Most B2B buyers have a preferred vendor before they ever speak to sales. Our research shows that buying groups typically contact sellers about 60% of the way through their journeys. By then, 92% have already ranked their shortlist, and the vendor they favor before that first conversation wins 82% of the time.
That's a problem for any funnel built on leads. A lead funnel shows you only a small slice of what's happening inside the accounts you care about. The rest of the research happens on review sites, in peer conversations, and on your own pages, from visitors who never identify themselves.
An account-based marketing (ABM) funnel is built to cover that gap. It organizes your pipeline around accounts and buying groups instead of individual leads, and it moves accounts through stages based on what they're actually doing. But the model only works if you can see which stage each account is in. Without that visibility, stages turn into guesses, and the handoff to sales turns into a list of names.
We've run our own go-to-market this way for years, and we've helped 1,000+ B2B teams do the same.
In this guide, we'll cover:
- The difference between an ABM funnel and a traditional lead funnel
- What the five stages of the ABM funnel look like in real account data
- The content, channels, and metrics that fit each stage
- How to hand accounts to sales without losing the rest of the buying group
- How one team moved 77% of its target accounts forward in 3 months
What is an ABM funnel?
Unlike a traditional marketing funnel, which tracks individual leads, an ABM funnel tracks the behavior and engagement of an entire account and its buying group.
You'll often hear ABM described as a flipped funnel. Instead of attracting as many leads as possible and qualifying them later, you start by identifying the accounts most likely to become valuable customers.
That's a useful way to understand account-based marketing, but it only explains how accounts enter the funnel. You also need visibility into what accounts are researching, who's involved, and how their behavior changes over time.
ABM funnel vs. traditional lead funnel
Both approaches aim to generate pipeline. The difference is how they identify opportunities and measure progress.
Consider an account where five employees are researching your product. One downloads a guide, two visit your website anonymously, and the others compare vendors on third-party sites.
A lead-based funnel might show one MQL. An ABM funnel can bring those interactions together to reveal an account that's actively evaluating a solution.
This also changes how you judge marketing performance. ABM marketing can generate more pipeline even when MQL volume stays flat or declines. What matters is whether you're engaging the right accounts and helping them progress toward a purchase.
Is an account-based funnel right for your business?
ABM tends to work best when deals are valuable, sales cycles are complex, and several people influence the purchase:
You don't need to check every box. Even a $50K deal can justify ABM if it involves multiple decision-makers and a long sales cycle. Companies with thousands of prospects can also use ABM to focus on their highest-value accounts.
The more revenue an account represents, and the more people involved in winning it, the more valuable ABM becomes. If you're selling a low-cost product to hundreds of thousands of businesses, broader lead generation is probably more efficient.
The 5 stages of an ABM funnel (and what each looks like in the data)
The five stages of an ABM funnel are Target, Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Purchase.
These buying stages are the funnel turned on its side, and each represents a different level of buying activity and readiness.
Of course, accounts don't always move through these stages in order. They can skip stages, remain in one for months, or move backward when priorities change.
Stage 1: Target
At this stage, an account matches your ideal customer profile (ICP) but isn't showing meaningful signs of buying activity.
- Signals: The account fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) but shows no meaningful intent. Triggers like hiring growth, new funding, or leadership changes can raise its priority.
- Goal: Get on the account's radar before it starts researching vendors.
- Content: Share useful industry insights, original research, and thought leadership that helps buyers recognize problems they may eventually need to solve. Social posts and ads should deliver value without requiring a click.
Stage 2: Awareness
An account is starting to investigate a problem but may not know which solutions or vendors to consider.
- Signals: Research around broad, category-level keywords, such as "sales forecasting" or "improve pipeline visibility." Little branded search activity and few, if any, direct interactions with your website or sales team.
- Goal: Help buyers understand their problem and introduce your company as a useful source of information.
- Content: Educational articles, industry research, and webinars that answer early questions. Focus on explaining the problem, its causes, and potential solutions rather than pushing product features. Original research works especially well because it stays useful at every stage.
Stage 3: Consideration
The buying group understands its problem and is now exploring possible solutions.
- Signals: Branded search begins, first website visits appear, and multiple people from the account consume content.
