The Signals Era Needs to Deliver Pipeline, Not Just ABM

From Accounts to Outcomes: The New B2B Operating System

When we first pushed ABM into the mainstream, it was radical for two reasons:

1. It aligned Sales and Marketing around the right targets.

2. It gave us a way out of the broken, lead-driven funnel.

The premise was solid. The unit of revenue isn’t a person. It’s an account. Only specific accounts can buy your solution. And GTM should prioritise those with the highest LTV.

But here’s the leap we still haven’t made: becoming pipeline-centric.

Rooted in metrics that don’t matter and left signals, and often a broken measurement layer between the promise of activating accounts and the reality of segment level reporting - the 2025 iteration of ABM has started to miss the point. Vendors invest in marketing to influence pipeline and that’s where the innovation is now needed

Why Accounts Aren’t Enough

Accounts are too abstract. One account can contain multiple distinct opportunities, at different stages, with different stakeholders.

Pipeline doesn’t map to accounts. Pipeline maps to buying groups. And an account may have several.

So in the strictest sense pipe can aggregate back to the account but to really move the needle, ABM campaigns need to talk to each distinct committee

And this is where the signals era matters. Because only signals can tell us when buying groups form, when they surge, and when they’re ready for Sales. Deterministic hooks are increasingly sparse, and now we have to adopt signals as sensors, score them, and use the output to paint broad stroke pictures that inform real intent and account progression

Buying Groups as the Bridge

Buying groups are the operational bridge from ABM to pipeline. They transform “accounts we care about” into “opportunities we can measure.”

Here’s how leading GTM teams are doing it:

1. Map the buying group across all ICP accounts by the products they could buy. (AI can now do this at scale.)

2. Generate CRM containers for each buying group, so pipeline is structured by opportunity, not just account.

3. Orchestrate engagement role by role, across Sales and Marketing, so every stakeholder in the group gets what they need.

4. Qualify groups, not leads: hand off QBGs (Qualified Buying Groups) to Sales when they hit the right signal thresholds or scores

5. Measure pipeline outcomes, not vanity MQLs. That means win rate, ASP, retention — not clicks.

The signals era makes this possible.

HVAs (collections of online actions which play together in concert to help us understand buying group behaviour) become the atomic units that reveal buying group behaviour.

Multiple staffers from the same company engaging with product pages, attending a webinar, and returning to pricing content isn’t “random noise.” It’s the signal of a buying group forming and acting

From ABM to Pipeline

When the first digital ABM programs launched, the tech to scale buying groups didn’t exist. Now it does. AI can map committees. Analytics can de-anonymise traffic and map to distinct interest, such as engineering sense checking api documentation. Identity graphs can tie signals back to accounts. CRMs can containerise opportunities by buying group.

The operating system for modern B2B growth looks like this:

ABM → Buying Groups → Pipeline.

And the signals era is what powers it.

Paid Section: Turning Signals Into Buying Group Intelligence

Here’s what premium readers unlock:

• Signal-to-Buying Group Mapping Framework: how HVAs roll up from individuals to group-level scoring.

• Buying Group Containers in CRM: practical steps to structure pipeline around groups, not leads.

• Scoring Model Template: example logic for weighting HVAs, identifying surges, and triggering QBG handoffs.

• Activation Playbook: how to orchestrate messaging by role across the buying group.

• Outcome Tracking Model: how to measure win rate, ASP, and retention at the buying group level.

👉 Start a 7-day free trial of Unmatched Premium to access the frameworks, templates, and scoring models that make buying groups a reality in the signals era.