Power Your Growth
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By Kelly Greenwalt
Foggy London town is an apt description, and boy, was it chilly!
But despite the weather, there were some great conversations happening inside the Global ABM Conference in London.
I always enjoy getting together with fellow B2B marketers. There's something refreshing about stepping away from the day-to-day, hearing what other organizations are struggling with, and comparing notes on where our industry is headed.
And this conference certainly delivered.
AI was, unsurprisingly, a big part of the conversation. But what I found most interesting wasn't necessarily what people were saying about AI itself. It was what they're trying to figure out around it.
How do we architect for it? How do we operationalize it? How do we get Sales and Marketing working together well enough to actually benefit from it?
And perhaps most importantly, where do we even start?
Here are my three biggest takeaways, plus a little encouragement for my fellow marketers.
One thing that stood out to me was the number of agencies in attendance.
And many of the conversations centered on a similar challenge: How do agencies help their clients build an AI-enabled marketing architecture when they aren't necessarily the ones who control that architecture?
It's a fascinating position to be in.
Agencies are being asked to help clients navigate an increasingly complicated technology landscape. They're expected to bring expertise, recommend strategies, improve performance, and increasingly, help organizations figure out how AI fits into the equation.
But the underlying systems, data, integrations, and technology decisions often sit with the client.
That's a tough assignment, and yet, I think it presents an enormous opportunity.
The world is thirsty for blueprints.
Not another presentation about the potential of AI. Not another list of AI tools. Actual, practical guidance on how to get started.
What should the architecture look like? Which systems need to talk to each other? Where should intelligence live? How do we connect that intelligence to execution? And how do we ensure that the entire system gets smarter over time?
Technology vendors certainly have an important role to play here. But I believe agencies and advisory firms (like our friends at ForgeX) are uniquely positioned to help organizations answer these questions at scale.
They understand their clients' business challenges. They understand the existing technology landscape. And they can help connect strategy with execution.
The agencies that partner with AI-forward technology providers are going to have a distinct advantage.
This is something we're particularly excited about at Propensity.
We're building toward a future where marketers aren't confined to operating inside a single application. Through our AI-enabled platform and bidirectional MCP architecture, users can connect their AI platform of choice with Propensity's capabilities to help build audiences, create and execute campaigns, and analyze performance.
Think about the possibilities for an agency.
Rather than building every workflow from scratch or requiring clients to abandon their existing technology investments, agencies can help orchestrate more intelligent marketing processes across connected systems.
And with AI increasingly capable of helping teams move from analysis to action, the opportunity goes well beyond generating recommendations.
My prediction? The agencies that become experts in AI-enabled marketing architecture, not just AI-generated content, will be the ones that really differentiate themselves.
Here's a classic throwback. Guess what we're still talking about in 2026?
Sales and Marketing alignment, yep, that old chestnut.
After all the advances in marketing technology, attribution, intent data, automation, and now AI, we're still struggling with one of the most fundamental relationships in B2B revenue generation.
Marketing says Sales isn't following up on leads, Sales says the leads aren't good enough.
Marketing says the accounts are showing intent, Sales says that doesn't mean they're ready to buy.
Sound familiar?
I find this particularly interesting because we're now talking about autonomous marketing, agentic workflows, and AI-powered campaign execution.
But if we haven't agreed on what constitutes a qualified opportunity, who owns it, and what happens next, what exactly are we automating?
A broken process doesn't become a good process just because AI can execute it faster.
I've long believed that Sales and Marketing alignment needs to start at the top, with the CMO and CRO agreeing on shared revenue goals, pipeline expectations, qualification criteria, and accountability.
But when it comes to actually operationalizing that agreement, I would start with one very specific process.
The handoff to Sales: get that right first.
What signals indicate a prospect is ready for a conversation? How much qualification is enough? Who validates the opportunity? How quickly must Sales respond? And what happens when Sales rejects it?
Document the rules. Agree on the exceptions. Make the process auditable. Then automate.
