RevOps playbook · AI Employee: Rev

Stale Opp Cleanup

CRM hygiene improves; forecast accuracy up

Install this playbookBack to marketplace
The problem

Sales pipelines accumulate deadwood. Every AE has a handful of opportunities that never moved past discovery from 8 months ago, a few that were paused for "budget refresh" and never picked up, and some where the champion left the company and nobody updated the record. The pipeline shows $12M in weighted value; half of it is fictitious. Forecasts drift, quarterly reviews waste time discussing dead deals, and real at-risk deals hide in the noise.

At a glance
Trigger
Cron (weekly)
Approvals
Owner can veto close
What it does
Writes to your systems
Systems
Salesforce · HubSpot
How it feels in production

An hour-by-hour walkthrough.

Every Monday morning, Rev scans every open opportunity for staleness signals: - No activity (email, call, meeting) in 30+ days - No stage progression in 60+ days - Close date pushed 3+ times - Champion left the company (LinkedIn signal) - Primary contact bounced or disconnected - Deal age exceeds 2x median for its segment + stage For each stale opp, Rev drafts a triage recommendation to the AE: - Reopen (draft outreach sequence + suggested talking points based on recent product / news updates) - Close-lost with reason ("no-decision — stalled since X, champion departed") - Push to nurture (long-term, low-touch cadence via marketing) - Keep active with new plan (AE writes the plan, Rev tracks execution) AE reviews the batch in 15-30 minutes. Approves triage per opp. Rev executes: closes lost with structured reason, moves to nurture with marketing handoff, or starts the reopen outreach sequence with the AE's approval on drafted messages. Quarterly cleanup: aggressive pass on opportunities older than 12 months without meaningful signal. Forecast becomes cleaner; QBRs focus on real deals; at-risk detection surfaces genuine risks instead of drowning in dead pipeline.
How it works

Step by step.

  1. 01

    Monday-morning staleness scan

    Every open opp against staleness signals. Multi-signal threshold: single signal (30-day no-activity on early-stage deal) may be normal; multi-signal (activity gap + stage stall + champion departed) triggers triage.

    Salesforce · HubSpot · CRM
  2. 02

    Draft triage recommendation per stale opp

    Reopen: outreach sequence + product/news update angle. Close-lost: structured reason from context. Nurture: marketing handoff. Keep-active: prompt AE to write the plan.

    Reasoning · Outreach cadence · Marketing nurture · Content library
  3. 03

    AE reviews + approves the batch

    Batched review UI: 20-40 opps in 20-30 minutes. Per opp: approve triage, edit, or skip. Skip = keep as-is (with an explicit "deferred" note to prevent repeat surfacing next week).

    Web UI · Slack · Teams
  4. 04

    Execute triage decisions

    Close-lost: structured reason + cascade to marketing (re-engagement window) + loss-summary. Nurture: marketing handoff with segmentation. Reopen: outreach sequence started; AE approves each message.

    CRM · Marketing platform · Outreach · Cadence tools
  5. 05

    Track outcomes + quarterly deep-clean

    Weekly outcome tracking: reopens converting to real activity, nurture yielding future opps, closed-lost reasons feeding the loss model. Quarterly aggressive pass on 12+ month opps with no signal.

    Analytics · CRM · CSM leader dashboard
Systems and wiring

What you connect to make this run.

Salesforce · HubSpot · CRM

read+write

Opportunity data + activity history + contact status. Write triage outcomes: close-lost, stage changes, nurture flags, next-action tasks.

Outreach · Salesloft · Cadence tools

read+write

Reopen outreach sequences drafted; AE approves each message; Rev handles cadence scheduling. Activity + reply signals flow back to opp state.

Marketing platform (HubSpot · Marketo · Iterable)

read+write

Nurture handoff: contact moves to long-term nurture segment. Marketing owns cadence; sales sees re-engagement signals (opens, form fills) as re-qualification triggers.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

read

Champion job-change signals. Contact departures trigger stale-opp review earlier than the calendar-only signals would.

What changes

Before and after, honestly.

Pipeline stale-value % of total pipeline
Before
30-55%
After
5-12%
Forecast accuracy improvement
Before
Baseline
After
+15-25% (cleaner denominator)
AE hours per week on pipeline hygiene
Before
2-5 hours
After
20-30 minutes (Monday review)
Reopens yielding real activity
Before
Not tracked
After
15-30% of reopens yield reply + advancement
Related

Playbooks that pair with this one.

RevOps

Deal-at-Risk Detection

Same signals, different threshold. At-risk = active deal deteriorating; stale = paused deal.

RevOps

Closed-Lost Cascade

Close-lost triage decisions flow into the loss cascade with structured reasons.

RevOps

Renewal Pipeline Review

Same weekly cadence for customer-side; joint discipline across new + renew.

Frequently asked

Answers about this playbook.

What if the AE insists a stale-looking opp is still real?

Keep-active is a valid triage path. AE provides the plan (next-step + expected timeline). Plan becomes tracked commitment; missed plan re-surfaces the opp next Monday. No hiding.

How does it handle multi-year enterprise deals with long cycles?

Segment-specific stale thresholds. Enterprise deals with 12-month cycles get different staleness signals than SMB 30-day cycles. Historical data per segment tunes the model.

What about opps waiting on a specific product roadmap item?

"Waiting-on-product" tag with expected date. Excluded from staleness triage until the product date passes. Product-team change (feature slipped) triggers re-triage.

How does it handle team turnover (AE leaves, opp reassigned)?

Reassigned opps get a fresh review by the new owner. Staleness clock partially reset (30 days for new owner to make contact); prior staleness signals preserved as context.

Can we exclude specific opps from cleanup?

Strategic-hold flag per opp for high-value long-term deals. Excluded from auto-triage; visible in dashboards; reviewed manually quarterly by sales leader.

See it run on your data.

Free plan, no credit card. Connect the systems this playbook needs and run it against a past event first.

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