Revenue Wizards, to prepare a guest post.
Haris helps leading B2B SaaS companies grow revenue and is a top authority on RevOps, a strategic and operational support function connected with ABM.
Sarah, working for a large advertising company, is searching for customer retention software. Retaining clients has become a challenge. You, as an ABM pro, already have her account marked to be in the consideration stage, as she perfectly fits your ICP. That’s why she saw a video guide on customer retention on Facebook. Now, she’s on your website, greeted by the message, “We understand the challenges advertising companies face in retaining customers.” She scrolls and sees case studies of how you helped a competitor. Intrigued, she reads further when a chatbot pops up, offering more industry-specific info. Sarah is hooked and books a demo for the next day. Oh, and though your company is based in New York, Sarah is in France—her entire experience was in French.
That’s the power of a world-class, data-driven Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, enabled through RevOps and executed by Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success.
ABM and RevOps Strategy
Let’s align on definitions: Gartner defines ABM as a go-to-market strategy targeting certain accounts with coordinated, ongoing marketing and sales activities. This approach works for both new and existing accounts. For example, upselling products to key accounts through a focused ABM campaign.
RevOps, meanwhile, is a strategic and operational support function that helps GTM teams improve business impact and customer experience by leveraging enablement, process, technology, and data insights. To make ABM work, you need all these tools, but strategy comes first.
Invest in Strategy
ABM and RevOps both require commitment and investment. Half-baked efforts, done just because they’re trendy, yield mediocre results. Treat them as strategic investments, and you’ll join the many companies already succeeding in this space. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of all high-growth companies will have a RevOps department, and HubSpot reports that 67% of brands are already using an ABM strategy.
If you haven’t started with ABM yet, let this be your motivation. However, keep in mind that ABM isn't for every B2B business. ABM expert Wouter Dieleman recommends having an Annual Contract Value (ACV) of at least $50,000, with ideal results above $100,000. For a simple ABM pilot, expect to invest at least $15,000 and 500 hours of team effort. Surprised? Don’t worry, at the end I show you how I hacked an ABM strategy for $0 and smaller ACVs.
In the rest of the blog, I will explain to you the RevOps perspective on enabling an ABM strategy. I will not cover ABM strategy in this blog. With strategy I mean, what content to show at what point to which prospects, in which channel to engage them, or how to know who your ICP is in the first place. My focus is on how RevOps enables ABM. Ready?
Foundations Before Advanced Strategies
At Revenue Wizards, we remind clients: “You can’t run before you walk.” Advanced strategies like ABM require strong foundations. Other advanced processes like predictive forecasting, automated invoicing, live target tracking, and AI applications all build on these basics.
Here’s how foundational work impacts ABM:
Your ABM tech stack
While process usually comes before tech, ABM is an exception. To succeed, you need a best-in-class tech stack. The keyword for ABM is intent—knowing an account is in the market before they reach out.
You heard before that 70% of purchase decisions are made before talking to sales. We want to tap into those 70%. Maybe reach prospects at 30-40% mark. This is the game changer of ABM.
Solutions like 6sense uncover intent by tracking customer behaviors and keywords, while Mutiny personalizes your website for each ICP. Chatbots, such as Drift or Qualified, engage prospects based on their stage in the buyer’s journey. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Segment captures and organizes all this data, and revenue intelligence software like Clari or People.ai provides AI-driven insights to optimize account targeting.
Now, this is a best-in class ABM techstack to accomplish that I illustrated in the opening story. In addition, you will need a CRM, Marketing Automation Platform, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a data enrichment tool like Cognism or Apollo, and advertisement tools for your relevant platform like LinkedIn, Facebook, or TikTok. A tech stack like this you will most likely require if you sell into midmarket or enterprise (Hence, the minimum 50k ACV volume to be most effective).
Here is a visualization of a tech stack example:
Pro tip: When acquiring a data solution for intent data, account data, or prospect data, always ask for a sample of your key ICP. This is especially important if certain industries or regions are important for you.
Giveaway: Here is a Miro board that has the above intent layer mapped out! Mapping the intent part is only one step. Most businesses don’t have a clear overview of their full tech layer and especially people across teams are unaware. Mapping your tech stack helps you to create visibility, identify gaps, and improvements.
Your ABM steps and RevOps process
Your ABM strategist will use the tech stack to engage prospects. For example, if an intent signal is detected from an ICP account, that account gets flagged, and relevant campaigns are triggered. Here’s a simplified process:
Over time, you will gather a lot of data in your CDP about your customers and the engagement history. Your ABM strategist and RevOps will analyze the data to continuously improve your ABM process.
ABM Enablement and RevOps
In a typical sales organization sales wants to jump on an account when they see the first intent signal like an ebook download. With an ABM strategy that would be against the whole point of ABM. We want to engage the account with the right message at the right time. Enablement in ABM will also include teaching people when not to take action (many VP of Sales are not going to like this). For example, when a prospect is in the awareness stage then we don’t need to ask prospects for a demo. It is too early for that. Rather they may be interested in educational content like a webinar.
The ABM tech stack may appear complex but for your user it does not need to be. Integration, automation and smart layout choices in your CRM will allow you to make all the complex tech invisible for the end users (Marketeers, BDRs, AMs, CSMs). They should just see what is relevant to them in the platform they are living in. The job of a good RevOps is to reduce the friction.
My Freemium ABM techstack
What if you're a small business, don’t have $100,000 lying around for tools, and want to start with ABM? Get Clearbit. It has a free add-on that identifies the accounts visiting your website based on their IP address.
Clearbit is also a great example of ABM in action. They identified that I visited their website, took a screenshot of our landing page at Revenue Wizards, and used it to demonstrate the power of their tool. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the power of ABM.
Once a week I crossed-check the website visitors with those who visited my profile on LinkedIn. If I identified an ICP then I wrote them a message along the lines “Wanna talk RevOps?”. This yielded to a few meetings.
This is a good starting point and from here you can automate it further. For example, you can use the Clearbit to extract the visitor information to a no-code tool like Clay. Then you can further enrich the data in Clay with data from LinkedIn SalesNavigator and build personalized automated outreach campaigns.
No matter if you are a small start-up or a large enterprise, everyone can get started with ABM.
Haris Odobasic is working on a RevOps book. If you’re interested to learn more about this topic, join the waitlist now: https://revenuewizards.com/revops-book
Subscribe to Revenue Wizards’ Substack:
Are you ready to dive deeper and work on your Go-To-Market strategy and execution?
Discover my solutions that support your journey from launching to scaling:
🛰️ Explorer: Understand Go-To-Market and develop a winning GTM plan.
Get best selling GTM Strategist book + 20 frameworks (workshops) + online course ($47). Tested by 7500+ companies🚀 Doer: Leverage the 100-step GTM Checklist tested on 750+ launches with templates (emails, launch plans, posts, landing pages), which will guide you from getting ready to launch to an impactful launch and scaling stage.
Get the Checklist ($97)💫 Leader: Guide your team to successfully choose ICP (target market), pricing, positioning & selection of best GTM Motion (channels, tactics). GTM Bootcamp includes 5 hours of applicable videos and a personal Miro board.
Get the Bootcamp ($347)[BESTSELLER] 🏆 Ready to win: Tackle the most pressing Go-to-Market issues such as selection of ICP, positioning, how to get customers, build teams and select proven ways how to go to market. Book a 90-minute hands-on consultation with Maja, get personalized guidance, a Miro board, and reliable vendor contacts for further work.
Want to bullet-proof your 2025 strategy? Book a session ($500)
 | A guest post by
|