These “Account Status” settings are the equivalent of sales stages in opportunities, but specifically for accounts/organizations. So the account is “cold,” the account is “working,” and so on. It is essential for reps (especially Sales Development Reps who are prospecting for new business) to be able to organize their accounts in this manner so that reps can focus on the right accounts with the right messages at the right time, and minimize wasted efforts. It’s highly embarrassing for your outbound sales team to be sending prospecting emails or making prospecting calls into your current customers! How To Use These Stages Create a new data field in your sales system on the Accounts/Organizations page or tab called “Account Status,” which is a pick list. Add these eight settings. Test them out and feel free to customize them to your own language and process. Here are further explanations for the statuses, which you can also think of “Bins” where you put accounts: Bin: 1. Cold This should be pretty self-evident, but it's accounts where you have no activity, and no real insight into whether they're a fit or not. Often this bucket consists of data you've imported from someplace like Jigsaw and unresponsive accounts. Bin: 2. Working This bucket includes all the prospects that a rep is actively touching and researching. A rep has some kind of conversation going on at this account, either by email or phone. They may not be sure if the company is a good prospect yet, if there's interest, or even who the right influencers are. The goal of a rep with an account in the "Working" status is NOT to generate a sales opportunity by any means necessary. The primary goal is to determine the “truth” of whether there is, or is not, an opportunity at this account in the next several weeks or months. If there isn't, it's better to move on than to generate a poor opportunity that will distract sales reps from “real” ones. “Nurture” Bin: 3. Active Opportunity