Definition: A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is an account that exhibits buying signals and intent indicators matching your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), but has not yet been contacted by sales.
MQAs bridge the gap between raw target lists and sales-ready opportunities. In B2B ABM, you can't call everyone in your TAL (Target Account List) at once. MQAs let your marketing team prioritize accounts by readiness and engagement before handing them off. This reduces noise to sales, improves conversion rates, and ensures your GTM teams focus on accounts most likely to move.
Without an MQA definition, marketing and sales operate in silos. Your best accounts might slip through while your team chases lookalikes.
MQA vs. SAL (Sales Accepted Lead): An SAL has been reviewed and accepted by sales. An MQA is waiting in the queue, showing promise but not yet claimed.
MQA vs. SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): An SQL is a contact within an account that sales has qualified as a deal-ready opportunity. An MQA is the account-level qualifier that happens before individual contact-level qualification.
MQA vs. TAL (Target Account List): Your TAL is a static list of all accounts you want to reach. Your MQA set is a dynamic, intent-driven subset of that list.
Q: How many accounts in my TAL should I mark as MQA? A: That depends on your sales velocity and team size. If your AE team can work 20 accounts in parallel and you have 5 AEs, you might keep 100 MQAs in active circulation. Too many MQAs and your team gets overwhelmed; too few and you leave revenue on the table. Start by calculating: (Target monthly closed deals / average deal cycle length in months) * desired pipeline multiplier (usually 3x-5x).
Q: Who owns the MQA definition: marketing or sales? A: Both. Marketing defines the signals. Sales reviews and refines based on what converts. Use your first month to align on 5-7 non-negotiable MQA criteria, then revisit quarterly as your data improves.
Q: Can an account be an MQA for multiple product lines? A: Yes. A single company might be MQA for your platform product but SAL for your services. Use account-level scoring, then drill into segment-specific qualification at the opportunity level.
MQA scoring typically lives in your CDP (Customer Data Platform), ABM platform, or CRM. Tools like 6sense, Demandbase, and Terminus calculate MQA scores based on your defined signals. Your sales team uses these scores to queue accounts for outreach, and marketing uses them to double down on campaigns aimed at MQA-tier accounts showing the most momentum.
Start by building an MQA playbook with your sales leader. Define which signals matter most (web traffic, job changes, funding news, intent keywords). Assign a point value to each. Automate the scoring. Review monthly, adjust quarterly.
Ready to implement account-level scoring? Abmatic helps you build and refine your MQA engine: turning raw intent data into prioritized accounts your sales team will actually work.