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Mark a Lead as Trash (and Un-Trash One)

TRASHED is the column for leads whose contact data is wrong — bogus phone number, bounced email, obvious junk like asdf asdf in the name field, or a duplicate of an existing lead. It’s not a column for leads who are real people you’ve given up on.

That distinction matters because the system treats the two cases differently.

Use TRASHED when

Section titled “Use TRASHED when”
  • The phone number rings to the wrong person, never rings, or is clearly fake (555-555-5555, all zeros, sequential digits).
  • The email bounces, is obviously a throwaway (test@test.com), or doesn’t resolve to a deliverable mailbox.
  • The submission is junk — asdf, qwerty, gibberish in every field.
  • You’ve identified a duplicate of an existing lead with valid contact info.

Use ARCHIVED instead when

Section titled “Use ARCHIVED instead when”
  • The contact data is valid but the lead has gone unresponsive after multiple attempts.
  • They explicitly asked to be left alone (set the appropriate communication flag too).
  • You’ve worked the lead for months and they’ve stalled completely.

The rule of thumb: TRASHED is about the data, ARCHIVED is about the person. If you wouldn’t get through to a real human on the phone or email even in principle, it’s trash. If you could reach them but they’re not engaging, archive.

How to mark a lead as trash

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From the detail page, or from the card’s ⋯ menu on the board:

  1. Open the lead’s detail page.
  2. In the Lifecycle card, under Setbacks and exits, click Mark as bogus. It is offered from NEW and from CONTACTING.
  3. Pick a Reason. The dialog will not submit without one:
    • Phone number is invalid
    • Email bounces
    • Number reaches the wrong person
    • Spam or bot submission
    • Duplicate of another lead (name the kept lead in the note)
    • Other
  4. Add a short note if it helps a future agent (“number connects to a 7-Eleven in Reno”).
  5. Click the red Mark as bogus button.

The timeline gets a Marked as bogus row with the stage change, the reason code in monospace, and your note. The reason matters: a teammate looking at the lead later sees not just that you trashed it but why.

What happens after a lead is trashed

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  • The card moves to the TRASHED column on the board.
  • The lead stops appearing in active queries (most filters exclude TRASHED by default).
  • The lead is not deleted. The record, the timeline, and any contact history all stay intact.
  • Automated outreach stops.

TRASHED is not permanent — the re-entry edge

Section titled “TRASHED is not permanent — the re-entry edge”

If the contact info gets fixed, the lead can re-enter the standard intake flow at NEW. This is TRASHED → NEW via the contact_info_updated trigger.

The common scenario: a lead submits a contact form with a typo’d phone number. You trash it. Two days later they call the office with the right number, or you spot the correct one on a second submission.

This is a button, not an automatic match. Open the trashed lead and click Contact info fixed in the Lifecycle card; it is the only action offered from TRASHED. Make sure the corrected number or email is on the record too. The button records the stage move, it does not edit contact fields.

When the lead re-enters NEW:

  • The SLA clock starts fresh.
  • The card returns to your NEW column.
  • The timeline preserves the original TRASHED transition, the contact-info-updated event, and the re-entry — the full history is visible to whoever picks up the lead next.

What if you trashed a lead by mistake

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You moved a lead to TRASHED, then realized the contact data was actually fine — you misread the phone number or the email isn’t actually bouncing.

Open the detail page and click Contact info fixed. It is the only way out of TRASHED, and it lands the lead back in NEW with a fresh response clock even if they were in CONTACTING before. Put “trashed in error” in the note so the timeline explains itself. Both moves stay on the record.

Don’t try to “fix” a misplaced trash by deleting the lead — there’s no delete action on a lead with history, and there shouldn’t be. Reversing the state transition is the right move.

Why we don’t have a hard-delete

Section titled “Why we don’t have a hard-delete”

Two reasons:

  • Recovery. Bad contact data gets corrected more often than agents migrating from other CRMs expect. The re-entry edge is real, not theoretical.
  • Audit. A trashed lead has a timeline. Deleting it would erase that timeline and the reason it was trashed. If a question comes up six months later (“why didn’t we respond to this person’s inquiry?”), the timeline is the answer.

The cost of keeping trashed leads in the database is approximately zero. The cost of losing the trail because someone clicked delete is high.

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