✳️ Operationalizing ABM in 2025:
How ABM is made possible with a small team & AI Agents

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Most ABM content talks strategy. But execution is where it breaks. If you don’t have a giant team, budget, or agency to support you, how do you run ABM? SalesCaptain & FullFunnel combined their powers to answer this question in 3 main steps.

If you know us already, then skip to the next part.
If you don’t, then you can learn who we are here before you continue reading. 

• Fullfunnel focuses on helping GTM teams build a solid ABM foundation, aligning marketing and sales around an ICP that has more specific characteristics than the typical Job Title and Company Size. 
• SalesCaptain operationalizes that strategic foundation using AI-powered tools like Clay, Lemlist, HubSpot, and others, allowing lean teams to execute ABM plays without a heavy lift.

Article Summary:

This article breaks down 

1. The ABM structure and methodology (Fullfunnel)
   
   
2. The execution layer that brings it to life (SalesCaptain)

Table of Contents: 

• Step 1: Build a Real ICP (Fullfunnel Framework)
• Step 2: The Operations of a good ABM Play by FullFunnel 
• Step 3: How to Automate ABM Ops with Clay, Lemlist, Zappier + AI (SalesCaptain)

Pre-requisites:

Before you implement this, you need to have: 

• Formed ABM team / Sales & Marketing team 
• Defined program goals (new logos, expansion, acceleration)
• Defined cluster or vertical
• Cluster win/loss deal analysis

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🧱 Step 1: Build a Real ICP (Fullfunnel Framework)

Most teams say they’re doing ABM. But when you look under the hood, it’s usually just cold outreach to a long list of VP titles at companies that fit a loose firmographic filter. The result? 

• Decreasing marketing-sourced pipeline
• Higher CPL (cost per lead)
• Low win rates
• Ghosting leads

This is what happens when ABM is reduced to basic firmographics. It’s not strategic - it’s spray and pray in disguise.

Here is an example of how basic firmographic targeting can set you up for failure. 

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And here are the results after testing Option 1: 

• Lots of MQLs generated 
• Low number of leads converted into Closed Won

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That’s where most programs fail.

The difference between a struggling ABM motion and one that works? The upfront work in defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) properly.

Fullfunnel treats ICP development as a strategy layer, not a spreadsheet exercise. It’s about understanding how your real buyers make decisions - and aligning your entire program to that.

Here’s what goes into building a usable ICP:

• Firmographics
  Industry, company size, revenue, geography - these give you the first layer of filters to work from.
• Technographics
  What tools are they already using? Are they on Salesforce? Do they run ads via Meta? Use Segment for tracking? These signals inform both your targeting and messaging.
• Qualification & Disqualification Criteria 
  
  • What makes an account a good fit? Find common traits across Tier 1 & Tier 2 clients, for example:
    
    • ACV > $50
    • Actively hiring data analysts/engineers
    • Raised >$10M in the last 3 months
    • Visited high-intent pages & spent >1hr on site
    • Warm intro or connection with someone on the buying committe 
  • What disqualifies an account (even if it fits firmographics)? Pick common traits from your top 10 lost deals, for example:
    
    • Patterns from lost top-10 deals:
    • CFO <12 months in role
    • Major layoffs in the last 6 months
    • No funding in the ast 12–24 months
    • Low intent or engagement from key contacts
• Buyer Personas ≠ Job Titles: Most teams target by title (e.g., VP of Data) and skip mapping roles. In an enterprise, there are often 100+ people with relevant titles. Instead, map:
  
  • Champion
  • Decision-maker
  • Influencer
  • Blocker

Don’t just target the department. Identify the actual buying roles.

But defining your ICP is only the starting point.

To run a functioning ABM motion, you now need to:

• Qualify accounts based on fit and signals
• Segment based on awareness and product need
• Research what actually matters to the buying committee
• Build awareness, nurture trust, and activate at the right moment

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🧱 Step 2: The Operations of a good ABM Play

Once your ICP is in place, the next step is to operationalize your ABM strategy. That means structuring your program around the right accounts, understanding them deeply, and executing coordinated plays that move them through awareness, engagement, and activation.

✅ 1. Account Qualification

Not every account that fits your ICP deserves equal attention. Qualification is about identifying who’s truly worth your effort right now. Based on the ICP criteria defined in Step 1 you should be looking at:

• Firmographics & Technographics: Basic filters like size, industry, tools they use, etc.
• Qualification Signals: What good-fit accounts have in common (e.g. raised funding, hiring, product usage signals).
• Disqualification Signals: Traits from past deals that went nowhere (e.g. new CFO, low intent, recent layoffs).
• Tier Segmentation: Tier 1 (highest priority) to Tier 3 (longer term nurture).
• Buying Committee Mapping: Go beyond job titles,identify champions, blockers, influencers, and decision-makers.

✅ 2. Account Segmentation

Once you’ve qualified your accounts, the next step is segmenting them based on potential buyer intent, and awareness . This determines what kind of play they’ll receive.

We use 3 core segments:

✅ 3. Account Research

You can’t personalize if you don’t understand the account.

Define the must-know info before you reach out:

• Strategic initiatives and current priorities
• Known challenges
• KPIs and jobs-to-be-done for each buyer persona
• Any other enrichment data (hiring, tech stack, recent news)

We split research into:

• Desk Research: Everything you can find via tools, signals, social, and public data.
• 1:1 Research: Deeper insights via outreach, interviews, or direct interactions with people at the account.