And here's something we're experimenting with at Propensity that I think is particularly interesting.
With increasingly sophisticated intent signals and contact-level intelligence, technology can help identify people and accounts demonstrating buying behavior.
But there's still a difference between identifying intent and establishing that someone is truly ready for a sales conversation.
We're experimenting with adding a human validation step after an intent signal is identified and before a qualified opportunity is passed to Sales.
Why?
Because our hypothesis is that sellers may be more likely to trust, prioritize, and thoroughly work an opportunity that has been verified by a human than one that simply met an automated scoring threshold.
That's not an argument against AI, quite the opposite.
Let AI do what it does best. Analyze signals, identify patterns, surface opportunities, and help prioritize the next action.
Then introduce human judgment at the point where it can add meaningful value.
And eventually, use the outcomes of those human decisions to make the system smarter. Which leads to another concept we're excited about at Propensity: recursive marketing.
The idea is simple. Every campaign, every engagement, every accepted or rejected opportunity, and every sales outcome should help inform what happens next.
Instead of running disconnected campaigns, evaluating data from previous campaigns and starting over each time, we should be building systems that continuously learn and improve as they are running.
But that learning requires feedback from Sales, and Sales needs to trust the opportunities being delivered.
See how we ended up right back at that handshake? Some things never change.
One of my favorite things about attending industry conferences is being reminded just how curious marketers are.
We ask questions. We challenge assumptions. We compare tools, tactics, and strategies. We want to know what's working, what isn't, and what someone else has figured out that we haven't.
And in a world where technology seems to change every five minutes, that curiosity is more important than ever.
So here's my encouragement to everyone I met in London, and to the broader marketing community.
Please keep sharing what you're learning.
Post your experiments. Share your results. Talk about the campaigns that worked and, perhaps more importantly, the ones that didn't.
Write on LinkedIn. Participate in Reddit conversations. Contribute to your favorite marketing community. Publish a blog post. Share your perspective wherever your peers are having conversations.
Because those contributions help all of us and there's another interesting dimension to this now.
Our LLMs are learning from the information available across the web, and public professional discussions can become part of the information ecosystem that shapes future AI-powered answers.
Not every post will be indexed or used by every model, of course. But the broader point remains.
The knowledge we share today helps shape what our industry understands tomorrow.
As AI becomes a bigger part of how marketers research solutions, develop strategies, and make technology decisions, thoughtful, experience-based content becomes even more valuable.
And frankly, I'd much rather learn from a practitioner who has actually tried something than read another generic list of best practices.
So please, keep the insights coming, our industry needs them, our LLMs thank you for your contributions, too!
If I had to connect all three of these takeaways, it would be this:
We're entering a phase of B2B marketing where having access to AI isn't going to be the differentiator.
That's the future we're building toward at Propensity.
Our vision for autonomous ABM extends beyond traditional account-based marketing. We're focused on helping organizations identify opportunities, understand buying groups, orchestrate coordinated engagement across channels, and connect that activity to measurable business outcomes.
And with our approach to AI connectivity, including bidirectional MCP, we're making it possible for organizations to bring their preferred AI tools into that process rather than forcing everything into one interface.
It's an exciting time to be in B2B marketing.
But I think the winners will be the organizations that balance innovation with operational discipline.
The ones that connect their data, align their teams, document their processes, and create systems that continuously improve.
Not just the ones with the most AI tools.
Despite the chilly weather, I left the Global ABM Conference energized by the conversations, the curiosity, and the opportunities ahead.
A big thank you to everyone who shared their perspectives and experiences.
And if we crossed paths at the conference, I'd love to continue the conversation.
Whether you're an agency trying to develop an AI-enabled architecture for your clients, a marketing leader looking to improve Sales alignment, or a team exploring what autonomous ABM could look like in practice, we'd love to compare notes.
Schedule a demo or consultation with one of our experts at Propensity.
Let's talk about what you're trying to solve and how we can help.
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