ABM in 2026: Targeting High-Value Buying Groups

In B2B marketing, trying to target every lead you can find is just a fast way to burn through your budget and get weak results. A sharp ABM strategy that focuses on 9-16 high-value buying groups, instead of that scattergun nonsense aimed at 100 individual contacts, brings in a much higher ROI and better conversion rates. The real question is, how do you actually find and talk to these key groups inside your target accounts?

Step 1: Account Selection and Tiering in Salesforce Sales Cloud

The whole foundation of a good ABM program is picking the right accounts. We’re not just grabbing a list of companies. We’re finding the ones most likely to buy and that have the biggest potential lifetime value. For 2026, Salesforce Sales Cloud has some solid features for this first, critical step.

1.1 Accessing Account Management and Hierarchy View

First, log into your Salesforce Sales Cloud instance. From the main nav bar, click the “Accounts” tab to see all the accounts you have access to. For a real ABM approach, you need to filter this down. In the top-right of the list view, find the “List View Controls” (it’s usually a gear icon) and pick “New” to make a custom list. Give it a clear name, something like “ABM Tier 1 Prospects 2026.”

Now, inside this new list view, start adding filters. I always start with stuff like “Industry” to match our ideal customer profile, “Annual Revenue” (maybe set a floor at >$50M), and “Employee Count” (like >500). After you’ve got a decent starting list, click an account’s name to open its record. On that detail page, find the “Account Hierarchy” button, which is usually up near “Edit” or “Delete,” because this visual map is gold for figuring out corporate structures and parent/child company relationships that often control the budget.

1.2 Defining Tiering Criteria and Custom Fields

You need a clear tiering system to manage your targets effectively. Inside Salesforce, go to “Setup” (the gear icon) > “Object Manager” > “Account”. From there, click on “Fields & Relationships” and then “New” to make a new custom picklist. Call it “ABM Tier” and give it values like “Tier 1,” “Tier 2,” and “Tier 3.” Your Tier 1 accounts are the big fish that get the most intense, one-to-one attention. Tier 2 are high-potential but get a slightly more scaled approach, and Tier 3 are the ones you’re warming up for later.

Pro Tip: Connect firmographic data tools like ZoomInfo or Cognism right into Salesforce. Their native integrations can automatically fill in account records with revenue, employee numbers, and tech stack info, which makes your tiering process way more data-driven and saves you from hours of manual digging.

1.3 Expected Outcome

When you finish this step, you’ll have a tight, focused list of 9-16 Tier 1 accounts sitting in Salesforce, all filled out with good firmographic data, and you’ll have a basic map of their org structure from the Account Hierarchy view. This is your ABM north star. Don’t get tempted to make the list bigger yet.

Step 2: Identifying Buying Groups within LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once your target accounts are set, the next job is to find the actual people inside them who influence or sign off on purchases. These are your buying groups which are usually made up of 3-7 people from different departments. For this part of the job, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the tool you can’t live without.

2.1 Advanced Search for Key Personas

Open up LinkedIn Sales Navigator and go straight to “Lead Search” in the top nav. This is where you get to work. Under the “Company” filter, type in the name of one of your Tier 1 accounts. Then you start layering on other filters to find the right roles.

• Seniority Level: This is important for ABM. I select “VP,” “Director,” “CXO,” and sometimes “Manager” if it’s a specific technical role. Generally, you want to avoid individual contributors unless you know for a fact they’re an influencer.
• Functions: This is how you find the cross-functional buying group. If I’m selling a SaaS product, I’m probably looking for people in “Information Technology,” “Operations,” “Sales,” “Marketing,” and “Finance.” The functions you pick will completely depend on what you sell. For instance, HR software sellers would obviously prioritize “Human Resources.”
• Job Title: Use this filter with caution. Searching for exact titles can make you miss people, so starting with broader function searches usually works better.
• Years in Current Company: This filter can be a good signal for who has influence. Someone with longer tenure often has deeper institutional knowledge and more sway.

