Here's a conversation that happens in B2B companies every single quarter. Marketing walks into the QBR with a slide showing 847 new MQLs, a 34% increase in engaged accounts, and three campaigns that hit their target CPL. Sales sits across the table and says: "We haven't closed anything from marketing in six weeks."
Both teams are technically right. And that's exactly the problem.
Account-based marketing was supposed to fix this. It promised to bring sales and marketing together around a shared set of accounts, moving in lockstep instead of running parallel plays. But for the majority of companies running ABM programs today, that promise hasn't materialized. According to Forrester, only 17% of B2B organizations report strong sales and marketing alignment — despite the fact that 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration is critical to business growth.
So what's actually going wrong? And more importantly, what do the teams that get it right do differently? That's what this playbook is about.
After working with dozens of B2B companies on their ABM programs, we've found the same three root causes showing up again and again. They're not about technology. They're not about budget. They're about how two teams make decisions — and the fact that they're almost never making them together.
Marketing scores accounts based on engagement signals — email opens, website visits, content downloads, webinar attendance. Sales scores accounts based on deal intelligence — contract renewal dates, economic buyer access, active vendor evaluations, and gut instinct built from years of territory knowledge.
These two scoring models almost never agree on which accounts are "hot." The result: marketing sends over a list of 50 "ready" accounts. Sales looks at the list and says five of them are actually in-market. The other 45 get ignored, attribution becomes a fight, and both teams quietly decide the other one doesn't get it.
"The teams that crack ABM share one trait: a co-owned account scoring model. Marketing brings intent signals. Sales brings deal intelligence. Together, they commit to a Tier 1 list — and measure the same number: pipeline velocity."
— PMG360 ABM Practice, 2026There's no universal standard for when an account is ready to move from marketing to sales. Without an explicit, written definition, both teams default to their own interpretation. Marketing thinks "engaged" means ready. Sales thinks "ready" means "already identified a need, has budget, and asked to speak with someone." Neither talks to the other until the frustration peaks — usually in the QBR, with everyone watching.
The fix isn't complicated, but it requires sitting in the same room: write down, in one document, the exact criteria that define Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 accounts. Not vague descriptions. Specific, scorable criteria. Then both teams sign off on it and agree to use it for the next 90 days.
Marketing reports on MQLs, CPL, and engagement rates. Sales reports on pipeline, deal velocity, and close rates. No single number belongs to both teams simultaneously. So when something breaks, it's always the other team's fault — because each side can produce data proving they did their job perfectly.
This is the deepest structural problem in most ABM programs: the metrics are designed for accountability theater, not for actual alignment. The remedy is a single shared metric that neither team can hit without the other. Pipeline velocity is that metric.
High-performing ABM teams don't fix alignment by adding more meetings or buying more technology. They redesign how the two teams make decisions together. Here's the pattern we see consistently across the programs that actually produce pipeline:
Instead of marketing generating a target account list and sending it to sales for approval or rejection, top teams build it jointly. Marketing brings firmographic fit data and third-party intent signals from tools like 6sense, Bombora, or G2. Sales brings territory knowledge, deal history, and relationship context. The combined list — usually 150 to 250 accounts — becomes the only list. Everyone commits to it. Everyone owns it.
Not campaign reviews. Not pipeline calls. Specific 30-to-45-minute weekly meetings where both teams look at the same five to ten accounts and ask one question: "What did we do for this account this week, and what signal came back?" These meetings are where the real ABM work happens. The campaigns, the ads, the content — that's all infrastructure. The standup is where strategy gets made.
The most aligned ABM teams have retired the MQL as their primary handoff metric. Instead, both teams track pipeline velocity: how fast qualified opportunities move through the funnel. It's a number that belongs to both teams simultaneously. Marketing can improve it by surfacing better intent data and shortening time-to-first-touch. Sales can improve it by handling objections earlier and reducing cycle length. Neither can hit it alone.
Most companies try to fix ABM-sales alignment by scheduling more meetings or buying another intent data tool. The teams we've seen actually fix it do something different: they run a focused 90-day sprint that rebuilds the foundation before scaling anything. Here's the structure we use.
Pull your current Tier 1 list. Have sales score every account independently on a 1–10 scale. Have marketing score every account independently. Compare the two scores. Everywhere they diverge by more than 2 points, schedule a 30-minute discussion to understand why. The output is your first co-owned account scoring rubric — explicit criteria for Tier 1, 2, and 3 — that both teams have contributed to and agreed upon.
Build the shared account dashboard that both teams will look at weekly. It needs four data points for every Tier 1 account: account engagement score (marketing), active opportunities and stage (sales), intent signal trend over 30 days (marketing), and last sales touch with outcome (sales). Launch the weekly account standup. Keep it to 45 minutes maximum. Review five accounts per session, rotating through the Tier 1 list.
At day 90, run your first joint QBR using pipeline velocity as the headline number — not MQLs, not CPL, not SQLs. Look at which Tier 1 accounts moved and which ones stalled. Reverse-engineer why. The accounts that moved will teach you more about what actually works in your ABM program than any benchmark report ever will — because it's your data, your accounts, your buyers.
Everything above sounds logical. Most B2B marketers reading this will nod along, agree with the framework, and then go back to running their existing program the same way they always have. Not because they don't believe it — but because actually making these changes is genuinely hard.
The weekly standup requires a sales leader who shows up consistently and considers it worth their time. The co-owned account list requires a level of trust between marketing and sales that takes months to build. The shared pipeline velocity metric requires someone — usually a VP or CMO — to go to the CRO and say "we want to share accountability for this number." These are organizational and political challenges, not technical ones.
This is also why the teams that make the most progress on ABM alignment almost always do it with an external partner. Not because they lack the knowledge — you've just read most of what you need to know. But because a partner can hold both rooms accountable in a way that internal stakeholders rarely can. They can facilitate the uncomfortable conversations, push back on the rationalizations, and bring data from other programs that makes it harder to dismiss what's not working.
That's precisely the role we play at PMG360. But before you talk to us, go through the checklist below and see exactly where you stand.
25 criteria across 5 dimensions. Check everything your team currently has in place — your score shows you exactly where to focus next.
The checklist above isn't designed to make you feel bad about where you are. It's designed to show you exactly where to start. The vast majority of B2B companies score between 8 and 16 — meaning they have some pieces in place but critical gaps that are quietly costing them pipeline every quarter.
Wherever you scored, one pattern holds across all four tiers: the jump from one level to the next almost always requires outside perspective. It's genuinely difficult to see your own misalignment when you're inside it. The teams with the fastest improvement cycles bring in a partner who has worked across dozens of ABM programs and can tell you, in week one, what's slowing you down — because they've seen it before.
That's what we do at PMG360. Not as a vendor who hands you software and a PDF of best practices. As a partner who sits in the room with both teams, facilitates the hard conversations, and stays accountable to the same metrics you are.
PMG360 partners with B2B marketing teams to build ABM programs that sales actually adopts. We bring the framework, the intent data expertise, the joint standup facilitation, and the measurement model — and we stay accountable until the alignment sticks.
We facilitate the account scoring session with your sales and marketing leads and build your first shared Tier 1 list — the one both teams actually believe in.
We set up Bombora, 6sense, or your existing tools to surface the right signals to the right reps at the right time — with automatic alerting built in.
We audit your existing content library and map specific gaps to the objections your Tier 1 accounts raise most often in sales conversations.
We build the shared measurement infrastructure and establish pipeline velocity as the number both teams own — with joint QBR facilitation included.