Revenue Operations
Revive Stale Sales Opportunities
Diagnose why a verified opportunity appears stale and draft a respectful reactivation plan without inventing buyer intent or urgency.
Quick facts
- Best for
- Owners · Founder-operators · Sales leaders
- Prompt type
- Effectiveness
- Expected result
- A stale-opportunity reactivation plan with a supported status assessment, hypotheses, stop conditions, draft touchpoints, and missing evidence.
- Time saved
- 45-75 minutes per stale-opportunity review
- Required inputs
- PIPELINE STAGE · PRIOR CONTACT HISTORY · VERIFIED OBJECTIONS · PROMISED ACTIONS · DECISION PROCESS · RELEVANT DATES · OFFER · CRM FIELDS · FOLLOW-UP OWNER
- Works with
- ChatGPT + Claude
What this prompt does
- Tests whether the supplied history supports calling an opportunity stale and identifies the evidence needed to decide.
- Drafts a bounded reactivation path with stop conditions and owner decisions.
When to use
- When a service opportunity has no documented next step or has passed a supplied follow-up date and needs evidence-based review.
When not to use
- Do not use it to ignore opt-outs, invent a reason for silence, revive a closed opportunity, or contact anyone without verified permission and human approval.
- Do not place unauthorized records or unnecessary personal, sensitive, or confidential data in an AI system.
The prompt
#CONTEXT:
Review a potentially stale service-business opportunity and create a reactivation plan for human consideration. Use only the supplied record; inactivity alone does not prove lost interest.
#INPUTS:
- Current verified pipeline stage: [PIPELINE STAGE]
- Contact history, channels, responses, and consent facts: [PRIOR CONTACT HISTORY]
- Objections explicitly stated by the buyer: [VERIFIED OBJECTIONS]
- Actions explicitly promised by either party: [PROMISED ACTIONS]
- Known decision participants, criteria, and process: [DECISION PROCESS]
- Relevant dates, stale threshold, and timing constraints: [RELEVANT DATES]
- Approved service offer, scope, and claims: [OFFER]
- Supplied CRM fields, including blanks and conflicts: [CRM FIELDS]
- Named human follow-up owner: [FOLLOW-UP OWNER]
#INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Determine whether the supplied stale threshold and dates support a stale label. If not, mark status Unknown and name the missing evidence.
2. Do not invent, infer, or fabricate commitments, quotes, dates, objections, decisions, contact facts, or CRM state. Mark unsupported details Unknown with their missing evidence.
3. Separate observed inactivity from possible explanations. Label every explanation as a hypothesis, never buyer intent.
4. Check for an opt-out, closed status, unresolved promise, expired offer, unsupported contact channel, or conflicting CRM state. Recommend no outreach draft when any stop condition applies.
5. Create a reactivation plan with objective, evidence, one primary draft, one optional follow-up draft, timing tied to supplied dates, and a clear stop condition.
6. Use only approved offer facts. Do not create scarcity, a concession, discount, new deadline, guarantee, or commitment.
7. Prioritize resolving seller-promised actions before requesting a new buyer action.
8. Use only authorized records in an approved AI workspace or approved AI vendor. Minimize the supplied data and redact or omit unnecessary personal, sensitive, or confidential data. Follow company retention and vendor policy.
9. Do not send, contact, schedule, change a live CRM, make a commitment, or present an offer. A named human owner must approve the exact draft and each consequential action before use.
#RESPONSE FORMAT:
## Stale-status assessment
- Supported, unsupported, or Unknown — evidence — missing evidence
## Record conflicts and stop conditions
- Finding — supplied source — owner decision needed
## Stale-opportunity reactivation plan
| Step | Objective | Evidence used | Proposed timing | Draft message | Stop condition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
## Hypotheses to validate
- Possible explanation — evidence for — evidence against — question for owner
## Human approval checklist
- Consent and status verified
- Seller promises resolved
- Draft claims verified
- CRM changes separately approvedInput checklist
- PIPELINE STAGE
- PRIOR CONTACT HISTORY
- VERIFIED OBJECTIONS
- PROMISED ACTIONS
- DECISION PROCESS
- RELEVANT DATES
- OFFER
- CRM FIELDS
- FOLLOW-UP OWNER
Example input
Fictional example — PIPELINE STAGE: Discovery complete. PRIOR CONTACT HISTORY: Casey at Larkspur Studio replied by email on June 20; two later seller emails are logged; no opt-out is recorded; phone consent unknown. VERIFIED OBJECTIONS: Implementation capacity during July. PROMISED ACTIONS: Seller promised a revised phased option but the record does not show delivery. DECISION PROCESS: Casey and finance lead review; final approver unknown. RELEVANT DATES: Team defines stale as 21 days without a buyer response; last buyer response June 20; review date July 31. OFFER: Northstar Process Assessment; approved scope supplied; current price and availability unknown. CRM FIELDS: Stage=Discovery complete; status=open; next_step=send phased option; close_date blank. FOLLOW-UP OWNER: Ravi, Account Executive.Expected output structure
- A stale-opportunity reactivation plan with a supported status assessment, hypotheses, stop conditions, draft touchpoints, and missing evidence.
Customize this prompt
- Supply your approved stale threshold instead of relying on a generic number of days.
- Include opt-out and closed-status fields so the review can stop inappropriate reactivation.
Guardrails
- Do not invent, infer, or fabricate commitments, quotes, dates, objections, decisions, contact facts, or CRM state; mark unsupported details Unknown with the missing evidence.
- A named human owner must approve every external send, external message, contact, and scheduling action before any action.
- A named human owner must approve every live CRM record or account update before any update.
- A named human owner must approve every commitment, promise, offer, price, policy exception, permission, and legal commitment before any action.
- A named human owner must approve every payment, billing, financial, tax, or pricing decision before any action.
- Use only authorized records in an approved AI workspace or approved AI vendor; minimize data, redact or omit unnecessary personal, sensitive, or confidential data, and follow company retention and vendor policy.
- Honor verified opt-outs and stop conditions; the assistant must not revive, execute, or update anything.
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