- Goal: Get on the buying group’s shortlist of vendors.
- Content: Guides, frameworks, customer stories, and peer-led webinars. Help buyers understand their options and how different approaches compare.
Stage 4: Decision
The buying group is comparing vendors and working toward a preferred choice.
- Signals: Visits to pricing, integration, and comparison pages, plus more contacts engaging and replying to outreach.
- Goal: Make comparison easy and help your champion build consensus.
- Content: Comparison pages, ROI material, detailed case studies, and demos.
- Note: Formats aren't locked to stages. A comparison blog belongs here even though blogs usually sit higher up.
Stage 5: Purchase
The buying group is getting close to a purchasing decision. The focus now shifts toward confirming fit and removing obstacles.
- Signals: Heavy, multi-person site activity and active sales conversations.
- Goal: Remove friction and reach the executives who sign off.
- Content: Implementation plans, security documentation, and references.
After the deal closes
An account-based funnel doesn't stop at closed-won. The same understanding of account behavior can help customer teams identify expansion opportunities, encourage adoption, and spot potential churn risks.
For example, new research into related product categories could signal an opportunity to introduce additional solutions.
ABM funnel stages at a glance
Beyond signals, you need context. The key is connecting these activities to actual account behavior. 6sense’s predictive models analyze buying signals, historical outcomes, and customer-specific patterns to show where accounts are in their journey and help teams prioritize their next steps.
See where your target accounts are in their buying journey. Explore 6sense Predictive Intelligence.
Why the funnel only works if you can see it
Here's what B2B buying looks like, according to 6sense’s buyer research:
- The average buying group has about 10 people
- A typical buying group’s journey lasts about 11 months
- Buyers have picked a favorite before talking to sales 82% of the time
How does that play out in real life? Here are two examples:
A deal that looks like a quick win. A prospect requests a demo, has three sales calls, and buys. It looks like a short sales cycle, but the account may have been researching for months. In 6sense analysis of closed-won deals, commercial accounts averaged 35 website visits before closing, compared to 95 for enterprise accounts.
Many “fast deals” have been in-market for months.
An account that looks like it's lost interest. Flexential, a company that offers a suite of IT solutions to B2B companies, noticed that some accounts would stop engaging with its campaigns, then suddenly become active again. It turned out those accounts were researching through channel partners during that quiet period. Intent data helped Flexential see that activity, even when the accounts weren't visiting its own website.
A stage that looks empty in your CRM may be full of buying activity.
Explore more findings in our Science of B2B research library. The research is free and ungated.
How to build an ABM funnel
At 6sense, we use a 5-step approach to account-based marketing:
- Select the best accounts
- Learn about them
- Engage the right way
- Collaborate with sales
- Track the important metrics
Step 1: Select the right accounts
Start with companies that are a strong fit for your business, then narrow your list to those worth pursuing. Focus your budget on the accounts with the best fit and most promising signals.
Build your ideal customer profile (ICP) from closed-won data. Look at your best closed-won deals and identify what they have in common: industry, company size, revenue, location, technology, and how they first found you. Look at deal size and sales cycle length, too.
Get sales to agree on the list first. Before launching campaigns, make sure sales agrees on which accounts to pursue. Even a great account list won't produce results if your reps aren't interested in working it.
Cluster accounts by opportunity type:
- Net-new prospects: Companies that haven't bought from you. Start with 1 to 3 verticals rather than spreading your efforts too thin.
- Re-engagement: Lost opportunities, stalled deals, and accounts that previously showed interest.
- Existing customers: Accounts with potential for cross-sell or expansion.
Prioritize each cluster using triggers. Look for buying intent and relevant triggers, such as new funding, hiring, or leadership changes. These can help you decide which accounts deserve more attention.
Step 2: Learn everything you can about them
Once you have your target list, find out what those companies care about and how they buy. For each account or segment, look at:
- Research activity: What problems, topics, and competitors are they researching?
- Technology: What systems do they already use, and where might your product fit?
- Buying group: How big is the buying group? Who influences the decision, evaluates solutions, and approves the purchase?
- Buying stage: Are they exploring a problem or actively comparing vendors?
