No Good Deed Goes Unpunished With ABM (Account Based Marketing)
If you’ve ever run an ABM program, you already know the truth behind one of the most iconic lines from Wicked: no good deed goes unpunished. In the show, Elphaba spends the entire story trying to help, transform, and do what she believes is right, only to end up misunderstood, underestimated, and labeled the villain. If that isn’t the perfect metaphor for modern B2B marketing, I don’t know what is.
Ask anyone who has attempted a full ABM motion inside a Microsoft partner organization. You try to make buying easier. You try to align sales and marketing. You try to bring the right insights to the right people at the right time. And somehow, you still end up fighting internal friction, political headwinds, shifting priorities, and the never-ending struggle of “prove it again.”
It’s not because ABM doesn’t work. It’s because ABM forces an organization to change. And change always comes with a cost.
The Elphaba Effect: When Doing the Right Thing Isn’t the Easy Thing
Elphaba never had a messaging problem. She had a perception problem. She was smart, strategic, driven by conviction, and deeply misunderstood. Sound familiar?
ABM leaders run into the same dynamic. You know the buyer committee. You know the signals. You know the content pathways that turn curiosity into consensus. But you’re often fighting systems that weren’t designed for modern buying behavior. Buyers want to self-serve. Sellers want qualified intent. Leadership wants pipeline yesterday. ABM has the potential to bridge all three, but not without friction.
Just like Elphaba, you’re trying to give the people what they actually need, not what they’re used to.
The Wicked Truth: ABM Upsets the Status Quo
Here’s the part everyone forgets: Elphaba didn’t get punished because she was wrong. She got punished because she disrupted the structure everyone benefitted from. She exposed the gaps, the myths, the places where the system failed.
ABM does the same thing.
It exposes when sales isn’t aligned. It reveals when messaging is too generic. It shows who’s actually buying, not who we wish was buying. It challenges teams to think beyond single-threaded deals and start building influence across an entire committee. It forces a spotlight onto the real journey, not the imagined one.
Of course people get uncomfortable. Of course it feels disruptive. That’s the point.
Defying Gravity: How ABM Actually Wins
There’s a moment in every successful ABM program where the narrative flips. Sales leans in. Leadership sees lift. Conversations shift from “why are we doing this?” to “can we do more of this?”
It’s the ABM version of Elphaba taking off and defying gravity. The work pays off because it was never about campaigns—it was about clarity. It was about knowing your buyers better than anyone else. It was about aligning the story, the signal, the channel, and the people behind the deal.
The magic wasn’t the spell. It was the strategy.
What Wicked Reminds Us About Modern B2B Buyers
The modern buyer is Elphaba. Misunderstood. Underestimated. Acting with conviction. Self-serving, independent, informed. And moving long before they ever talk to sales.
ABM isn’t a tactic to push. It’s a lens that forces us to tell the truth about how buying actually works today. It invites us to step out of old narratives—like the Wizard’s façade—and meet buyers where they are, with what they need.
That’s the real rebellion. And it’s why ABM matters more in 2025 than ever before.
The Final Spell: ABM Isn’t a Good Deed. It’s a Necessary One.
Every ABM leader knows this: you don’t build these programs because they’re easy. You build them because they’re right. Because they work. Because they make buying better, relationships stronger, and revenue more predictable.
If the journey feels wicked at times, remember the lesson Elphaba gives us. Doing the right thing isn’t always rewarded immediately. But the impact outlasts every misunderstanding, every early struggle, every moment someone calls you “too much” or “too different.”
Change never comes without resistance. But the best marketers know how to fly through it.
