ABM Done Right - A Personal ABM Podcast

Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber

As ITSMA and TechTarget report that 66% of ABM programs underperform, Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM) and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) talk to sales and marketing leaders about what's working, what's not working, and how ABM needs to evolve. Along with account-based sales and marketing insights from Kristina and Eric, you will learn from leadership at Challenger, Demandbase, Okta, Uniphore, Alyce, Highspot, Gong, Critical Start, Longbow Advantage, Proof Analytics, Narrative Science, and many others. Come back each week for new content as we try to share new podcasts each Monday or Tuesday. This podcast is hosted by Personal ABM. You can learn more by going to PersonalABM.com

  1. 2D AGO

    Matt Hummel at Pipeline360 on Why Marketing Needs to Focus More on Post-Pipeline Than Driving Pipeline

    Send us a text While CMOs, VPs of marketing, and others are concerned that deals are stalling in the mid-funnel and last-mile nurture, they continue not to invest in it.  In fact, when Eric Gruber, CEO of Personal ABM, talked to Matt Hummel from Pipeline360 (the guest for this episode),  Matt mentioned that he had just spoken with a CMO customer of his on this exact topic.  Now, the Pipeline360 platform helps with lead generation, automated campaigns. and appointment scheduling. It's an integrated CRM, it does reputation management, and it enables customizable funnels and websites. The CMO customer told our guest that they're building a strong pipeline using their platform, but it's not converting to revenue. Our guest asked the CMO... How much are you investing in the mid-funnel? And she said... We're not. She continued to invest in building a pipeline, even though the pipeline didn't go anywhere. In this episode, you'll hear: 1. Why teams are not investing in the mid-funnel nurture and why they should focus more on post-pipeline than actually building the pipeline.  2. How CMOs and marketing teams think they are investing in the mid-funnel but they're not.  3.  How we need to be reading the "defense" and paying attention to what's going on in the accounts we want to win -- and how failure to do this will result in low win rates despite investing in the post-pipeline. 4. How we need to go beyond orchestrating technologies and orchestrate the account experience.  5. How we should be enabling champions 6. How teams are approaching the mid-funnel wrong -- and how to change the account experiences that are delivered post-pipeline.- 7. Why companies like Uniphore struggle with accounts going dark after initial engagement with ABM campaigns.

    58 min
  2. 10/14/2025

    Jayashree Rajan and Eric Gruber on How CMOs Need to Rethink Their Approach to ABM

    Send us a text Brandon Redlinger posted on LinkedIn that marketing doesn’t deserve a seat at the table by default. Marketing doesn’t have the respect of the CRO by default. Marketing should have a seat at the table and earn the respect of the CRO and sales, but other members of the C-suite lose confidence in Marketing’s ability to contribute more broadly than just branding and campaigns. They need to see that: You develop strategies that directly align with the company’s financial objectives.You collaborate more effectively with sales, customer success, product, and finance.You drive measurable impact on business, revenue, and margin growth – and not just pipeline.In this podcast episode, Jayashree Rajan (CMO of Nexla) joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM to discuss: 1. How CMOs need to rethink what ABM is --- and their approach? You'll see how most CMOs and their teams are only doing list-based marketing or account-based demand gen vs. changing the interactions that all teams have and the account experiences that are delivered across the buying journey and customer lifecycle.  2. How CMOs need to approach ABM readiness and execution. 3. How we should take a data-driven evaluation approach for actual impact 4. How CMOs need to change their thoughts on scaling and AI when it comes to ABM -- and how we should focus on scaling for impact vs. just scaling activities.  5. How to align your CEO, CRO, CFO, and CCO with marketing when it comes to ABM or a strategic account program.  After listening  to this episode, you may want to check out the supporting article below: https://www.personalabm.com/how-cmos-need-to-change-their-thinking-of-what-abm-is/

    1h 4m
  3. 09/09/2025

    Challenging Demandbase's CEO on His Thoughts on Buyer Group Marketing

    Send us a text A couple of months ago, Gabe Rogl, the CEO of Demandbase, posted: BGM, or Buying Group Marketing, is the new ABM. Yes, ABM was named wrong in the first place. It should have been account-based go-to market, or account-based experience.  But it's because it's just not a marketing thing. And yes, it's still foundational for businesses that market complex solutions with long sales cycles, but there's been a clear evolution the last 15 years that's led us to the criticality of buying groups.  It started around 2010, when the lead-based approach reached its endpoint. That led to the decade-plus evolution of ABM as a practice, as a job function, and as a technology. ABM was a huge step forward because it focused resources on accounts that led to the greatest LTV and made sales and marketing alignment a priority. But today, the best go-to markets are supercharging ABM by operationalizing buying groups as: 1.  Not everyone in an account is relevant to the sales cycle. 2. There are more people involved in a sales cycle than ever before.  3. Accounts can purchase multiple products, focusing on the account alone without using buyer groups as a data object. This makes it very difficult to prospect, sell, forecast multiple opportunities in the same account. 4. Engaging buying groups de-risks every phase of revenue creation. Pipeline, win rates, renewal, expansion.  5. It is an absolute competitive differentiator right now, because few companies are doing it well. This is why he says BGM initiatives will drive the next wave of B2B growth. But on this episode, Jessica Fewless at Inverta joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber to challenge Gabe's post and thoughts.

    45 min

About

As ITSMA and TechTarget report that 66% of ABM programs underperform, Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM) and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) talk to sales and marketing leaders about what's working, what's not working, and how ABM needs to evolve. Along with account-based sales and marketing insights from Kristina and Eric, you will learn from leadership at Challenger, Demandbase, Okta, Uniphore, Alyce, Highspot, Gong, Critical Start, Longbow Advantage, Proof Analytics, Narrative Science, and many others. Come back each week for new content as we try to share new podcasts each Monday or Tuesday. This podcast is hosted by Personal ABM. You can learn more by going to PersonalABM.com