Common Mistake: Relying only on job titles. A “Director of Digital Transformation” might actually hold more sway over a tech purchase than a “VP of IT Operations,” all depending on what the company is focused on at that moment. You’ve got to find people whose roles line up with the problems you solve.

2.2 Building Buying Group Lists

As you find people who fit your profile inside each account, use Sales Navigator’s “Save to List” feature. You should create a separate list for every single account, named something like “AccountName – Buying Group.” This keeps everything organized for when you need to export and integrate the data later. For each account, your goal is to find about 5-8 key people who make up the decision-making unit, which usually includes a technical buyer, an economic buyer, a user champion, and maybe someone from legal or procurement.

Pro Tip: Keep an eye out for people who’ve just changed jobs or joined one of your target companies. A new leader often has a mandate to make changes and is way more open to looking at new tools. The “Job Changes” filter in Sales Navigator is perfect for spotting these opportunities.

2.3 Expected Outcome

You should now have 9-16 separate lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Each one matches up with a Tier 1 account and holds the profiles of the 5-8 people you’ve identified as the buying group. This organized process takes you past simple lead gen and into strategic group identification.

Step 3: Integrating Buying Groups into Your CRM and Marketing Automation

Finding the buying groups is just the start. To get your ABM strategy moving, you have to get these contacts into your CRM and marketing automation platforms so you can start your personalized engagement.

3.1 Exporting from Sales Navigator and Importing to Salesforce

You can export some lead data from your saved lists in Sales Navigator, but direct email exports are limited for privacy. The real value is the rich profile data. For every person in your buying group lists, you’ll want to go to their profile and then manually create or update their contact record in Salesforce. In Salesforce, go to “Contacts” and hit “New.” Fill in the basics like “First Name,” “Last Name,” “Title,” and “Department,” and make sure you associate them with the right “Account.”

Here’s a really important part: create a custom field on the Contact object in Salesforce called “Buying Group Role” (a picklist with values like “Economic Buyer,” “Technical Buyer,” “User Champion,” “Influencer,” “Procurement”). Assign the right role to every contact. You need this for proper segmentation.

Editorial Aside: Lots of marketers want to automate this whole process. While some enrichment tools exist, taking the time to manually verify and categorize these few key contacts for 9-16 accounts pays off massively in precision. It’s worth the effort.

3.2 Segmenting and Tagging in HubSpot Marketing Hub

Once those contacts are in Salesforce, make sure your sync to your marketing automation platform (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) is set up to pull in the new contacts along with their custom fields. In HubSpot, go to “Contacts” > “Lists”. Create an active list for each target account, maybe named “AccountName – ABM Buying Group.” You’ll use filters like “Contact Property: Account Name is exactly [AccountName]” and “Contact Property: ABM Tier is exactly Tier 1.”

You can then segment these lists even further using your “Buying Group Role” custom property. For example, you can create a list for “AccountName – Economic Buyers” or “AccountName – Technical Buyers.” These super-specific lists are what you’ll use to deliver personalized content.

3.3 Expected Outcome

Your CRM will now hold perfectly categorized contacts for every buying group in your Tier 1 accounts, complete with their specific roles. Your marketing automation platform will have matching segmented lists, all set for you to launch highly personalized campaigns. This setup closes the gap between finding people and actually talking to them.

Step 4: Crafting Personalized Content and Engagement Tracks

With your buying groups identified and segmented, it’s time to deliver content that actually matters to them. Generic campaigns are a waste of time in ABM. You have to be specific.

4.1 Developing Persona-Specific Content Assets

For each main role in your buying group (like the Economic Buyer or Technical Buyer), create content that talks directly to what they care about. The Economic Buyer wants to see ROI, cost savings, and a strategic edge. The Technical Buyer is focused on integration, security, and performance. And the User Champion needs to see that your product is easy to use and will fix their daily headaches.

The content itself can take different forms:

• Economic Buyer: Think ROI calculators, analyst reports like Gartner Magic Quadrants or Forrester Waves, executive summaries, and case studies that have hard numbers.
• Technical Buyer: They need whitepapers on your architecture, API docs, technical spec sheets, security audit reports, and demo videos that show deep functionality.
• User Champion: Give them product walkthroughs, user guides, testimonials from people in their shoes, feature comparison charts, and free trial offers.

