Find dormant leads in Pipedrive: filters that work

Here is how to find dormant leads in Pipedrive: build a filter on people whose last activity date sits 4 to 18 months back, add lost deals as their own view, mark the result with labels and export to CSV for working it. Everything is done with standard features, no add-on app needed.

The numbers that justify the job: when HBR's researchers tested 2,241 US companies, 23 percent never answered a web inquiry at all (HBR, 2011), and a B2B SaaS lead costs $249 to generate, blended across channels (First Page Sage, 2026). In a Pipedrive account used for a few years, that sum times several thousand sits gathering dust.

Which filters should you build?

Pipedrive is deal centered, so you need to look in two places: among people and among deals.

Filter 1: dormant people. Go to Contacts, People, and create a new filter:

1. Last activity date is earlier than 4 months ago.
2. Last activity date is later than 18 months ago.
3. Email is not empty.
4. Person has no open deals. Open deals mean someone is already working them.

If the Last activity date field is sparsely filled in for you, supplement with Updated as a rough proxy, but be aware that bulk updates pollute that field.

Filter 2: lost deals. Go to Deals and filter on status Lost with a close date 4 to 18 months back. The people behind those deals are the segment's top priority: they have seen a proposal and a price. Also look at the lost reason, "wrong timing" and "no budget" are candidates, "recently chose a competitor" can wait.

How do you use labels?

Labels are Pipedrive's simplest way to make the segment persistent. Select all matches in the filter and set a label, for example Dormant. Create levels if you want:

• Dormant hot: a lost deal or unanswered inbound.
• Dormant: the rest in the 4 to 18 month window.
• Dormant old: older than 18 months, requires verification before sending.

The point of the label is that you can later filter on it directly, track how the segment shrinks and exclude it from other work so no one double-contacts.

What do you do with ownerless leads and leads of inactive owners?

Filter on Owner and go through people owned by employees who have left. It is a classic source of dormant leads: when a salesperson leaves and no one takes over the book, the whole stock goes quiet at once. Reassign ownership before working it, a lead without an active owner never gets followed up.

How do you export the list?

Open the filter or label view, select all and choose export to CSV. Include name, email, organization, title, owner, last activity date, label and any linked deal with its lost reason.

Before sending:

• Verify the email addresses. People change jobs: the median US worker had been with their current employer for 4.1 years in January 2026 (BLS), so some of the list has changed role or company.
• Respect unsubscribes. Pipedrive does not block sends for you if you work them through an external tool, so keep your own suppression list.

How do you work the segment?

Signal driven and personal, not as a mass send. Look for what has happened since last time per lead: a new position holder, a funding round, hires, a return visit to your site. A lead stamped "not ready" was often the right company at the wrong time. Manual monitoring scales to around fifty leads per person. Beyond that, a buying-signal agent like Revexa's Leo is the realistic option: he watches for signals, judges each company against the ideal customer profile he builds from your website and drafts the message in your voice for you to approve. Start Leo, 7 days free.

Frequently asked questions

Which Pipedrive plan is required?

Filters, labels and CSV export are included in all plans. No marketing module is needed for the segmentation itself.

Should you use the Leads inbox or People?

Both. The Leads inbox collects unqualified leads that often get forgotten entirely, filter it on created more than 4 months ago. People captures everything that was once qualified.

How often should you run the filter?

Quarterly. Save the filter and the rerun takes minutes, and the labels let you see what has already been worked.