Key takeaways
- An MQA is a company, not a person, that has passed an agreed bar for fit and engagement.
- Engagement from several roles at one account counts for more than a lot of activity from one person.
- Fit acts as a gate: a poorly matched company never becomes an MQA however busy it looks.
- Marketing and sales agree the threshold and what sales does when an account crosses it.
How an account becomes an MQA
An account becomes an MQA when it clears two tests at once: it fits the ideal customer profile, and enough of the right people there have engaged recently. The exact bar is a local agreement between marketing and sales, written down so both sides read it the same way.
Fit usually rests on firmographics such as industry, size and location, sometimes with the tools the company uses. Engagement covers actions such as attending a webinar, replying to an email or asking for a demo, counted across everyone at the account.
- A fit test the account must pass before any engagement counts.
- Engagement from more than one person, ideally including someone with influence.
- A recency window, so activity from months ago fades out.
- A named next step and owner in sales for every new MQA.
MQA vs MQL
The difference between an MQA and an MQL is the unit being judged: an MQL is one person, an MQA is the company they work for. B2B purchases are made by buying groups, so a single keen contact says little about whether the organisation is ready to buy.
Lead-level scoring can also mislead in the other direction. Three quiet contacts at the same company, each below the MQL bar, may together show more real interest than one person who downloads everything. Account-level judgement catches that pattern.
How account level lead scoring works
Account level lead scoring works by rolling the scores of individual contacts up to the company they belong to, then adjusting for who those people are. A sensible model weights senior or budget-holding roles more heavily and caps how much any one person can add.
Scores should decay with time so the account reflects current interest. Many teams also add points for breadth, meaning the number of distinct people or departments engaged, because breadth is a better sign of a live buying process than repeated clicks from one desk.
An example of an account reaching MQA status
Take an illustrative logistics company that matches the ideal customer profile on industry and size. Over three weeks its operations director attends a webinar, a finance manager replies to a nurture email with a question and two team leads read a guide.
No single person crosses the MQL bar, but together the account clears the agreed MQA threshold. The account owner in sales receives a short note listing who engaged, with what, and when, and plans a first conversation with the operations director.
Common mistakes with marketing qualified accounts
Marketing qualified accounts go wrong most often when volume is counted instead of breadth, so an account full of clicks from one person looks hotter than it is. Another is letting engagement override fit, which sends sellers to companies that were never likely to buy.
MQAs also fail when sales has not agreed what to do with them. If a new MQA gets no response within days, marketing loses trust in the model and sales loses trust in the list.
Where Pebbles Ai fits
Common questions
Who decides when an account becomes an MQA?
Marketing usually applies the rule, but sales and marketing agree it together. The rule, the threshold and the response expected from sales should be written down and reviewed every few months.
Does an MQA replace the MQL?
Not always. Many teams keep MQLs for inbound requests from individuals and use MQAs for target accounts, so a demo request still gets a fast reply while account-level judgement guides outbound effort.
How many engaged contacts make an account qualified?
There is no universal number. Most teams want more than one person engaged, including at least one with influence over the purchase, and set the exact rule from what their closed deals looked like.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