Make sure your website has dedicated landing pages for this content so you can track engagement by account. Tools like Drift or Intercom can even personalize what people see on your site based on their company’s IP address or if they’re a known contact.

4.2 Orchestrating Multi-Channel Engagement Sequences

Don’t just rely on email. You need to design a multi-channel sequence that hits them from a few different angles:

• Personalized Emails: Mention specific company news or initiatives you found. Ditch the generic templates.
• LinkedIn Outreach: Connect with the key players, share an interesting industry article, and comment on their posts. Use Sales Navigator’s “Alerts” so you know what they’re up to.
• Targeted Ads: Use platforms like LinkedIn Ads or Google Ads with customer match lists to show display ads only to the members of your buying group.
• Direct Mail: For your Tier 1 accounts, a really personal direct mail piece (like a book on a relevant topic with a handwritten note) can be what it takes to get noticed.

Pro Tip: Sales and marketing have to be in lockstep. Your sales team needs to know what marketing emails have gone out, and marketing needs to feed sales any intel from content engagement. A shared Slack channel for each target account is a great way to make this happen in real time.

4.3 Expected Outcome

Every person in your buying groups will be getting relevant, personalized content across different channels, which drives up engagement and shows them you’ve done your homework. This coordinated attack builds trust and pulls accounts through the sales funnel much faster.

Step 5: Measuring and Optimizing ABM Performance

You don’t measure ABM success by counting individual leads. You measure it by account progress and revenue. Your metrics have to change to reflect that.

5.1 Key Account-Level Metrics

Inside your CRM (Salesforce) and marketing platform (HubSpot), you need to be watching these account-level numbers:

• Account Engagement Score: This should be a combined score based on website visits from the account’s IP, content downloads from multiple people in the buying group, email opens, and ad impressions.
• Pipeline Velocity: How fast are your target accounts moving from one sales stage to the next?
• Meeting Bookings: The number of first calls or demos you’ve locked in with people from the buying group.
• Opportunity Creation: The moment a sales-qualified opportunity is officially opened for a target account.
• Closed-Won Revenue: This is it. The final number that proves your ABM program is working.

Common Mistake: Still reporting on MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) as your main ABM metric. In ABM, you qualify accounts, not people. Your dashboards need to show account-centric progress.

5.2 Using Analytics Tools for Insights

Use a tool like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to see what your target accounts are doing on your website. You can set up custom dimensions to track traffic from specific company IP ranges or just use UTM parameters on your campaigns to see where traffic is coming from. Look for patterns. Are multiple people from the same account all looking at the same case study? That’s a great sign they’re building consensus.

Check your CRM reports every single week. Track where each target account is, and pay attention if one has stalled out or is showing weird engagement. This isn’t just about making reports. It’s about finding problems and fixing your strategy. If a technical buyer isn’t touching your whitepapers, maybe the content is wrong for them, or maybe you’re trying to reach them on the wrong channel.

ABM is not something you just set up and let run. You have to constantly review account engagement scores and sales results. If a Tier 1 account isn’t moving, figure out why. Is the content not hitting the mark? Are we even talking to the right people? Is the sales message off? You have to be ready to change your content, redefine your buying groups, or even swap out an account based on what the data tells you. For example, if a Tier 1 account shows almost zero engagement after two quarters, it might be time to move them down to a Tier 2 nurturing track and promote a more promising Tier 2 account up.

5.4 Expected Outcome

You’ll have a clear, data-backed view of how well your ABM campaign is working, which will let you constantly tweak and improve it. Your reporting will finally show account-level progress, tying marketing’s work directly to sales outcomes and actual revenue.

By focusing your B2B marketing on a tight group of 9-16 well-researched buying groups, you radically increase your odds of closing those big, high-value deals. When you carefully identify, engage, and measure these critical units, you’re no longer just generating generic leads. You’re running a precise, revenue-focused strategy that gets real results.