Recycling leads

Rizer supports recycling HubSpot leads in addition to deals. If your sales process uses leads — contacts that need qualification before becoming deals — you can track and re-engage them through the same recycling system.

This article covers how lead recycling works, how it differs from deal recycling, and how to manage recycled leads effectively.

Do you use HubSpot leads?

Before diving in, a quick clarification: HubSpot leads are a specific object type, separate from contacts and deals. Not every HubSpot account uses them.

If your sales process goes straight from contact to deal, you probably don’t use leads and can skip this article. If you have a qualification stage where contacts become “leads” before they become “deals,” then lead recycling applies to you.

Not sure? Check your HubSpot account. If you see a Leads section in your navigation or have lead pipelines configured, you’re using leads.

If your HubSpot account doesn’t use the leads object, Rizer will show you a message during setup saying lead recycling isn’t available. You’ll only see deal recycling options.

How lead recycling works

Lead recycling follows the same basic process as deal recycling:

1. A lead gets disqualified in HubSpot
2. The lead enters Rizer’s recycling system
3. You assign a recycle reason and callback date
4. Rizer tracks the lead until the callback date arrives
5. When ready, you re-engage by creating a new lead in HubSpot

The lifecycle is similar. The statuses work the same way.

Lead Statuses

Recycled leads move through these statuses:

Recycling

Leads actively being tracked. Each has a recycle reason and callback date assigned. They’re waiting for the right moment to re-engage.

This is where most recycled leads sit. Rizer watches the calendar and watches for triggers, ready to move them forward when the time comes.

Ready for callback

The callback date has arrived, or something triggered the lead early. These leads are ready for your team to pick up and re-engage.

This is your action list for leads. Review each one, decide whether to pursue it, and either re-engage or mark as completed.

Recycling completed

Leads that went through the process but weren’t re-engaged. You reviewed them and decided not to pursue — maybe the contact left the company, the company isn’t a fit anymore, or the opportunity is too small.

These stay in Rizer for historical tracking but are out of your active queue.

Qualified

The success metric for leads. These were re-engaged and qualified, meaning they moved forward in your sales process.

This is the lead equivalent of Won after recycling for deals. It’s how you measure whether your lead recycling efforts are paying off.

[Screenshot: Leads navigation showing the status tabs with counts]

How leads differ from deals

While the recycling process is similar, there are important differences between recycling leads and deals.

No products or line items

Deals in HubSpot typically have associated products — the things you’re selling. Leads don’t. They’re earlier in the process, before you’ve scoped out exactly what the prospect might buy.

Since leads don’t have products naturally, Rizer lets you assign default products during setup. If you assign default products, recycled leads show up in product-level reports. You can see how many leads were lost for each product and track qualification rates by product.

Re-engagement creates leads

When you re-engage a recycled deal, you can choose to create either a lead or a deal in HubSpot. When you re-engage a recycled lead, Rizer creates a new lead.

This makes sense — leads are earlier in the process. If someone didn’t qualify as a lead the first time, they probably need to go through qualification again. If they’ve progressed enough to skip qualification, they probably shouldn’t have been a lead in the first place.

The new lead enters the pipeline and stage you configured during Rizer setup.

Success metric is Qualification

For deals, success means closing as won. For leads, success means qualifying — moving forward in your sales process, typically becoming a deal.

Rizer tracks this automatically. When you re-engage a recycled lead and that new lead gets qualified in HubSpot, Rizer updates the original to Qualified.

Setting up lead recycling

Lead recycling is configured during the onboarding wizard, but you can adjust settings anytime.

Import settings

Go to Settings > Integrations > HubSpot > Settings inside the Lead Import section.

Import from pipeline

Select which lead pipeline or pipelines contain lost leads you want to recycle. Rizer only imports leads from pipelines you select here.

If you have multiple lead pipelines (maybe different ones for different regions or products), you can select all of them or just the ones you want to track.

Default products

Since leads don’t have line items, you can assign default products here. These products get associated with every recycled lead for reporting purposes.

Export settings

Go to the Lead Export section.

New leads pipeline

Select which pipeline new leads should be created in when you re-engage. This is usually your main lead pipeline.

New leads stage

Select which stage within that pipeline. New leads typically start at the beginning, but you might have a specific stage for recycled opportunities.

