How to Customize Contact and Account Stages & Recommended Stages

Use these best practices for contact or lead stages BEFORE you finalize your CRM sync. Whether your team has finalized contact / lead and account Stages, or not, here's a guide to edit Apollo Contact Stages to match your Statuses. Even if your stages don't have the same verbiage used in this guide, having at least relevant stages to the stages listed here gives you heightened clarity into your sales/marketing pipeline, more clear analytical insights, and increases productivity across sales/marketing teams. 

1. Start in Settings > Contacts > Stages to review and customize Contact Stages.

• Here's a breakdown of recommended stages for Contacts:

  Pro tip: When creating Custom Stages, overwrite existing stages to leverage their current mappings to triggers for automated stage changes (ie, when a contact replies, the Contact is automatically updated to the REPLIED contact stage)

Cold: This contact is a new contact, who has not been emailed, called, or reached out to before. Go get em with a sequence or a campaign! 

Approaching: The contact has been sent at least 1 email or was called. You can manually make a contact this stage. Or, use sequences, and the contact stage will automatically be updated. 

Replied: You've received a reply to your email from this contact. Apollo will automatically update a contact to this stage if they reply to an email from a sequence. But, you can also mark the contact as replied manually if not using sequences.

Interested: You've got a potential deal on your hands – your contact is interested in exploring working together further. Apollo updates the contact to the "interested" stage automatically if the email of your contact is detected in a gmail calendar invitation (this only works when you have your gmail account linked and use google calendar). 

Not Interested: The prospect responded, "not at this time," "reach out in 6 months," or "we have another solution for that, thanks." You can re-engage these leads with nurture messages later if their company is a qualified potential client and this contact fits into your buyer persona profile.

Unresponsive: Prospects are automatically marked as "unresponsive" by Apollo if added to a sequence and they never reply or engage with your messaging. You can also manually change prospects to this stage. Re-engage these leads every 30-90 days, as educating prospects and better timing can make an eventual sale. 

Bad Data: The Prospect's email bounced because the email was incorrect. This is not the same as not interested or unresponsive. So, keep these separate. 

Changed Job: Apollo has a special stage for contacts from the Job Change feature. Because Apollo is a data-first engagement tool, we let you know when someone changes jobs so you can email them at the right time, as they're settling into their new role.

2. Next up: Edit your Account Stages

Start in Settings > Accounts > Stages to review and customize Account Stages.

• Here's a breakdown of recommended stages for Accounts: 

Pro tip: When creating Custom Stages, overwrite existing stages to leverage their current mappings to triggers for automated stage changes (ie, when a contact replies, the Contact is automatically updated to the REPLIED contact stage)

3. Important Note: Keep in mind the triggers associated with your Contact and Account Stages while editing. Ensure they're mapped appropriately to their email and call triggers.

Here's a guide to walk you through editing your Stages + Triggers.

Related Resources: 

Create Sequence Rulesets So You Don't Email the Wrong People

Create Custom Fields to Report on Custom Information