Each Lifecycle Stage has its own purpose and meaning. All the Lifecycle Stages are predefined by Lead Liaison. Definitions are provided below:
Anonymous = Any Prospect without an email address is an Anonymous Prospect. This stage does not appear in reports and graphs; however, can be used as a filter for Segmentation, Fulfilment Actions, etc.
Suspect = A Prospect (with an email address) who has not shown interest in your services through inbound activity like a website visit or email click.
Engaged = A Prospect who has registered inbound activity.
Marketing Qualified = Commonly referred to as Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Prospects who have demonstrated enough interest for marketing to qualify as ready for sales.
Sales Qualified = Prospects that your sales team have further qualified and accepted for direct follow up or contact.
Opportunity = Prospects who have a real, qualified sales opportunity in your CRM.
Customer = Prospects who have a closed-won opportunity in your CRM.
Evangelist = Prospects who are not currently sales opportunities, but advocates for your business.
Disqualified = Prospects who are not qualified. This could be for many reasons, such as poor contact information, not meeting your Budget, Authorization, Need, Timeline (BANT) criteria, etc.
Other = Anything your want! Consider it to be a wildcard stage that your business can use for any reason.
Some of the Lifecycle Stages are managed by us whereas the rest are left for you to decide how you'd like to manage them.
Lead Liaison will automatically manage when a Prospect moves into the following Lifecycle Stages:
Anonymous = Any Prospect, such as a visitor, who does not have an email address is added to this Stage.
Suspect = Any Prospect without inbound activity who has an email is promoted to this Stage.
Engaged = Any Prospect with inbound activity is promoted to this Stage.
Opportunity = Any Prospect associated with a Deal created in OneFocus™ will move to this Stage. For customers using Salesforce.com, any Contact in the Contact Roles section of the Salesforce.com Opportunity will move to this Stage.
Customer = Any Prospect associated with a Closed-Won Deal created in OneFocus™ move to this Stage. For customers using Salesforce.com, any Contact in the Contact Roles section of the Salesforce.com Opportunity and the Opportunity is moved to Closed-Won status will move to this Stage.
You're responsible for defining and setting up your company's business processes to move Prospects into the following Stages:
Marketing Qualified = Used by your marketing team to show a prospect is sales ready. Qualify prospects through key conversion forms (such as contact forms, demo requests, trials, etc.) and high-value gated content (such as buying guides, videos, playbooks, case-studies, etc.).
Sales Qualified = Used by your sales team to indicate which Prospects they've accepted as being ready for direct contact, and qualified for sales.
Evangelist = Used to put your promoters or evangelists into this stage. These are the people that spread the word about your organization through word of mouth, referrals, and high online ratings/reviews.
Disqualified = Used by sales or marketing to indicate that a prospect does not qualify for your services.
Other = Use this however you'd like!
Our complete documentation on Lifecycle Stages is available here.