ABM Stages are ZenABM's customizable account scoring. Instead of building and maintaining complicated scoring logic inside your CRM, you define stages in ZenABM as simple conditions, built from your LinkedIn ad data, your CRM data, or both. Every account is then scored and placed automatically, so the companies that are ready for sales outreach surface on their own.
You do not need a HubSpot/Salesforce/CRM connection to use ABM Stages. They can work on LinkedIn data alone.
How stages work
You define an ordered set of stages that mirror your funnel.
Each stage has a set of conditions. When an account meets them, ZenABM places it in that stage. As accounts engage more, or as deals progress in your CRM, they move on their own. There is nothing to maintain by hand.
ABM Stages are calculated both at the general level and separately for each of your ABM Campaigns.
Current vs. lifetime stage
Every account has two stages.
- Current ABM Stage comes from your ABM Campaigns. It uses the scope you selected there and the start date you defined. It can move down when activity drops. With no ABM Campaign, the current stage is the same as the lifetime stage.
- Lifetime ABM Stage has no scope limit. Its start date is about 90 days before you signed up. It never goes down: it shows how far a company ever got across all your motions.
Building conditions
A stage is one or more condition blocks, combined with AND (all must be true) or OR (any can be true). Every condition is the same shape: pick a condition type, a metric, a comparison, and a value.
There are seven condition types:
LinkedIn Metrics
Impressions, clicks, engagements, CTR, CPC and cost. For example, "clicks greater than or equal to 5". Needs no CRM.
Lifecycle Stage
A company's HubSpot lifecycle stage, such as "Sales Qualified Lead".
HubSpot Deal Stage
A specific HubSpot deal stage, or that an account has any open deal. Needs Deal syncing turned on.
HubSpot Company Property
Any HubSpot property at the Company level. Ideal for external data sources you track, like webinar attendance, whitepaper downloads, form fills on your website and more.
HubSpot Contact Property
Any HubSpot property at the Contact level, scored across the people at the account: match on any contact, or require at least N of them. Read live from HubSpot on every run.
Attio Deal Stage
A specific Attio deal stage, or that an account has any open deal.
Attio Company Property
Any attribute on the Attio company record.
Combine CRM data (like Employee Range) with LinkedIn metrics. For example, "Aware" could be at least 50 impressions for 1-10 employees OR at least 250 impressions for 50-250 org size.
Setting it up
Check the defaults
Your scope and start date: define an ABM Campaign
The current stage uses the scope and start date of your ABM Campaigns. Set up at least one. Without one, the current stage uses the lifetime rules: no scope limit, and a start date about 90 days before you signed up.
Define your Customer and Lost stages
Define Customer and Lost right away to get revenue attribution working. We highly recommend using a Deal/Opportunity for both. For example: Customer is a Deal in stage Closed Won.
Let it sync
What stages give you
The right accounts at the right time
Scoring surfaces which accounts are Interested now, so Sales works the ones that are ready.
Leading indicators of campaign health
Accounts entering a stage move long before pipeline does, which makes it the earliest read on whether a motion is working. See Dashboard.
Journeys overall and per motion
See an account's full stage history, and its progress within a specific ABM Campaign.
Reading the results
You can click on any Stage Badge to see its dedicated page.
- Entering vs. progressing. For each stage, see accounts arriving and accounts moving on, so you can spot where they stall.
- Per-company history. Every account carries a full stage history: where it went, and how long it spent at each step.
- On the dashboard. Companies in ABM Stages is your funnel today; Companies Moving ABM Stages is momentum.
Best practices
Use ZenABM's own time-boxed fields to keep stages fresh. For example: Interested companies are the ones with at least 5 clicks in the last 30 days.
- Pull in external HubSpot signals. Whitepaper downloads, webinar attendance, form fills: anything living in a HubSpot property can drive a stage. Ad engagement plus a whitepaper download is a much stronger signal than either on its own.
- Stage order matters. We evaluate stages in reverse-waterfall order, starting from the lowest and moving up towards Identified. If a Company meets any stage condition, it is not evaluated further, so make sure the lower stages are meaningful.
- Keep making adjustments. If everyone piles into one stage, your thresholds are too loose or too tight. Adjust and recalculate. You can also ask Zena to add, rename or re-rule a stage for you, or do it from the MCP server and the API.
