Contacts go quiet. Left alone they sit in your active stages forever, making the pipeline look busier than it is. A lapsing stage moves them out automatically after a period of silence.

Setting it up

1. Create the stage they should land in — "Lapsed", "Dormant", whatever your team calls it.
2. Give it the after a period of inactivity trigger.
3. Set days of inactivity — how long the silence has to last.
4. Choose which stages lapse. This is the important one.

Choose the source stages carefully

Lapse the early stages — the prospects who never engaged. Leave your customers out of it: a customer who has not been in touch for ninety days is usually just a customer who does not need anything right now, and moving them out of the customer stage breaks every report that counts customers.

When they come back

Pair it with activity resumes after inactivity on the stage they should return to, and a lapsed contact who gets back in touch is picked up again without anyone watching for it.