A CRM can look full while still hiding follow-up risk. The goal is not to message every old contact. The goal is to identify which records deserve review, which records should be closed, and which ones need a clean next task.
Use this process when the team suspects the pipeline contains old opportunities but does not know where to begin.
Create a stale-record review
- Open opportunities with no activity in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- Leads with no owner.
- Contacts with notes but no opportunity.
- Deals with no next task.
- Records with duplicate names, emails, or phone numbers.
- Opportunities stuck in the same stage beyond the normal sales cycle.
Separate cleanup from outreach
CRM cleanup should happen before customer-facing communication. A safe workflow can identify a stale record, prepare a summary, and route it to a person.
- Review record quality.
- Confirm the owner.
- Decide whether follow-up is appropriate.
- Draft the next task if approved.
- Log the decision.
Watch for duplicate and split histories
Duplicates make good opportunities harder to understand. A person should review whether records represent the same contact, the same company, or different relationships.
- Same email across multiple contacts.
- Same phone number with different names.
- Opportunity notes split across records.
- Old owner assigned to a current account.
Approval points
Human approval matters when a record may trigger customer communication, status changes, or CRM updates that affect a rep or customer.
- Approve a revived opportunity.
- Reject a stale record.
- Assign or reassign the owner.
- Approve a follow-up draft.
- Approve CRM synchronization.
Next step
Use the CRM Lead Recovery page to understand the workflow, or run the Free Lead Leak Check to start with a bounded review.