Lifecycle stage disqualification to "Other" for bad-fit leads

Outcome. Leads that are a clear firmographic mismatch, or flagged as spam or a test submission, move to the "Other" lifecycle stage automatically, keeping MQL and SQL conversion reporting honest instead of skewed by leads that were never going to convert.

Workflow map Enrollment, branches and actions at a glance marketing-ops-015

flowchart TD
    A[bad_fit_flag set, or industry/size changes] --> B{Already Opportunity or Customer?}
    B -->|Yes| Z[No action, excluded]
    B -->|No| C{bad_fit_flag = true?}
    C -->|Yes| D[Set lifecycle stage: Other]
    D --> E[Set disqualification reason]
    E --> F[Add to Disqualified - Other list]
    C -->|No| G{Industry and size both fail target-fit check?}
    G -->|Yes| D
    G -->|No| Z

When to use it, when not to

• UseUse when your target-fit criteria are simple and stable enough to check automatically, such as industry and company size, or when a rep can flag an obvious bad fit with one checkbox during review.
• UseUse for genuinely disqualifying cases: wrong industry, too small or too large, spam, duplicate test submissions, direct competitors.
• SkipDo not use this on a contact already at Opportunity or Customer stage. A live deal or an existing customer is not "Other" material regardless of a firmographic mismatch discovered later; route those to a manual review task instead, see Known pitfalls.
• SkipDo not use automated industry/size matching alone if your target-fit definition is nuanced or changes often. A manual flag reviewed by a person may be more reliable than a brittle automated filter in that case.