As an ABMer, I am used to evaluating different ABM platforms and all tech stack that is involved or can contribute to the ABM strategy. And here is the thing, we keep hitting the same wall across every ABM platform.
On paper, their certifications and training materials align with ABM best practices: various ABM deployment models require different orchestration strategies. Demand generation needs one approach. Growth ABM needs another. Strategic ABM needs something else entirely. Deal acceleration? That’s its own motion.
Then, you look at the platform tiers most mid-market companies can afford, and you realize: you can’t build what they’re teaching you to build if you want to succeed.
Maybe you get one journey builder, your scoring model can’t differentiate by deployment model, or your orchestration assumes all accounts follow the same path, regardless of whether they’re Enterprise ABM, Growth ABM, one-to-many or demand generation.
This isn’t about any single vendor. It’s an industry-wide pattern. The strategic vision gets sold in training and marketing. The platform limitations get discovered in implementation.
And here’s what makes this particularly insidious: Different models need different treatment. A journey and the definition of MQA for customer expansion is radically different from net-new enterprise. Treating them the same is strategic malpractice.
When the Head of ABM in an organization designs account qualification frameworks that ABM platforms can execute it creates an infrastructure problem and if the company doesn’t have the resources to act on it (meaning, the budget to upgrade and the capacity to integrate it) the ABM program is set for failure.
Workarounds that never work
When teams hit the platform limitations, usually there is only three choices:
- Building one MQA definition and one journey for demand generation sort of works for growth plays, and definitely doesn’t work for strategic accounts.
- Others hack around the constraints. Manual segmentation. Processes in spreadsheets. Elaborate workarounds that live half on the platform and half outside it. But the ABM platform can’t surface what’s happening.
- Blaming the strategy? Sometimes that’s valid. But if you are limited to one journey-for-all it’s infrastructure limitations to begin with, no strategy can cope with that.
All three paths lead to the same outcome: the platform investment is not justified.
The business model reveal
There is inconsistency about what ABM platforms promise, what ABM modern practices they adhere to, and how they present themselves as the tools that will be the vehicle to execute those models, and what their product does. And not because the product cannot do it otherwise, but because they make organizations pay, first for the tool, and then for succeeding with the tool.
This is not a temporary limitation that vendors are working to fix.
The platforms sell you sophisticated orchestration in their demos, marketing and training. Then they architect limitations into pricing tiers that make execution impossible at mid-market budgets.
They know when an organization hits these limitations they either compromise their strategy to fit the platform, spend months building fragile workarounds, or upgrade to enterprise pricing they can’t justify without proven results.
The platform becomes an obstacle to the strategy it’s supposed to enable.
The practitioner rebellion
Something’s shifting. I’m seeing more ABM practitioners abandon the all-in-one platform approach entirely.
Instead of paying for one enterprise-tier platform that promises everything but limits execution, they’re splitting that budget across three or four specialized tools that let them operationalize what they designed.
The math works out similarly, sometimes cheaper, sometimes slightly more. But the control is very different.
But this is not the magic solution either, and it doesn’t work for every organization. The multi-tool approach requires technical sophistication most marketing teams don’t have. It demands constant maintenance. It can create reporting nightmares when we want a unified view of account engagement and journey influence.
This is where the all-in-one ABM platform still holds real value as a hub. When everything integrates into one system, you can see the entire picture. You know which accounts are engaging, what signals are firing, where orchestration is working or breaking down. That unified visibility is worth something, especially for organizations that can’t dedicate engineering resources to stitching together multiple point solutions.
The platforms taught practitioners to think sophisticatedly about deployment models, signal-driven qualification, and differentiated orchestration. Then they made it impossible to execute without massive spending. So practitioners are doing what they always do when infrastructure doesn’t support strategy, they’re building it themselves, and that is not always the best approach.
The ABMer directive
You need clarity about which model you’re running and the discipline to build an infrastructure that supports it. So, before you decide to upgrade, test the one journey you have.
If you are starting ABM in an organization, the basic model you need to pick, test, and master on an ABM platform is demand generation. Build one MQA definition for that model. Build the orchestration that supports it. Prove it works, measure it, then think about scaling.
If your platform can’t support even that one model, one MQA framework, or one orchestration path that works, you need to fix the foundation first and figure out why you are not ready to scale to ABM.
Most programs fail because they try to run four deployment models with infrastructure built for zero. Start with one that works. Everything else is noise.
If you are at a point where ABM is a reality, you need to ask yourself, does our infrastructure let us execute ABM? Can our platform differentiate MQA criteria by deployment model? Scoring accounts based on the specific motion?
ABM Platforms Takeaways
ABM platforms teach practitioners to build sophisticated multi-model programs with differentiated MQA (Marketing Qualified Account) frameworks for demand generation, Growth ABM, Enterprise ABM, and deal acceleration. However, mid-market pricing tiers typically provide only one journey builder and one scoring framework, making it impossible to execute the strategies taught in platform certifications. Organizations either compromise their strategy, build fragile workarounds, or must upgrade to enterprise pricing they cannot justify without proven ROI.
1A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is an account-level qualification framework used in account-based marketing. Unlike lead-based MQLs, MQAs assess entire accounts based on deployment model-specific criteria. For example, an Expansion MQA for existing customers requires renewal timing, expansion propensity scores, and funding signals, while a Tech-Adoption MQA identifies companies using ABM platforms but showing low maturity signals. Each MQA type should trigger different orchestration and sales plays.
Some practitioners split their ABM platform budgets across specialized tools—dedicated account intelligence platforms, uncapped orchestration tools, and configurable scoring systems. This multi-tool approach trades platform consolidation for operational flexibility, allowing practitioners to build the MQA frameworks and deployment model differentiation that all-in-one platforms restrict at mid-market tiers. However, this requires technical sophistication and creates integration complexity not suitable for all organizations.
Start by proving one deployment model works before scaling. For organizations beginning ABM, demand generation is the foundational model to master. Build one MQA definition, one orchestration path, and measure success before attempting multiple models. If the platform cannot support even a single model effectively, the issue is foundational infrastructure, not deployment model strategy. Most ABM programs fail because they attempt four deployment models with infrastructure built for zero.