In most Enterprise technology firms, Account Based Marketing (ABM) is often marketing in name alone. In the typical sales and marketing church-and-state environment, ABM seems to be falling most often on the sales side of the fence and used to augment the key account planning function.

Many CMOs are fine with this arrangement. After all, the skill set required, half inside sales/half research person isn't readily available in most marketing departments. Let the sales team handle it and there will be one less turf war to fight over and one less thing to worry about, right?

So, why should marketing get involved in Account Based Marketing?

Account Based Marketing is typically reserved for the largest 5% of your prospect base, the whales or the elephants, which in some categories represent more than 50% of the potential revenue. Landing one of these prospects will make your quarterly revenue number in one fell swoop.

Guess who is the most important target of your marketing efforts? The exact same prospects.

And what do you think will be the single biggest influence on their perception and consideration of your brand and offering? With apologies to your advertising, PR and event budgets, without a doubt, the ABM efforts.

Case in point: If your desired brand attributes are innovation and thought leadership, but your ABM efforts focus on reliability and value, guess what is going to show up on your next brand tracking study? A giant gap with your most important audience.

So how can this be avoided?

At the very least, marketing should work with the ABM teams to ensure the corporate brand is infused into the overall efforts. Message maps to drive each conversation will at least ensure alignment is achieved.

However, ideally marketing should control this function. It is a terrific way to build a better relationship with sales and have a major and easily demonstrable impact on company revenue.

And if you need another more selfish reason, ABM works and budgets are going up. According to ITSMA's State of the Marketing Profession Address, ABM budgets are going to increase almost 50% in 2008, an almost 250% increase since 2006. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any part of your budget that's experienced that type of growth. And since there is only so much marketing budget to go around, chances are that growth may actually be at your expense. 

So the choice is simple, embrace Account Based Marketing and increase your staffing, budget and stature. Or let someone else do it and take your chances. I'd recommend the former.