Contact and Account Stages Overview

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Overview

Contact and account stages in Apollo help you track progress on sales and marketing pipelines. Stages associate a progress tag with each account or contact for quick insights into your pipeline health.

Check out the following sections to learn how to set up contact and account stages.

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Default Contact Stages

The following table describes the default stages that can be assigned to your contacts:

Stage Name	Description
Cold	This is a new contact that 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 Create Sequence Rulesets. You might 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.

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Default Account Stages

The following table describes the default stages that can be assigned to your accounts:

Stage Name	Description
Cold	This is a new account you have never engaged with.
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 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.

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Change Stages for Contacts and Accounts

To manually change the stage for a contact or account:

1. Launch Apollo and click Search.
2. Select one of People, Companies, or List.
3. For companies, choose your filters on the left side. For people, click the Saved tab. For lists, choose the list you want to update.
4. Click the checkbox for each contact or account that you want to update.
5. For companies, click the Edit drop-down, then click Set Stage. For people, click [ . . . ] > Set Stage.
6. Select the stage you want to assign to the contacts or accounts. If you have connected a CRM, you can also choose to create records for accounts in the CRM. Then, click Set Stage.

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Custom Stages

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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Create a New Contact Stage

To add a new stage for your contacts in Apollo:

1. Launch Apollo and click Settings > Contacts.
2. Click Add Stage.
3. Enter a name for your contact stage. Then, click Create Stage.
4. (Optional) If you have connected a CRM, choose a field in your CRM to sync with your new Apollo contact stage. Then, select the status that displays in your synced CRM field.

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Recommended Stages for Contacts

The following table provides Apollo's recommendations for custom stages you might want to create and the default stages to override. You don't need to follow these recommendations.

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Create a New Account Stage

To add a new stage for your accounts in Apollo:

1. Launch Apollo and click Settings > Accounts.
2. Click Add Stage.
3. Enter a name for your contact stage. Then, click Create Stage.
4. (Optional) If you have connected a CRM, choose a field in your CRM to sync with your new Apollo contact stage. Then, select the status that displays in your synced CRM field.

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Recommended Stages for Accounts

The following table provides Apollo's recommendations for custom stages you might want to create. You don't need to follow these recommendations.

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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:

1. Launch Apollo and click Settings > Contacts.
2. Click the Triggers tab.
3. For each of the email and call triggers, choose a contact stage that will be set when the trigger occurs.
4. Click Save.

To customize account stage triggers:

1. Launch Apollo and click Settings > Accounts.
2. Click the Triggers tab.
3. Choose an account stage that will be set when the trigger occurs. You can also add account stages that deliver warnings to your team during their searches.
4. Click Save.

For more information on triggers, check out Use Stage Triggers to Manage and Track Sales Engagement. 

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