Overview
Contact and account stages in Apollo help you track your progress on sales and marketing pipelines. They also label each account or contact with a progress designation. The additional analytical insights can help increase productivity as well.
Refer to the sections below for examples and suggestions on how to set up contact and account stages.
Stage Descriptions
There are several default Contact Stages and Account Stages in Apollo:
Default Contact Stages
| Stage Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Cold | This is a new contact who you have not emailed, called, or reached out to before. |
| Approaching | You have sent the contact at least 1 message or have called them. |
| Replied | This contact has replied to your email. |
| Interested | Your contact is interested in working together further. Apollo updates the contact to the "interested" stage automatically if your contact's email is detected in a Gmail calendar invitation. This only works when you have your Gmail account linked and you use Google Calendar. |
| Not Interested | The contact responded that they are not interested. You can try to re-engage with the contact at a later date if they fit your buyer profile. |
| Unresponsive | Apollo marks a contact as "unresponsive" if they never reply or engage with your messaging. If you want to amend the default number of days in which Apollo marks a contact as unresponsive, refer to the Create Sequence Rulesets article. You may want to re-engage with these leads every 30-90 days, as different positioning, more education about your product, a change in a contact's role, or better timing could still lead to a sale. |
| Do Not Contact | Apollo automatically assigns a contact to the Do Not Contact stage if a contact actively unsubscribes from your emails. You can also configure contact triggers in the settings if you want to set up additional automation. For one-off cases, such as when a contact personally requests for you to stop reaching out, or for competitors, you can manually assign saved contacts to the Do Not Contact stage from the search page.  |
| Bad Data | The prospect's email bounced because the email was incorrect. |
| Changed Job | Apollo informs you when a contact changes jobs so you can email them as they settle into their new role. |
Default Account Stages
| Stage Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Cold | This is a new account that you have not engaged with before. |
| Current Client | You are actively doing business with these accounts. |
| Active Opportunity | This is a prospective account that someone in your team is currently working on closing. |
| Dead Opportunity | This is an account that your team was unable to close and with whom you are no longer actively engaging. |
| Do Not Prospect | This is an account that you want to blacklist from your engagement efforts. You can manually assign saved accounts to the Do Not Prospect stage from the search page.  |
Custom Stages
You can add custom stages to identify specific statuses for your Contacts and Accounts. Custom stages help you sync information between Apollo and your CRM.
When creating custom stages, make sure to overwrite or delete existing stages that could leverage their current mappings to the triggers that run the automated stage changes. For example, when a contact replies, the Contact is automatically updated to the Replied Contact Stage.
Customize Contact Stages
To customize contact stages, launch Apollo and click Settings.
Click Contacts in the "Configurations" section.
In the Stages tab, click + Add Stage to add a new stage.
In the new modal, use the text-box to fill out the Name of your new stage and set the parameters.
Click Create Stage to add your stage.
To Edit or Delete a stage, click ..., then click Edit or Delete.
Table of Recommended Stages for Contacts
| Default Stage | Overwritten / Custom Stage | Category | 'Do Not Override' Checked? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nurturing | No Category | No | |
| Approaching | In Progress | No | |
| Replied | In Progress | No | |
| Meeting Set | Succeeded | Yes | |
| Interested | Succeeded | Yes | |
| SQO | Succeeded | Yes | |
| Active Evaluator | Succeeded | Yes | |
| Current Client | Succeeded | Yes | |
| Closed: Check Back Quarterly | Not Succeeded | Yes | |
| Unresponsive | Closed: Unresponsive | Not Succeeded | No |
| Closed: Referred Elsewhere | No Category | Yes | |
| Not Interested | Closed: Not Interested | Not Succeeded | Yes |
| Closed: Bad Fit | Not Succeeded | Yes | |
| Do Not Contact | Closed: Do Not Contact | Not Succeeded | Yes |
| Closed: Bad Data | Not Succeeded | Yes | |
| Closed: Changed Job | Not Succeeded | Yes | |
| Bad Data | No Category | Yes | |
| Changed Job | No Category | Yes |
Customize Account Stages
To customize account stages, launch Apollo and click Settings.
Click Accounts in the "Configurations" section.
In the Stages tab, click + Add Stage to add a new stage.
In the new modal, use the text-box to fill out the Name of your new stage and set the parameters.
Click Create Stage to add your stage.
To Edit or Delete a stage, click ..., then click Edit or Delete.
Breakdown of Recommended Stages for Accounts
| Default Stages | Overwritten / Custom Stage | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Nurturing | No Category | |
| Working | In Progress | |
| Engaged / Hot | In Progress | |
| Meeting Set | Succeeded | |
| Active Opportunity | Succeeded | |
| Current Client | Succeeded | |
| Dead Opportunity | Not Succeeded | |
| Churned | Not Succeeded | |
| Bad Fit | Not Succeeded | |
| Nurture - Timing | Not Succeeded | |
| Nurture - Not Interested | Not Succeeded | |
| Nurture - Unresponsive | Not Succeeded | |
| Closed | Not Succeeded | |
| Do Not Prospect | Not Succeeded |
Triggers Based on Stages
Account and contact stages are associated with triggers that automate responses in a sequence. Triggers can be edited for each stage.
To customize contact stage triggers, launch Apollo and click Settings.
Click Contacts in the "Configurations" section.
To edit a trigger for a Contact Stage, click Triggers to see your list of triggers.
Click the drop-down to change the trigger for your stage.
To customize account stage triggers, launch Apollo and click Settings.
Click Accounts in the "Configurations" section.
To edit a trigger for an Account Stage, click Triggers to see your list of triggers.
Click the drop-down to change the trigger for your stage.
For more information on triggers, please read Use Stage Triggers to Manage and Track Sales Engagement.