The Missing Link

But then we cornered Sal in her office, and she had a surprising story. Yes, she disdained ABM’s methods and initially said, “No way you’re doing a pilot with my accounts,” but in the end, she allowed it. And when those leads became seven times more likely to close, Sal Parson and her team became begrudging ABM fans. 

Plausible? True? The plot thickens. But we don’t have time to dwell on half-baked theories while we still have suspects to investigate. With this next suspect, we ask the question, could the greatest enemy to adopting ABM be change itself? 

Let’s see what our suspect Trent Zishion (alias “Change Management”) has to say for themself.  

The next clue: An abandoned transformation initiative 

To state the obvious: Change is hard. Humans don’t like to change—our brains are wired to stick with what’s comfortable and familiar, even to our detriment. We’re often unwilling to veer from “our way” of completing a task once we have a process in place. For instance, psychologists have done a test where they gave humans and two different species of monkeys a puzzle to solve (selecting a series of icons). After the subjects learned one way of solving it, the researchers introduced a more efficient “shortcut.” Of all three, humans were the slowest to adopt the new, more efficient strategy, after rhesus and capuchin monkeys. 

These inbuilt biases make the practice of change management incredibly necessary for businesses changing anything about the way they work, including introducing ABM. Yet, when it came to ABM, people tended to brush over the need for change management. Why, you might ask? Blame it on the tech vendors. 

Tech vendors were incentivized to downplay the difficulty of adopting ABM. They’d say things like “ABM is easy! It’s just about being more focused in your demand gen. You’re going to use all the same channels, just with more data that will help you be smarter about it!” 

This, alas, was a comforting lie to sell software. 

The lie worked—for a time. But then people realized it wasn’t as simple as just “tweaking” what they were already doing, they had to fundamentally change the core processes that made the business money. As we discussed in the last chapter, sales was particularly unwilling to let go of their entrenched processes (especially when it meant putting their commission checks on the line). Same with marketers, who were comfortable with the demand waterfall and reluctant to change their strategy. 

Like the humans in the test, they clung to what they knew. 

It’s hard to fault them. The software vendors painted such a rosy picture of what ABM could be. But in reality, no one starts from an ideal place—every ABM program starts within a company that has its own culture and inertia, something the salespeople pushing ABM tools rarely discuss. 

It didn’t help that existing systems supported the old norms. We’ve talked about how salespeople were reluctant to compromise their quota, but what about marketers who were measured on MQLs rather than revenue? If your choice is between supporting a salesperson with their pipeline (which is ultimately better for the business but you won’t be recognized for) and doubling down on your volume-based demand gen activities (which are less likely to lead to more revenue but will look better in your own performance review) what are you going to spend your time on? 

As SaaS veteran Jill Rowley told Inverta, “We always say, compensation plans drive behavior.” People will respond to the incentives you give them—and in order for the business to meaningfully change, those incentives need to change too. 

The truth is, you can read all the books, follow all the steps, and still fail to meaningfully adopt ABM because there’s so much working against you. That’s actually a much more common experience. ABM often takes multiple attempts to stick because change is hard and humans are resistant to it. You need someone who believes in ABM to champion it, to come up with a change management strategy, and to troubleshoot when things get stuck. 

But many folks got stuck after the first (or first few) setbacks, decided ABM didn’t work, and gave up. Could the difficulties involved in making such a big change be the reason ABM died? 

It’s time to get to the bottom of this. We need to talk to Trent Zishion. 

Trent Zishion’s alibi

Trent Zishion proves harder to track down than our previous suspects—everyone claims to have seen them, just around the corner, but when we go to look, they’re not there. Eventually, breathless and sweaty, we find them in the third-floor break room, calmly sipping an iced coffee. 

“Ah, I was wondering when I’d have the pleasure of your company. Please sit,” they say. “Coffee? Tea?” they move to stand up, but we raise a hand to stop them. 

“You know I can’t accept that—and anyway, Mx. Zishion, I’m supposed to be running these,” we protest, panting. 

“Suit yourself,” they shrug and sit back. “What would you like to know, detective?” 