Auto-creation strategy

Same options as deals:

• Unlimited — Create leads in HubSpot as soon as they’re ready, no limits
• Limited — Set a maximum per owner per day or week
• None — All re-engagement is manual

If you use limited, you can also specify which days of the week leads can be created.

Managing recycled leads

Once leads are in recycling, you manage them the same way as deals.

Viewing lead details

1. Go to Leads > Recycling.
2. Click any lead row to view it.

You’ll see:

• Contact and company information
• Recycle reason and callback date
• Competitor information (if recorded)
• Missing feature links (if any)
• Activity timeline

Editing a recycled lead

1. Find the lead in Recycling.
2. Click to view it.
3. Click Edit.
4. Update whatever needs changing.
5. Click Save.

Marking ready early

To move a lead to ready status before the callback date:

1. Find the lead in Recycling.
2. Click to view it.
3. Click Mark ready for callback.

The lead moves to Ready for callback immediately.

Re-engaging leads

When a lead reaches its callback date and you decide to pursue it, re-engagement creates a new lead in HubSpot.

Finding Ready Leads

1. Go to Leads > Ready for callback.
2. You’ll see leads that have reached their callback date or triggered early.

[Screenshot: Ready for callback leads tab showing leads ready for re-engagement]

Each lead shows:

• When it became ready
• Contact and company information
• Owner information
• Why it was recycled
• AI suggestions for re-engagement

Re-engaging a single lead

1. Click a lead row to expand its details.
2. Review the information — remind yourself why it didn’t qualify and what might have changed.
3. Click Re-engage prospect.
4. Select which owner should be assigned the new lead.
5. Click Create.

Rizer creates a new lead in HubSpot in the pipeline and stage you configured. You’ll see a confirmation with a link to the new record.

Re-engaging multiple leads

1. In the Ready for callback list, check the box next to each lead you want to re-engage.
2. Click Re-engage prospect.
3. Assign owners — same owner for all, or individual owners.
4. Click Create.

All new leads get created in HubSpot at once.

What gets created

The new lead includes:

• Association to the same contact
• Association to the same company
• Lead name (with a recycling indicator)
• The owner you selected

The new lead starts fresh — no old notes or history cluttering things up. The relationship context is preserved through the contact and company.

What happens after re-engagement

Rizer tracks what happens to the new lead:

• If it gets qualified in HubSpot, the original recycled lead updates to Qualified after recycling
• If it doesn’t qualify again, you can recycle it for another attempt
• The cycle can repeat as many times as needed

Lead reporting

Recycled leads appear in Rizer’s reports alongside deals. You can see:

• Total leads recycled — How many leads are in your recycling system
• Leads by status — Breakdown of in recycling, ready, completed, and qualified
• Leads qualified after recycling — Your success metric
• Qualification rate — What percentage of recycled leads eventually qualify
• Time to qualification — How long from recycling to qualifying

When to recycle leads vs. let them go

Not every lead that doesn’t qualify should be recycled. Here’s how to think about it.

Recycle when…

Timing was the issue

They weren’t ready to evaluate solutions right now, but they might be in a few months. Classic recycling candidate.

Budget wasn’t available

They were interested but didn’t have money allocated. Budget cycles reset. Worth checking back when new budgets kick in.

The right person wasn’t available

Your contact couldn’t make the decision, or the actual decision-maker was unavailable. Organizational changes might open doors later.

They went dark but seemed interested

The lead was engaged and then stopped responding. People get busy. A check-in a few months later might restart things.

You were missing something they needed

A feature gap or capability issue blocked qualification. If you’re building what they need, track the lead and follow up when it ships.

Don’t recycle when…

They’re fundamentally not a fit

Wrong industry, wrong company size, wrong use case. If they’ll never be a good customer, recycling won’t change that.

The contact is gone with no path forward

Your contact left and you have no other way into the company. Without a relationship, there’s nothing to follow up on.

They explicitly said no

If they asked not to be contacted, respect that. Mark it completed and move on.

It was a bad lead from the start

If the lead should never have entered your system — spam, wrong company, student project — recycling doesn’t make sense.

When you’re unsure

Lean toward recycling. The cost of tracking a lead that never qualifies is low. The cost of forgetting one that could have qualified is higher.

You can always mark it completed later if you decide it’s not worth pursuing.