How to find stale leads in Salesforce

The quickest way to find old Salesforce leads that never converted is a lead list view or a Leads report that filters out converted leads and keeps only the ones with no recent activity. In a report, you set Converted to false, exclude Lead Status values that mean the lead is closed, and filter Last Activity to dates older than your cutoff, such as 90 or 180 days ago. Add a second filter for leads where Last Activity is blank, because a lead nobody ever touched has no activity date at all. Sorting by Created Date and grouping by Lead Owner shows how old the backlog is and who it belongs to.

That gets you a list, and it's a good place to start. The trouble is that the list mixes very different leads together. The Last Activity date only moves when someone logs a task or an event, so a lead your rep emailed from their own inbox without logging it looks untouched. Some of these people now work somewhere else. Some became contacts through another path, such as a colleague who signed up. Some opted out of email, and some were never a fit in the first place. A report can't tell those apart, so the rep who opens the list still has to research every row before deciding who to call.

That sorting is the real job. A good result is a short list of leads that are worth working now: people who still hold a relevant role at a company that fits your ideal customer profile, who haven't opted out, and who aren't already in another part of your pipeline. Each one should come with the reason it stalled, the reason it's worth another try, and an owner who knows to follow up.

Salesforce has its own tools that help with parts of this. Einstein Lead Scoring, on editions that include it, scores leads on how closely they resemble the leads you converted in the past. Lead assignment rules can route leads to the right owner. Neither one looks outside Salesforce to see whether the person changed jobs or the company just raised money, which is often the best reason to reach out again.

Kite does that research and sorting for you. It reads the stale leads and their history, checks each one against your profile and the outside world, and writes its decisions back into Salesforce.

Start by telling Kite which leads you want it to look at. You can keep the request simple:

"Find the leads in Salesforce we never converted and tell me which ones are worth another try."

Or you can be more specific:

"Go through our open Salesforce leads with no activity in the last six months and flag the best 50 for the sales team."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. By the time you ask, it already knows your ideal customer profile, your current customers, and your competitors from that research, so it can suggest how old a lead has to be to count as stale and what makes a lead worth reviving. You can confirm those choices or adjust them, and then Kite starts.

You'll need to connect your Salesforce account through OAuth so Kite can read and update your leads. You don't need any other accounts, because Kite checks people and companies through its own built-in research sources. You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack.

Updating Salesforce records is routine work, so Kite makes the changes and then tells you what it did. If you'd like to see the list before anything changes in Salesforce, say so in your request.

Kite starts by learning how your team actually uses the Lead object, because every Salesforce org records lead progress a little differently. It reads all the fields on the Lead object, including the custom ones your team added, and the picklist values for Lead Status and Lead Source. The default statuses are "Open - Not Contacted", "Working - Contacted", "Closed - Converted", and "Closed - Not Converted", but many teams rename them or add their own, such as "Nurture" or "Disqualified".

From there, Kite decides which statuses mean a lead is still open and which mean someone already closed it out on purpose. It treats a lead marked "Closed - Not Converted" for a clear reason differently from one that's been sitting in "Working - Contacted" for a year, because the second one simply stalled.

Kite pulls every lead that was never converted and has had no logged activity since your cutoff, including the leads that never had any activity at all. For each one, it reads the fields that describe the lead's history:

• Lead Status and Lead Source
• Created Date and Last Activity
• Lead Owner, and whether that owner is still an active user
• Rating, if your team uses it
• Company, title, email, industry, and number of employees
• The Email Opt Out flag

Kite also reads each lead's tasks and notes. These show what actually happened: whether a rep called twice and got no answer, whether the person asked to be contacted next quarter, or whether the lead came in from a webinar and nobody ever followed up. That history is often the clearest sign of why a lead stalled and what it would take to restart the conversation.

Kite removes the leads that shouldn't get another try before it spends any effort on research. It sets aside every lead with Email Opt Out checked. It searches your contacts and accounts by email address and company, so a person who already became a contact, or whose company is already a customer or has an open opportunity, doesn't get worked twice. It also drops your competitors and leads whose notes say they asked not to be contacted.

Then it sets aside the leads that were never a fit. A student who downloaded an ebook or a company far outside your market stays out of the working list, and Kite records why.

Kite checks each remaining lead against the outside world, because an old lead's details are only as current as the day they were entered. Using its built-in research sources, it confirms whether the person still works at the company and still holds a relevant role. When they've moved on, Kite marks the lead as out of date. It can also find who holds that role now, so the account isn't lost along with the person.

Kite then looks for a reason to reach out again. It checks each company for recent events, such as a funding round, hiring in the function you serve, a new leader, an expansion, or a product launch. A lead that went quiet a year ago because the timing was wrong can be worth a call this week if its company just hired a new head of marketing.

Kite scores every lead that passes from one to five, with a one-line reason, such as "VP of operations at a 200-person logistics company, attended your webinar last year, and the company just opened a second warehouse." The score weighs fit with your ideal customer profile, how far the lead got before it stalled, and whether there's a fresh reason to get in touch. A lead that reached a demo and went quiet ranks above one that only filled in a form.

When the list runs past about fifteen leads, Kite splits it into primary and secondary groups so your team knows where to start. If only a handful of leads deserve attention, Kite says so. A short list of real opportunities is more useful than a long list of old names.

Kite updates each lead it reviewed, so the decision lives on the record where your team will see it. Leads worth working get a new Lead Status that your team uses for active follow-up, and the fit score and its reason go into lead fields. If your org has no field for them, Kite can create one. Leads that are out of date or never fit get the status your team uses to close them out, so they stop cluttering your open-lead views.

Kite also adds a note to each lead worth working. The note explains why the lead stalled, what changed since then, and the source for each fact. When a lead's owner is no longer active, Kite can run your lead assignment rules so the lead lands with someone who will follow up. It then creates a task for each owner with a due date, so the leads show up in their to-do list instead of waiting in a report.

Finally, Kite can create a Salesforce campaign for the revived leads and add each one as a campaign member. That gives you one place to see who was worked and, later, how many of them turned into opportunities.

When the work is done, Kite posts a summary in the conversation where you asked. It says how many unconverted leads it reviewed, how many it set aside and why, and how many it marked as worth another try. The full list comes with it as a table, showing each lead's score, reason, owner, and the recent event behind it, so you can scan it without opening Salesforce.

From there, Kite can write a personalized email for each primary lead, built around what changed at the company. It shows you the emails before anything is sent, and once you approve them, it can log each one on the lead's activity history in Salesforce. If you want stale leads reviewed regularly, ask Kite to run the same job every month, and it will check the leads that newly crossed your cutoff each time.

When Kite finishes, your Salesforce org holds a clean, prioritized set of stale leads that your team can work right away, and your conversation with Kite holds the record of what changed.