When Steve Jones joined Planful as VP of Demand Generation, the company was stuck in a traditional demand generation trap: MQL-driven, single-threaded outreach that worked for transactional lower mid-market deals but failed to crack upper mid-market accounts with complex buying committees.
With Gem-E as their AI command center, Planful completely transformed their go-to-market approach, generating over $1 million in direct-source pipeline from 24 opportunities in just two months, hitting 104% of their pipeline target, and setting up a projected 20-40% increase in SDR productivity for 2026.
The challenge: A fragmented GTM motion that couldn't scale
When Steve arrived at Planful, the company had already been using UserGems since 2021. UserGems was delivering value, but Planful wasn’t yet running a coordinated ABX motion. Signals existed, but they weren’t orchestrated into an account-level strategy and they weren't yet using Gem-E to orchestrate.
Their overall GTM strategy was fundamentally broken, and they were facing three key challenges:
Teams operating in isolation
Planful's go-to-market motion lacked coordination. Marketing would generate MQLs and hand them off to SDRs, SDRs would qualify meetings and pass them to sales. Then each team would move on to the next lead, with little to no collaboration or support down-funnel. There was an ABX gap, without a shared account strategy, buyers experienced disconnected touchpoints instead of a cohesive, multi-threaded journey across teams.
Too many sources of information with no clear priority
Every morning, SDRs received signals from multiple systems: Salesforce, 6sense, UserGems, TrustRadius, G2, and ZoomInfo. Each system had its own way of scoring accounts and contacts, so there was no clear picture. The team struggled to prioritize.
"When an SDR went in every morning, they didn't know where to start, what to do, what to trust.. Too many signals in front of them. Nothing really aggregated together into one score, and it frankly was bogging them down."
Without a centralized ABX command center, prioritization was manual, reactive, and inconsistent across teams.
The wrong accounts, the wrong approach
Planful’s ICP was loosely defined, so they were pursuing thousands of accounts that were unlikely to convert. Their outreach worked reasonably well for transactional, lower mid-market deals, but it wasn’t effective for upper mid-market accounts with complex buying committees. Upper mid-market growth required ABX, coordinated engagement across buying committees, and the existing demand-gen model simply couldn’t support that.
The solution: Gem-E as the AI-powered ABX command center
Steve realized Planful didn’t need more tools, they needed a new operating model. Planful needed an AI-powered ABX engine, a command center that aligns marketing, SDRs, and sales around the accounts that matter most.
Gem-E became the foundation of their ABX strategy. It unifies signals, aligns teams, and orchestrates how accounts are engaged across the full funnel.
Today, Gem-E sits at the center of Planful’s GTM tech stack, coordinating every tool and workflow. This ABX engine is what allowed Planful to transform pipeline and SDR productivity so quickly.
"It starts with the command center… The engine. It powers everything we do."
How it works for Planful
Gem-E aggregates multiple signal types into one unified priority score that gives marketing and sales the same picture of which accounts and contacts to prioritize.
The unified scoring is what allows Planful to operationalize ABX, and now everyone works from the same account-level truth:
- People signals: Past champions, new hires, promotions
- Account engagement: Web visitors, high-value page hits, content downloads
- Third-party intent: G2 reviews, TrustRadius activity
- First-party data: CRM history, Gong insights, previous interactions
- Custom signals: FP&A project indicators, buying committee engagement
This automated prioritization removes guesswork and ensures SDRs spend time on the highest-value conversations every single day.
Strategic three-tier account prioritization
Armed with Gem-E's scoring, Planful created a focused, resource-optimized strategy:
Tier 1: Top 150 accounts
- Highest-scoring accounts most likely to convert
- 1:1 ABX with tightly coordinated sales, marketing, ads, and SDR engagement
- Maximum sales and marketing resources allocated
Tier 2: 400-500 accounts
- Strong signals, warming interest
- Scaled ABX with personalization across channels
- Balanced resource allocation
Tier 3: Remaining accounts
- Awareness-stage campaigns
- Efficient, scalable approach
- Always-on ABX monitoring, ready to activate when intent spikes
Coordinated engagement: AI-powered messaging at scale
When Gem-E identifies a high-value signal it activates a full account-based experience.
This is where Planful’s ABX motion comes to life. Every high-value signal, whether a past champion, a new hire, a promotion, or a strategic buying committee update, triggers coordinated engagement across marketing, SDRs, and sales. Marketing launches personalized ad campaigns while SDRs begin tailored sequences, all aligned around the same account-level story.
Instead of isolated touches, buyers experience a consistent, account-based narrative across ads, email, and sales outreach. Each interaction reinforces the next, ensuring the buying committee sees one unified story, no matter which touchpoint they encounter.
"We are now using Gem-E as our message generator to really tell that personalized story...We're bringing all these contact signals into one story. When we find new hires, promotions, past champions, we are getting ads in front of them and getting them into sequences right away. Nothing is done in a vacuum."
Planful transformed fragmented workflows into a seamless ABX engine, driving higher response rates, more qualified conversations, and faster pipeline progression.
Real results: ABX driven pipeline and productivity gains
The proof is in the numbers:
- $1,000,000+ in direct-source pipeline generated
- 24 opportunities identified, prioritized, and engaged through Gem-E
- 104% of overall pipeline target achieved
- Upper mid-market pipeline transformed from critically low to significantly improved
- 20-40% projected increase in SDR productivity for 2026
"In really just the past two months, we've generated over a million plus in pipeline, 24 direct source opportunities… As of today, I think we're at about 104% of our overall pipeline target, which is just fantastic."
A complete GTM transformation
By rebuilding their GTM around an command center, Planful transformed the way their teams work. No longer fragmented, marketing, SDRs, and sales move together, responding to signals in real time and engaging accounts with a coordinated, consistent story. Their new ABX approach allows Planful to navigate complex upper mid-market deals with precision and scale, turning insights into action across every stage of the buyer journey.
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