Reporting Guide Idle Leads
Leads that nobody follows up on are leads you lose. The Lead follow-up reports find them: open leads that no one has touched for a number of days you choose, who they belong to, where they sit in your pipeline, and how long they have been waiting.
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Part of the Reporting guide.
Leads that nobody follows up on are leads you lose. The Lead follow-up reports find them: open leads that no one has touched for a number of days you choose, who they belong to, where they sit in your pipeline, and how long they have been waiting.
Open leads grouped by how long ago anyone last touched them.
What counts as a touch
A touch is something a person did on the lead:
- A call, text or visit logged on the lead
- A note
- An attachment added
- A one-to-one email sent to the lead
- A task on the lead completed
- A status change made by a person
- A workflow applied to the lead by hand
These do not count, because they are not a person following up: automatic and workflow emails, autoresponders, mass email campaigns, and changes Open Leads makes on its own.
Open Leads keeps the date and kind of each lead’s most recent touch. When Reporting started, it filled these in from the history it already had, so leads worked before then are not wrongly shown as never touched.
Setting the number of days
Open Customize this report; under Options, set A lead is idle after … days with no touch. It is 30 days unless you change it, can be anything from 1 to 3,650, and is saved with the report. The column headings show the days in use, for example Idle leads (no touch in 30 days).
The follow-up numbers
| Number | Means |
|---|---|
| Idle leads | Leads not touched within the number of days, including leads never touched. |
| % idle | Idle leads as a share of all leads in the row. |
| Never touched | Leads with no touch at all, ever. |
| Recently touched | Leads touched within the number of days. |
| Avg days since last touch | The average days since the last touch, among leads touched at least once. Never-touched leads are left out so they do not distort it. |
The follow-up breakdowns
- Last touched groups leads into bands: within the last 7 days, 8 to 30 days ago, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, 91 to 180, 181 to 365, more than a year ago, and never touched. The bands are fixed and do not change with the idle days setting.
- Last touch was groups leads by the kind of their last touch: call, text, visit, note, attachment, email, task, status change or workflow.
The follow-up reports
| Report | Use it to |
|---|---|
| Idle leads by salesperson | See who has the most leads going cold. |
| How long since leads were touched | See how old the neglect is across the whole pipeline. |
| Idle leads by status | Find statuses where leads get stuck. |
| Idle leads by source | Find sources whose leads get ignored, which often means they are poor quality or nobody owns them. |
| Idle leads by salesperson and age | See, for each person, how old their untouched leads are. |
| How leads were last touched | See whether your team mostly calls, emails or just adds notes. |
All of them count only open leads (won and lost leads do not need following up) and look at all time, so every open lead is included however long ago it came in. Remove the Open / Won / Lost is Open filter if you want every lead.
Turning it into a work list
- Open Idle leads by salesperson.
- Click a person’s Idle leads number to list exactly those leads.
- Open them from the list, or download the list to share with the person.
- Save the report and schedule it to each manager every Monday morning, so nothing goes quiet without someone noticing.
A lead shows as never touched when nothing in the list above was ever recorded on it. If your team calls leads but does not log the calls, those leads will look untouched. Logging calls and texts on the lead is what makes this report accurate.