To be honest, MQLs don’t reflect the actual behavior of B2B buyers. No matter how many you gather, leads won’t close deals. Accounts do.
For a long time, marketers have been evaluated based on the number of leads they generate, such as form fills, email clicks, and content downloads. However, most of these metrics are more noise than signal. In complex buying environments especially, one person showing interest doesn’t mean the whole account is ready.
This is why more teams are shifting their focus from Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs). MQAs are a smarter way to spot actual buying intent because they’re based on behavior across the entire account, not just one contact.
This shift isn’t optional anymore. It’s what modern go-to-market teams need to build a real pipeline.
In this article, we’ll explain why MQLs fall short, how MQAs offer a better way to qualify opportunities, and how you can start using MQAs across marketing, sales, and RevOps right now. Let’s dive in.
MQLs reward activity rather than revenue
The marketing team has hit their lead target. Dozens of new contacts downloaded content or registered for a webinar. The team celebrates, but sales shrugs.
Why? Because MQLs only tell part of the story.
Qualifying based on individual actions, like one person reading a blog post, misses the bigger picture: Is this account really in the market? Are the right people involved? Is there real interest, or just curiosity?
That’s the flaw in the MQL model. It was built for simpler times.
As Inverta highlights, “The MQL has become a crutch for teams seeking easy wins instead of meaningful momentum. Revenue happens at the account level—and so should marketing.”
These days, a typical B2B deal involves six to ten stakeholders and spans months. One download isn’t enough. MQAs address this issue by identifying account-level engagement, which involves multiple individuals performing meaningful actions over time and across various touchpoints.
This is how you know an account is actually warming up, not just passing through.
3 ways to operationalize MQAs
1. Define MQAs based on real acts
To accurately assess MQAs, you need a qualification system that reflects the actual behavior of real buyers, not just how they fill out forms. Here’s how:
- Map your ideal customer profile (ICP) to buying behaviors. What types of content demonstrate intent? How many contacts from an account should be involved?
- Work with sales to determine what constitutes a “qualified” account. This could mean three people from the same company engaging or multiple touchpoints over a set period.
- Review past deals to spot patterns. For example, if your best accounts always look at your pricing page and join a webinar within two weeks, track that.
- Once you’ve determined the criteria, sync them into your martech tools. Create workflows in your CRM and marketing automation platform that automatically flag accounts when they meet the MQA threshold.
This way, the sales team will know exactly who to prioritize. Marketing can then stop chasing low-value leads and start nurturing valuable accounts.
If you’re unsure how to structure this from scratch, partnering with a specialized ABM Agency can help you avoid blind spots.
2. Respond to clear account signals
The second challenge is timing. Most marketing teams still conduct outreach based on campaign calendars instead of when a buyer is actually showing interest. To fix this:
- Smart B2B inbound marketing strategies can help you act on behavior instead of broadcast schedules.
- Watch for intent signals. Has an account recently viewed your pricing page? Have several people from one company visited your site in the same week?
- Set alerts when activity spikes. Use tools like 6sense or Bombora to track surging accounts and send the information to the sales and marketing teams in real time.
- Replace generic nurture flows with actions tied to actual behavior, such as sending a case study after someone views your customer success page or offering a live demo when a C-suite contact engages.
This makes your outreach feel timely and relevant instead of random. You’re not pushing messages; you’re meeting buyers where they are.
3. Evolve alongside your metrics
One reason MQLs have stuck around is that they’re easy to count. However, being easy doesn’t make them useful. If you want MQAs to be effective, you need to change your metrics, too:
- How many accounts go from cold to engaged.
- What percentage of MQAs become real opportunities?
- How many stakeholders engage within each account?
Instead of marketing and sales reporting in silos, create shared dashboards that track account movement from first touch to meeting booked.
If your reports reflect the actual buying habits of buyers and why account-based marketing is key to B2B sales, you will make better decisions.
Build momentum instead of leads
If your marketing strategy still revolves around MQLs, then you’re probably measuring clicks and contacts rather than conversations and deals. That’s a dangerous disconnect.
Smart teams align around real opportunity by watching accounts, not individuals, and that’s what MQAs are.
Here’s the plan: focus on what makes an account truly qualified. Equip your stack to surface intent at the moment. Measure progress at the account level, not lead count.
Make this shift now, and you’ll build a pipeline that actually closes and finally aligns sales and marketing.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
1. What is a Marketing Qualified Account (MQA)?
An MQA is an account that demonstrates significant engagement across various contacts and touchpoints, indicating that it is prepared for a coordinated sales and marketing follow-up.
2. Is this just better lead scoring?
No. MQAs focus on accounts, not individuals. They focus on accounts, which is how real B2B decisions are made.
3. Do I need fancy new tools for this?
Not really. You can start with the tools you already have, such as CRM, MAP, and intent data, as long as you have a solid MQA definition and workflows in place.
4. Won’t this slow down our lead volume?
Yes, and that’s a good thing. You’ll receive fewer accounts, but they’ll be far better qualified. Sales will spend less time sifting, and your close rate will improve.
5. How do I convince leadership to make the shift?
Show how MQLs create waste and misalignment. Then, demonstrate how MQAs focus your team on accounts that generate revenue.
Author’s Bio
Guillermo Navas
Psychologist and head of content at Linkify Solutions. Originally from Venezuela and now based in Uruguay, he has reached over two million readers across the Americas and Spain with his articles. As an SEO specialist, he creates content for B2B SaaS brands, aligning it with their broader marketing strategies.
