Contact and Account Stages Overview

Article author
Matthew Charles
  • Updated

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.

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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. Assign stage
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.

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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. Assign account stage

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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.

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Customize Contact Stages

To customize contact stages, launch Apollo and click Settings.

Settings

Click Contacts in the "Configurations" section.

Contacts

In the Stages tab, click + Add Stage to add a new stage.

Add Stage

In the new modal, use the text-box to fill out the Name of your new stage and set the parameters.

Name Stage

Click Create Stage to add your stage.

Create Stage

To Edit or Delete a stage, click ..., then click Edit or Delete.

Edit Delete

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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 

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Customize Account Stages

To customize account stages, launch Apollo and click Settings.

Settings

Click Accounts in the "Configurations" section.

Accounts

In the Stages tab, click + Add Stage to add a new stage.

Add Stage

In the new modal, use the text-box to fill out the Name of your new stage and set the parameters.

Name Stage

Click Create Stage to add your stage.

Create Stage

To Edit or Delete a stage, click ..., then click Edit or Delete.

Edit Delete

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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

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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.

Settings

Click Contacts in the "Configurations" section.

Contacts

To edit a trigger for a Contact Stage, click Triggers to see your list of triggers.

Contact Trigger

Click the drop-down to change the trigger for your stage.

Contact Trigger Change

To customize account stage triggers, launch Apollo and click Settings.

Settings

Click Accounts in the "Configurations" section.

Accounts

To edit a trigger for an Account Stage, click Triggers to see your list of triggers.

Account Trigger

Click the drop-down to change the trigger for your stage.

Account Trigger Change

For more information on triggers, please read Use Stage Triggers to Manage and Track Sales Engagement

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