✅ 4. Account Awareness

Pavilion and Trustradius report that 86% of enterprise B2B buyers buy from "shortlisted" vendors. This means if your company didn't get into the consideration set, you're too late. The first thing you need to consider is how you can get there and create awareness across the buying committee.

To build awareness you need to:

• Targeting them with strategic content and social ads
• Running account-level campaigns based on their industry or use case
• Using thought leadership to match their language and problems

Goal: Move them from “never heard of us” to “this looks relevant.”

✅ 5. Account Development

Once awareness is there, the next step is to build a relationship.

This includes:

• Personalized BDR outreach based on account signals
• Connecting with multiple stakeholders (not just one champion)
• Commenting on their content, joining mutual communities, offering value early
  
  

Goal: Create familiarity and trust across the committee.

✅ 6. Account Activation

This is the moment of truth.

Define bridge activities that transition the account from “interested” to “ready to talk.” That includes:

• Hyper-personalized offers
• Content or tools tied to their exact problem
  Direct invitations to collaborate or co-create (e.g., audits, reports)
  
  

Goal: Book discovery conversations and move the deal into pipeline.

🧱 Step 3: How to Automate ABM Ops with Clay, Lemlist, Zappier + AI

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You’ve done the strategic work. You’ve defined your ICP, qualified accounts, and segmented them. Now comes the fun part: operationalizing the whole thing at scale - without hiring 10 people.

That’s where tools like Clay, Lemlist, Zapier, and AI come in. They allow lean teams to run sophisticated ABM plays that feel human, timely, and personalized.

Below we break down each operational step with a real workflow example powered by Clay and humans.

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✅ 1. Account Qualification

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Use Clay’s enrichment and filtering capabilities to qualify accounts in a much smarter way.

Example Workflow:

• Input a list of domains or companies.
  
  
• Use filters like:
  
  
  
  • Number of locations (e.g., >10 restaurants for a hospitality tool)
    
    
  • Recent growth or layoff signals
    
    
  • New CMO/CFO hires (via LinkedIn changes)
    
    
  • Open job roles
    
    
• Score each company based on those signals, then bucket into Tiers 1–3.
  
  

✅ Why it works: You go beyond generic firmographics to target companies with momentum and urgency.

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✅ 2. Account Segmentation

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Segmenting accounts by product need, awareness, and relationship isn’t manual anymore.

Example Prompt for Clay AI:

“Based on the company description, tech stack, and LinkedIn activity, assign this company to one of the following:
• Cluster ICP (Not aware, unknown need)
• Future Pipeline (Aware, unknown need)
• Active Focus (Aware and need is clear).
Output the segment and the reason why.”

✅ Why it works: Clay AI reads signals and context at scale and assigns the right play per account. This ensures each account gets relevant messaging.

✅ 3. Account Research

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Clay makes it easy to research the buying committee and gather essential data like emails, and phone numbers while collecting data from 130+ data sources. 

Workflow Example:

• Start with a company table.
• Use job title filters like “Head of X,” “VP of Y,” or custom prompts to identify champions, blockers, and decision-makers.
• Run waterfall enrichment: Clay automatically tries multiple enrichment tools (e.g., Dropcontact → Apollo → Clearbit) to get the most accurate phone numbers, emails, and LinkedIn profiles.
• Assign to each a label with their role, Champion, Decision Maker, etc.
  
  

✅ Why it works: Waterfall enrichment gives you the best emails and phone numbers across tools, saving time and avoiding blank fields. We’ve seen this improve our identification from 40% to over 80%. 

✅ 4. Account Awareness

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Use Clay to connect CRM activity with enrichment data and break accounts into awareness tiers.

Example Setup:

• Pull CRM data into Clay (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.)
• Match based on:
  
  • Page visits
  • Email opens
  • LinkedIn engagement
  • Webinar attendance
• Segment accounts by engagement level and assign to the awareness buckets from Step 2.
  
  

✅ Why it works: You create a live map of account awareness, constantly updated and tiered based on real behavior.

✅ 5. Account Development

Once you know who to engage, Clay helps generate personalized outreach at scale.

Workflow Example:

• Clay writes a first-draft email based on firmographics, recent activity, and LinkedIn bio.
• Your BDR reviews and tweaks it (human-in-the-loop).
• Lemlist handles multi-step sending with custom variables per contact.
  Optionally: Send physical gifts or swag via Sendoso for high-value contacts.

✅ Why it works: Human-reviewed AI beats templates. And gifts increase response rates for Tier 1 accounts.

✅ 6. Account Activation

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This is where Clay signals kick in. 

• Custom Signals: Clay can monitor accounts for high-intent triggers like:
  
  
  
  • Funding rounds
  • New senior hires
  • Website changes 
  • Hiring surges
  • Mentions in Google News
  • New Instagram or LinkedIn posts
    
    
• Personalized Offers: Enrich CRM data to identify what feature or value prop each account cares about based on their latest news. 
• Lemlist Automation: Once ready, trigger a Lemlist campaign automatically from Clay or HubSpot.
  
  

✅ Why it works: You automatically hit accounts with the right offer, timing, and context.

Your Next ABM Steps:

Are you ready to take the next step in your ABM Campaign? Arrange a meeting with SalesCaptain and operationalise your ABM motion. If you want to get strategy in place first then visit https://fullfunnel.io/.