Companies discussing ABM usually focus on outbound marketing, landing new clients, and trying to win over enterprise accounts that haven’t expressed interest. That’s mistake number one.
The first decision in ABM isn’t about tools, or campaigns, or orchestrations. It’s about the account mix. Who makes the list? Which 500 or 1,000 accounts are worth your team’s time? That decision is where most ABM programs fail.
MQAs are not the Target Accounts List
A target account list (TAL) is not the same thing as a list of MQAs. MQAs are accounts that have demonstrated some level of qualification — perhaps they’ve raised their hand, or the platform has scored them based on signals. A target account list includes all the accounts you are prioritizing, regardless of whether they’ve shown up yet.
Here is where the confusion starts. Too many leaders hear “ABM” and assume it’s a fancy way of saying outbound. It isn’t.
ABM starts with low-hanging fruit
If you’re running ABM in B2B SaaS, the most common flavour is growth ABM. And growth ABM doesn’t start with “who else can we sell to?” It begins with, “Who do we already have that we cannot afford to lose?”
The priority in any account mix is retention and that’s why current customers come first:
Tier 1 = existing customers you cannot afford to lose.
Within Tier 1 are also opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. The principle is to sell more to people who already trust you.
The reason is obvious: losing these customers means losing revenue and putting more pressure on new pipeline. Maintaining and expanding is the easiest and most efficient way to cover 60–65% of your growth targets.
How the tiers should look
Here’s the basic shape of an account mix:
Tier 1: Non-negotiable retention and expansion.
- Current important customers you don’t want to lose, prioritizing the ones at risk.
- Cross-sell opportunities.
- Upsell opportunities.
- This is where most of your ABM budget and attention should go.
Tier 2: Important but secondary.
- Other current customers who aren’t in crisis but still matter.
- Additional cross-sell and upsell plays.
- A small slice of net-new accounts — but only the ones that clearly match your ICP and show some clear buying signals.
Tier 3: Net new.
- Pure outbound plays.
- No existing or very mild relationship.
- No product footprint.
These are the hardest wins. They should not get the bulk of your resources.
Stop chasing logos
Here’s the real problem: leaders love the big logos. They want to show their board that they’re “going after Amazon” or “targeting Nike.” The wish list becomes the strategy.
That is not ABM. That’s fantasy.
Chasing big logos without signals or rational prioritization is unrealistic and harms your business. Wanting them doesn’t make it real.
Meanwhile, while leadership obsesses over wish lists, the company quietly neglects the accounts it already has — the ones most likely to churn because no one is investing in them.
And churn is the silent killer. It’s the reason so many SaaS companies keep sprinting after new customers: they can’t keep the ones they already sold.
The Signal-Driven Way
This is where buying signals come in. You don’t decide the account mix by gut feeling or wish list. You decide it by evidence.
- Which customers are showing usage spikes or dips?
- Who’s hiring in ways that suggest growth?
- Who’s engaging with your content, or suddenly researching competitors?
- Who has a renewal coming up, or a CSM health flag?
Signals turn account selection from a fantasy into a grounded strategy. Without them, you’re just playing logo bingo.
Why Leaders Get It Backwards
So, why do many leaders allocate all their resources to the most challenging tier (net-new outbound)?
- Vanity. Large logos look good on board meeting agendas. Keeping mid-market customers doesn’t.
- Fear. Betting on a focused list makes failure traceable. If the 1,000 accounts don’t convert, everyone knows where the problem was. A 10,000-account list hides mistakes.
- Misunderstanding. Many still think ABM is just outbound, instead of a full-funnel GTM.
It is common sense that you don’t load most of your resources onto the most challenging target. You load them into the easiest and most valuable — the customers you already have.
The Payoff of Getting Account Mix Right
When you build the account mix the right way, a few things happen:
- Churn decreases because you’re investing in retaining customers instead of constantly replacing them.
- Expansion becomes predictable. They treat cross-sell and upsell opportunities as core revenue, not “extra.”
- Net-new becomes a lever, not a lifeline. You can afford to invest in new accounts because you’re not bleeding revenue from the base.
By the time you harpoon net-new accounts, you have already covered 60–65% of your revenue goals. That’s what gives ABM its power.
No more logo bingo
The companies that succeed in ABM aren’t the ones with the fanciest tech stack or the longest list of logos. They’re the ones that prioritize retention and expansion before chasing whales.
An account mix isn’t a wish list. It’s a bet. If you want your Account-Based GTM to succeed, that’s where you start.
Takeaways
The ABM account mix is the set of accounts your program prioritizes across retention, expansion, and net-new. It determines where sales and marketing focus resources.
A target account list includes all prioritized accounts, whether or not they’ve shown intent. MQAs are accounts that meet specific qualification criteria or show buying signals. They are not the same thing.
Retention and expansion protect existing revenue and often cover 60–65% of growth goals. Chasing net-new first puts unnecessary pressure on pipeline.