The quarterly review opens with good news. Marketing delivered 1,200 MQLs, up 30% on last quarter.
Then the CFO asks one question: “Which of those companies are closer to buying?” Nobody can answer it.
That gap is why more B2B teams are adding an account engagement score to their reporting. An MQL count tells you how many people raised a hand. An engagement score tells you which accounts are actually moving toward a decision.
What an MQL Count Can’t Tell You
MQLs were built for a world where one person bought software. So they count individuals, not buying groups.
That creates three blind spots:
- Volume hides concentration. Ten MQLs might come from ten accounts, or from one intern downloading everything.
- Silent buyers don’t count. A CFO who reads your pricing page but never fills out a form adds zero MQLs.
- The count says nothing about readiness. An ebook download and a pricing page visit can both trigger an MQL.
The results show it. Forrester’s waterfall benchmarks put the conversion rate from inquiry to closed deal in a lead-centric process at less than 1%. For most B2B teams, that means fewer than one win for every hundred people who express interest.
What an Account Engagement Score Measures
An account engagement score rolls up activity from everyone at a company into one number. As a result, it reflects how the buying group is behaving, not just one contact.
Most useful scores combine four inputs:
| Input | What it measures | Example signals | Suggested weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breadth | How many roles are engaging | Visits or replies from finance, IT, and operations | 35% |
| Depth | How serious the activity is | Pricing page views, demo requests, integration docs | 30% |
| Intent | Research happening off your site | Third-party intent data showing topic surges | 20% |
| Fit | How closely the account matches your ICP | Industry, size, tech stack | 15% |
Breadth carries the most weight on purpose. Deals rarely close on one person’s enthusiasm, as we explain in our piece on single-threaded ABM.
You can adjust the weights for your market. What matters is agreeing on them with sales before you start.
Two Accounts, Two Different Stories
Here’s how the two metrics compare on the same pair of accounts. The figures are illustrative.
Account A produced 14 MQLs last quarter. However, 12 came from one marketing coordinator downloading guides. The other two came from a junior analyst.
Account B produced only 3 MQLs. But six people from four departments visited the site. The CFO viewed pricing twice, and the IT lead read the integration documentation. Intent data also showed the company researching your category.
| Account A | Account B | |
|---|---|---|
| MQLs | 14 | 3 |
| Breadth (out of 35) | 10 | 30 |
| Depth (out of 30) | 8 | 24 |
| Intent (out of 20) | 0 | 16 |
| Fit (out of 15) | 15 | 12 |
| Engagement score (out of 100) | 33 | 82 |
By MQL count, Account A looks like the priority. By engagement score, Account B is far closer to buying. Most sales leaders would tell you Account B is where the deal is.
Turning the Score Into Action
A score only helps if everyone knows what to do at each level. So agree on thresholds and owners.
| Score | Stage | Owner | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–39 | Aware | Marketing | Nurture with relevant content and ads |
| 40–59 | Engaged | SDR | Research the account and map the buying committee |
| 60–79 | Active | SDR and AE | Reach out to several roles, not just the most active contact |
| 80–100 | Ready | AE | Create an opportunity and attach every known stakeholder |
This also changes the handoff conversation. Instead of passing individual leads, marketing hands sales an account with context: who’s involved, what they’ve looked at, and what they’re researching.
Changing What You Report
Leadership doesn’t need more numbers. They need numbers that connect to revenue. Here’s how the report can shift:
| Instead of reporting | Report this |
|---|---|
| MQLs generated | Accounts reaching Active or Ready |
| MQL-to-SQL conversion | Active-to-opportunity conversion |
| Cost per MQL | Cost per engaged account |
| Leads by source | Pipeline value from engaged accounts |
The new metrics are fewer and closer to revenue. They also make marketing’s contribution easier to defend when budgets get reviewed.
Making the Switch Without Breaking Things
Many teams hesitate because their targets, tools, and compensation plans are built around MQLs. That’s a fair concern.
Forrester, which has advocated this shift for years, recommends a crawl, walk, run approach rather than an overnight change. In practice, that looks like this:
- Run both for one quarter. Keep reporting MQLs while you calculate engagement scores in parallel.
- Test which predicts better. At quarter end, check which metric better predicted the opportunities that were actually created.
- Shift targets gradually. Move marketing goals toward engaged accounts, and review sales and marketing definitions together.
Forrester’s own view is that for most companies, leaving MQLs behind is no longer a question of if, but when. The parallel quarter usually makes the case on its own.
Where Engagement Scores Go Wrong
A badly built score can mislead just as much as an MQL count. Watch for these mistakes:
- No time decay. Activity from three months ago shouldn’t count the same as activity from this week. Reduce points after 30 days.
- Counting the wrong visitors. Filter out existing customers, job seekers, partners, and competitors.
- One person inflating the score. Cap how many points a single contact can add.
- Building it without sales. If sales doesn’t trust the score, they won’t act on it.
Most ABM platforms can calculate account scores automatically. Still, the logic behind the score should come from your team, not a default setting.
Where MQLs Still Fit
MQLs aren’t useless. They still help with individual follow-up and content performance, as covered in our guide to Marketing Qualified Leads.
The problem is using them as the headline number. A lead tells you a person is interested. An engagement score tells you a company is getting ready to buy. Leadership cares about the second one.
Want reporting that shows which accounts are ready to buy? ColedaB2B helps B2B teams build account engagement scoring, connect it to intent data, and report pipeline that leadership trusts. Talk to us about your reporting.
FAQs:
An account engagement score combines activity from everyone at a company into one number. It usually reflects how many roles are engaging, how serious their activity is, off-site intent signals, and fit with your ideal customer profile.
An MQL measures one person’s interest. An account engagement score measures the whole buying group’s activity, which makes it a better signal of whether a company is moving toward a purchase.
Assign weights to breadth, depth, intent, and fit, then score each account against them. A common starting split is 35% breadth, 30% depth, 20% intent, and 15% fit, adjusted to your market.
It depends on your model. In a 100-point system, many teams treat 60 or above as ready for sales outreach and 80 or above as ready for an opportunity.
Not overnight. Run engagement scores alongside MQLs for a quarter, compare which predicts opportunities better, then shift targets gradually.
