The fastest ABM strategy I ever saw fail did so because of one cell in a RACI matrix. Sales had marked themselves Responsible for “target account list approval.” Marketing had marked themselves Accountable. Both teams ran for two months under the impression that the other one had the final say. When they discovered the conflict, the list was torn apart and the program lost a quarter rebuilding trust.

That’s the failure mode RACI exists to prevent. Most teams don’t take it seriously enough to do it right.

I’ve run this exercise in workshops with maybe fifty client teams now. The matrix I’m going to share is the version that’s survived contact with real ABM programs across SaaS, healthcare, fintech, and a few industrial categories. It’s not perfect. It is opinionated. The opinions are there because every blurry line in this matrix is a place I’ve watched a program fall over.

 

Why most ABM RACI exercises produce nothing

Before the matrix, the meta-point. A RACI is not a deliverable. It’s a contract.

Most teams treat the RACI like a homework assignment. They fill it out in a 90-minute meeting, ship it as a PowerPoint, and never reference it again. That document does no work. The version that does work is the one each function leader signs off on, references in their staff meetings, and updates quarterly when the program scope changes.

The other failure mode. Teams produce a RACI with eight columns: Marketing, Sales, RevOps, Customer Success, Product Marketing, Demand Gen, Field Marketing, and Sales Ops. The matrix is technically complete. Nobody can use it. By the time you’ve added eight stakeholders to a row, the actual decision-maker is buried.

I keep the columns to four for ABM work in most mid-market companies: Marketing, Sales, RevOps, and Executive Sponsor. Larger orgs split Marketing into Demand Gen and Field, and Sales into AE and SDR. That’s the maximum I’d push it. Eight is theater.

 

The four roles, in plainer language

R, Responsible. Who actually does the work. Names, not departments. If two people are R, the work won’t get done.

A, Accountable. Who owns the outcome and signs the check. Exactly one A per row. This is the line teams violate most often, and it’s the one that causes the most damage.

C, Consulted. Whose opinion you need before you finalize. Two-way. They get to push back. You get to weigh their input.

I, Informed. Who needs to know after the fact. One-way. They don’t get to redesign the work. They get the update.

The discipline that matters. Every row has exactly one A. Every row has at least one R. Most rows have one or two C and one or two I. Rows with five Cs are rows where nothing will happen.

 

The matrix I actually use

I’ll walk through this in sections, because the back-and-forth on each line is where the program either holds together or falls apart. The matrix below is the working version. Adjust seniority and structure for your org, but don’t lose the underlying logic.

 

Strategy and target list

ICP definition. Marketing is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. RevOps is C. Executive sponsor is I. The data work is marketing’s. The judgment call is marketing’s. Sales has to be heard, but if Sales gets the A here, the ICP becomes “any account we can close,” which is not an ICP.

Named account list creation. Marketing is R. Sales is A. RevOps is C. The list has to be sales’ to live with. Marketing assembles the list using ICP filters and signal data. Sales approves it, with the understanding that they own the consequences of who’s on it. The single most important single-letter swap in the matrix is the A on this row. Marketing-A lists die. Sales-A lists work.

Account tiering (1:1, 1:few, 1:many). Marketing is R. Sales is A. The same logic applies. Sales has to defend the tier in a pipeline review. They get the A.

Quarterly list refresh. Marketing is R. Sales is A. Build the cadence into the matrix or it doesn’t happen. Quarterly is the default. Monthly is overhead. Annually is too slow.

 

Data and infrastructure

Account hierarchy and matching. RevOps is R. RevOps is A. Marketing is C. This is RevOps’ territory. Marketing leaders who try to own the data layer create org confusion. RevOps owns the matching and reports the match rate to Marketing weekly.

Intent and surge data ingestion. RevOps is R. Marketing is A. The data work is RevOps. The interpretation and downstream use is Marketing’s. The A sits with the team that has to make decisions off of it.

CRM hygiene on named accounts. RevOps is R. RevOps is A. Sales is C. Don’t make Sales the A on data hygiene. They’ll deprioritize it every time pipeline pressure rises, which is always. RevOps owns the discipline.

ABM platform admin (6sense, Demandbase). RevOps is R. RevOps is A. Marketing is C. Same principle. The platform is infrastructure. RevOps runs it. Marketing uses it.

 

Plays and execution

Play design (the playbook itself). Marketing is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. Marketing builds the plays. Sales gets to push back on usability. Marketing has the final word, because the plays are theirs to run.

Play execution per account. This is the row that fragments most often. I keep it simple. Marketing is R for marketing-led plays. SDR is R for SDR-led plays. AE is R for AE-led plays. The A on any individual play sits with whoever’s leading it that quarter. The handoffs, which are the failure-prone part, are governed by the orchestration cadence below, not by RACI.