- Buying process: How long does a typical purchase take? Do they buy directly or through partners?
Step 3: Engage each stage with the right message
Start by developing a messaging plan for each account segment. For each account or account segment, try to understand:
- What's the biggest problem these accounts face, and what causes it?
- Which signals suggest they're experiencing that problem?
- What assumptions or misconceptions might prevent them from considering a solution?
- What information would help them evaluate their options?
- Where do they spend their time, and which content formats will reach them?
Keep audiences synced to stages
The message should change as your audience progresses. An account in Awareness might benefit from research explaining a growing industry problem.
An account in Consideration may want to understand different approaches and see examples of companies like theirs. By Decision, that same account may be comparing specific products and trying to justify the purchase to finance.
Step 4: Hand off accounts to sales without losing the buying group
You can identify the best accounts and run excellent campaigns, but it won't help much if sales receives one lead with no context about everyone else who's engaged.
To make the handoff work:
- Set one consistent sales handoff process. Agree on what qualifies an account for sales outreach, such as reaching a particular buying stage or intent threshold. Define who follows up and what happens next, regardless of which campaign generated the engagement.
- Hand off opportunities, not individual leads. Say three people from an account have been researching your product, but only one responds to a BDR. Instead of passing that contact alone, create an early-stage opportunity and associate all known, engaged buying group members with it. Sales gets a fuller picture of the opportunity.
- Engage multiple stakeholders early. Don't wait until a deal is underway to reach other decision-makers. Marketing can start building familiarity with technical evaluators, business leaders, and potential champions while the account is still researching.
Don't measure success only by whether you've reached someone at an account. Pay attention to how many people in the buying group you're engaging.
Step 5: Track these ABM funnel metrics
Are your target accounts moving closer to buying? Which ABM metrics are worth tracking? Track performance at three levels:
Should you replace MQLs? Moving to an ABM funnel doesn't mean abandoning lead targets without a replacement. Instead of measuring MQLs, measure how many qualified opportunities marketing helps create. Start with your revenue bookings target and work backward to determine how many opportunities you need, based on average deal size and win rate.
Lastly, give channels time to work. Don't judge channels before leads have had time to convert.
How Flexential moved 77% of target accounts
Flexential, which offers IT solutions to B2B companies, wanted to introduce a new combination of products to customers outside its usual target market. With long sales cycles and third-party partners involved in many deals, the team needed a better way to identify promising accounts and reach them at the right time.
Here's how they approached ABM with 6sense:
- Built a focused account list. Flexential identified companies that matched its new target audience, then distributed accounts across sales territories based on pipeline goals.
- Matched campaigns to buying stages. Using 6sense intent data, the team tailored advertising, content, and email campaigns to what accounts were researching. As accounts moved closer to a purchase, the messaging changed to match.
- Kept sales involved. Monthly meetings gave sales teams updates on campaign performance and account activity. Weekly email digests showed reps which accounts to prioritize and what content to use.
In just three months:
- 77% of target accounts moved beyond the Target stage
- Decision-stage accounts increased 16%
- Purchase-stage accounts increased 63%
Within one year:
- Closed-won business from intent-based account lists increased 101%
- Pipeline increased 23%
Common ABM funnel mistakes to avoid
- Targeting too broadly. Start with a focused account list and one to three industries.
- Leaving sales out of account selection. Agree on target accounts before launching campaigns.
- Passing on leads instead of buying groups. Give sales the full picture of who's engaged at each account.
- Changing handoff rules every campaign. Set consistent criteria for when sales should act.
- Multi-threading only after a deal is underway. Engaging stakeholders too late can kill momentum. Reach multiple buying group members before a deal starts.
- Gating too much content. Most buyers won't fill out forms. Make your best resources easy to access.
- Judging channels too early. Give campaigns time to influence accounts before measuring results.
- Keeping MQLs as the primary success metric. Track account progression, pipeline, and revenue instead.
- Buying tools before setting a strategy. Define your accounts, goals, and process first.
See every stage of your funnel
Your buyers are researching long before they contact sales. 6sense helps you see that activity, identify which accounts are ready to buy, and know when to engage.
Put 6sense’s predictive intelligence to work across your marketing, sales, and AI tools.
