1. Your "target accounts" list hasn't changed in months

ABM is supposed to be dynamic. Accounts move in and out based on fit, intent, and engagement. If your list was built once in a planning meeting and nobody's touched it since, it's not a strategy. It's a spreadsheet with a title.

2. Sales and marketing are targeting different accounts

Ask your SDR team for their top 20 accounts. Ask marketing the same question. If the lists don't significantly overlap, you don't have ABM. You have two departments independently guessing.

3. You're measuring reach, not accounts

Impressions, followers, and click-through rates are fine metrics for brand campaigns. For ABM, the only question that matters is: are the specific accounts on our list engaging more than they were last month? If you can't answer that, you're tracking the wrong things.

4. Every account gets the exact same message

Personalization doesn't mean changing the company name in a template. If your "ABM" outreach is identical across every account except a mail-merge field, you've built a slightly more targeted version of spray-and-pray, not ABM.

5. Outreach happens before any warm-up

Cold messages to accounts that have never seen your brand convert poorly. If your outreach is the first touchpoint a target account has with you, you're skipping the part of ABM that actually makes it work.

6. Nobody can tell you why an account is "in stage 2"

Real ABM has clear, signal-based criteria for account stages: engagement, intent, and fit. If account progression is based on gut feel or "we've talked to them a few times," your funnel isn't a funnel. It's a list with vibes.

7. You find out an account converted by accident

If a target account closes and the first time anyone connects it back to your ABM efforts is in a celebratory Slack message, not a dashboard, you don't have attribution. You have luck, and luck doesn't scale.

None of these require a bigger budget to solve. They require tighter coordination between the account list, the channels, and the signals that move accounts between stages.