Content for plays (case studies, one-pagers, custom decks). Marketing is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. Customer Success is C. Product Marketing is C if it exists.

Outbound sequences for named accounts. Marketing is R for the messaging architecture. SDR is R for the sequence build and send. SDR Manager is A. Marketing is C. This row is the most common place I see SDR-Marketing fights flare up. The fight is almost always because the A is unclear. Make it the SDR Manager and run the conflict through them.

Direct mail and high-touch tactics. Marketing is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. Don’t ask Sales to be Accountable for direct mail. They’ll deprioritize. Marketing owns it.

 

Orchestration and meetings

Pod meeting cadence (Marketing, SDR, AE per segment). Marketing is R. Sales is A. The meeting is sales’ meeting. Marketing organizes and prepares. Sales runs and decides. This sounds like a small detail. It’s the difference between a meeting that produces decisions and a meeting that produces a deck.

Weekly account review. Marketing is R. Sales is A. RevOps is C. The pattern repeats. Marketing brings the data and the prioritized list. Sales decides what to do with it.

Monthly program review with leadership. Marketing is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. RevOps is C. Executive sponsor is I. This is Marketing’s accountability moment. They report. They take the questions. They own the narrative.

 

Measurement and reporting

Pipeline reporting from named accounts. RevOps is R. Marketing is A. Sales is C. RevOps builds the dashboard. Marketing owns the number publicly. Sales validates the attribution.

Account engagement scoring. Marketing is R. Marketing is A. RevOps is C. The scoring model is Marketing’s design. RevOps builds it in the platform.

Win/loss analysis on named accounts. Sales is R. Marketing is A. The interviews are sales-led. The synthesis is marketing’s. The A sits with Marketing because the lessons feed back into the playbook.

Board reporting. Marketing is R. Executive sponsor is A. Sales is C. RevOps is C. The CMO or VP Marketing presents. The exec sponsor signs off on the slide before it goes to the board. Sales gets to see and challenge it before it’s final.

 

The roles I’d add only if you’re a larger org

Customer Success becomes a column when you’re running ABX, not just ABM. Add an R or A to CS for renewal-and-expansion plays in the customer base. Don’t add CS to acquisition rows. They’ll be invited to meetings they don’t need to be in.

Product Marketing becomes a column when you have one and they’re senior. They take the A on ICP definition and on the messaging architecture, and Marketing demand gen takes the R. If you don’t have a senior PMM, leave it merged into Marketing.

Field Marketing becomes a column when 1:1 plays are a big part of the program. They take the R on event-led and high-touch plays.

 

The lines I refuse to leave fuzzy

Three rows where I push the team hardest in workshops, because these are the rows that decide whether the program survives the first political storm.

Who has the A on the named account list. Sales. Always Sales. Marketing-A on this row is one of the top two reasons ABM programs fail.

Who has the A on data hygiene for the named accounts. RevOps. Always RevOps. Marketing or Sales A on this row produces a slow, invisible decay that becomes a crisis at month nine.

Who has the A on the program’s pipeline number. Marketing. The CMO or VP Marketing has to own this number publicly. If Sales has the A on the program pipeline number, the ABM program will be defended only when Sales’ broader number is healthy, which is sometimes never.

Get those three Os right. The rest of the matrix is dial-tuning.

 

How to actually run the workshop

Two hours. Whiteboard or shared doc. Function leaders only, no observers.

Walk through each row. Ask each leader to mark themselves before the discussion. The conflicts are where the value is. Spend the time on the rows where two teams both marked A. That’s the conversation you needed to have, and the one that wouldn’t have happened in any other meeting.

Document the outcome the same day. Send it to each function leader for sign-off in writing. Reference it the next time a conflict comes up. Update it quarterly.

A RACI that’s been signed by the people whose names are in it does work for years. A RACI that’s been forwarded as a slide and never referenced does no work at all.

 

What I’d cut

The “Support” column some teams add. S in RACIS. It’s almost always the same as Consulted. The extra column produces ambiguity, not clarity.

The five-column variants with “Approve” and “Verify” added. These are project-management tools for engineering teams. ABM is not a project. It’s a motion. Keep it to RACI.

The matrix with thirty rows. Most teams need ten to fifteen rows. Anything more is detail that belongs in the playbook, not the RACI. The RACI’s job is to prevent the strategic-level conflicts. The playbook’s job is to govern the day-to-day work.

 

A working starter

If you want to ship a draft to your team this week, start from the rows above. Adjust the columns to your org. Send it to your CRO and your CMO with a note that says you’d like to walk through it together for ninety minutes before the next ABM cadence.

The version that gets walked through gets used. The version that gets emailed gets ignored.

That’s the whole exercise.