We sit, attempting to catch our breath and pull out our yellow legal pad, ready to take notes. “Where were you the night that ABM died?” 

“In my conference hotel room. As I recall, I had lavender tea and fell asleep listening to an audiobook—I was none the wiser until the next morning.” 

“Hmm.”

“You don’t believe me,” says Trent Zishion.

“It’s my job to be skeptical. I’ll have to verify your story with the security footage. Anyway, tell me about your relationship with ABM.”

“Positive,” they say. “Collegial. There’s not much to tell, if I’m honest. She brought a lot of great ideas to the table, we implemented them, and were better for it. I’m sorry if that’s not the drama you’re looking for.” 

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Please,” Trent stirs the ice in their drink with their straw. 

“I think you only pretended to like ABM. I think you had to put on the face of liking her because you had everyone—investors, executives, colleagues breathing down your neck wondering why you hadn’t implemented her ideas yet when she had taken the industry by storm. I don’t think you really wanted to change. I think you were just going through the motions, all while running your same old playbook.” 

Trent goes pale. “You don’t have any proof—” 

“You know, Trent, everyone I’ve spoken to so far—Vega List, Brian Journey, Strata Ji, Sal Parson—they’ve all given me the runaround when it comes to this awful business with ABM. But you, you’re involved with all of them. You could have stalled ABM’s progress all while pretending to sing her praises. It makes so much sense now. The only problem was when they started getting their acts together and actually following ABM, your elaborate charade would fall apart. Everyone would discover you’d been faking it all along and you’d have to face the consequences. That’s why you had no choice but to kill her.” 

Trent looks down. “You’re right. About a lot of things. But I didn’t kill her.” 

“You had better start talking,” we say.  

“I did take some time to come around to ABM and her ideas, okay?” Trent says, sweating despite the cold drink in their hands. “Deep down, I’m a creature of habit. I admit it, I was reluctant to get on board with ABM’s plan. I found myself nodding along in meetings and agreeing to things I wasn’t sure about, because, well, I didn’t know if they’d work for our team. Everyone’s always so eager to jump on the next trend and not be left behind—sometimes I feel like the only one asking whether it’s actually practical. But everyone was so excited, I couldn’t say that. So I slowed things down a little. Was it cowardly? Maybe. But it was sane. And anyway, in the end ABM convinced me.” 

Our pen stops mid-sentence. “What?” 

“Yeah, she wore me down through sheer persistence,” they say. “You know that ABM failed the first time we tried it at Conan Doyle Industries. I thought that was proof I was right all along. But ABM, no one could stop her,” their eyes get misty and they stop to dab at them with a tissue.

“Sorry,” they say, taking a shaking breath. “She first tried a 1:few program but couldn’t get buy-in from the sales team. Next, she tried a 1:many program, which started to get slow results. When the sales team started to see those 1:many results trickle in, they were more interested in experimenting with 1:1. Eventually, it became undeniable that folks who went through our ABM program were converting much better than those who didn’t, and we had salespeople breaking down our door, wanting access to the program. It was a huge success and she did that.” They’re sobbing now.

We reach out to awkwardly pat them on the shoulder, “There, there.” 

“It’s just, she taught me so much,” Trent chokes out between sobs. “I’m going to miss her.” 

We soften, despite ourselves. “Thank you, Trent. That’s all we need.” 

So, did Trent Zishion kill ABM?

Of all the suspects we’ve spoken with so far, Trent Zishion is the one with their hands in the most proverbial pies (not that their immaculate turtleneck would ever show any signs of crumbs). They would have had the chance to sabotage ABM all while pretending to be her biggest supporter. 

Trent admits to an initial distrust of ABM. But they insist that their hesitation evolved over time into real respect and—dare we say—admiration for ABM, for her vision and persistence. They seem genuinely distraught at her death. 

So where does this leave us? We seem to have an increasingly dwindling suspect list and still no clear perpetrator. We have to be missing something…could it be right under our fingertips? 

Join us next time where we’ll investigate Ted Nology, alias “Technology.”