Measuring Success with Account-based Go-To-Market Programs

As you consider launching Account-based go-to-market programs at your company, it is essential that you ensure alignment across all of your customer facing teams. This alignment must also translate to the metrics you track across your marketing, sales and customer success teams. Important key metrics to align include target account identification, pipeline contribution and pipeline velocity for each team, through to the health or success scores of individual customers. 

Demand marketers have long used marketing qualified leads (MQLs) as a key metric to designate leads they consider worthy of actioning by sales. However, salespeople aren’t measured on the number of leads they pursue — they’re measured on the total revenue gained across all accounts and new business that they close. 

If you’re moving forward with an account-based strategy, this type of disconnect between how to prioritize who sales targets, and how they action those targets will hinder the success of your account-based go-to-market (GTM) program. A commensurate transformation in the sales process is long overdue, in a B2B marketing world that is increasingly focused on an  account-first and account-based approach.

Many B2B companies are realigning their teams to focus on marketing qualified accounts (MQAs), and Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs), and as a result are seeing dramatic impact on their pipeline. This doesn't mean the end of the MQL; in fact, it is just the opposite. MQLs are the basis of, and a key component of, the MQA. The MQA is a combination of both MQLs and all other engagement from both known and anonymous buyers from a target account.

For your customer-facing teams to be aligned, you must clearly define what a qualified account looks like across your teams. MQAs are a subset of your ideal customer targets, as they only include accounts with high enough engagement level to indicate possible sales readiness. Think of it this way: while the MQL relates to one lead, the MQA encompasses the entire buying group at an account that is ready to engage with sales.

As you move forward with account-based go-to-market (GTM) and prepare to move to an MQA model, here are some account-level metrics that you will need to pay attention to:

• Coverage: This indicates whether you have the right data on your target account. 
• Are you targeting the appropriate buying unit within an organization? 
• Do you know the size of the organization and do you have all the geographical information needed to properly target the account? 
• To determine if you have a MQA, you must first determine whether you have accurate coverage data for the target account.
• Awareness: If a prospect is going to buy, they’re going to spend time on your website. Another step for determining whether an organization is a MQA is to see if they’re aware of your company. This can be difficult to measure, but a good place to start is with branded web traffic and user interactions, such as the open rate of email newsletters.
• Engagement: This is tied closely to awareness because it lets you know how much time the individuals within an account are spending with your company. One of the best ways to measure engagement is to attribute minutes to the number of actions a prospect takes. For example, if a prospect opens an email, you might attribute one minute of engagement to that action. Downloading an E-book or scheduling a meeting with a sales representative might receive ten or 30 minutes, respectively. Based on the amount of time/engagement you see with a few decision makers at one organization, you can determine whether the organization qualifies as a MQA.

Now that we’ve defined what an MQA is and we’re paying attention to the right signals, we must begin to look at the criteria that make up MQAs:

• Target Accounts: When determining if an organization should be considered an MQA, you must look at it as a collective whole and the level of engagement it’s showing. For example, your sales and marketing teams may determine that a large enterprise needs to show more engagement from more people than a small company. Or, perhaps you accept a lower threshold from target accounts than non-target accounts. Both teams need to work together to determine what level of engagement is required for different types of companies.
• Buying Unit Personas: To move an account into MQA status, it’s important to also look at personas and their level of engagement. Perhaps your teams require a certain amount of engagement from key personas in specific buying centers, and at least some engagement from a senior executive.
• Engagement: There are certain actions known as “hand raisers” that always make an account marketing qualified. For example, if a particular demo is accessed by two different people at an account, or a director-level contact requests a meeting, the account should be considered an MQA and your sales team should be alerted about the opportunity.
• Exclusion lists: While it’s important to know what qualified an account as an MQA, it’s also worth noting that you may want to exclude certain accounts as well. This could be because they’re partners or companies that don’t fit key account criteria.

A simple example of an MQA could look like this: 4 unique buying team members engaged within 30 days or 3 unique buyers with a minimum of 9 activities within 30 days. You could then adjust that for different tiers of target accounts.



For an account-based GTM program to be successful, consistent communication is required between your sales, marketing, and success teams. These teams need to align on the definitions and criteria behind the term “qualified,” and which attributes and metrics will be used to measure those criteria. It is important to establish clear roles and hand-offs that drive the prospect accounts and related buying teams through their journey.  We wish you great success in driving pipeline and revenues at your company with account-based programs.