Understanding Lead Statuses in Sequences

Last updated: October 21, 2026

When managing sequences, you may notice different status indicators for your contacts and steps. Understanding what each status means can help you monitor your outreach effectively and resolve any issues that arise.

Status Definitions

Pending

A Pending status means a step is waiting for a specific condition to be met before it can proceed. There are a few common reasons a step may be pending:

  • LinkedIn Message Dependencies: If a sequence includes a LinkedIn connection request followed by a LinkedIn message, the message step will remain pending until the connection request is accepted. Any subsequent LinkedIn steps will also stay pending until the invitation is accepted.

  • Email Throttling: Email steps may queue as pending when they are scheduled after a configured wait period, or when sending is being throttled due to mailbox limits or deliverability safeguards.

Waiting for Approval

A Waiting for Approval status appears when a sequence is running in Copilot mode and leads are queued for manual approval before enrollment. When a lead has this status, all steps will show as Pending, but Topo will not start any steps until you manually approve and enroll the lead.

  • Open your Tasks and click "Approve & Enroll" for those leads

  • Switch the sequence from Copilot to Auto-pilot mode to enable automatic enrollment without manual approval

Failed

A Failed status indicates that a step in your sequence could not be executed successfully. This represents an interruption in the workflow and helps you identify where your sequence has stopped progressing as expected.

A sequence template's Advanced settings include Contact catch-all emails, which is on by default. Catch-all domains accept any address, so the mailbox cannot be confirmed. When the toggle is off, a lead with a catch-all email is still enrolled and is never emailed. The choice applies to enrollments made after it is saved. If the sequence template skips failed email steps and still has another channel, it continues without the email steps. Otherwise the sequence is Failed, and the lead's sequence tab says Catch-all email. That lead can be enrolled again later. An invalid email is refused, and that lead does not get a sequence.

Additional common causes of failed steps include:

  • LinkedIn connection request timeout: When a LinkedIn connection request is not accepted within the configured timeout period, the step is marked as failed and the sequence stops progressing. The default timeout is 7 days and can be customized up to 30 days.

  • Automatic exclusion rules: Leads may fail if their company has been automatically added to exclusion lists based on reply behavior. These settings are configured at Settings > Organization > Exclusions > Automatic exclusions and can be overridden at the sequence level.

  • Mailbox changes: Modifications to connected mailboxes can cause sequence steps to fail.

  • 1-month timeout due to low sending speed: If contacts are enrolled in a sequence but are not contacted within a month because of low sending speed, they time out and fail, with all steps marked as Skipped. This typically occurs when the How many new leads per day setting is too low relative to the number of enrolled leads, especially when sender capacity is shared across multiple sequences.

Troubleshooting Pending and Failed Contacts

If contacts are stuck in a Pending state, here are some steps to help resolve the issue:

  1. Check LinkedIn Connection Status: Verify whether your LinkedIn invitations have been accepted. Unaccepted invitations will keep all subsequent LinkedIn message steps in a pending state.

  2. Review Step Delays: Check the configured wait times in your sequence. A pending status may simply indicate that the system is waiting out the delay period before executing the next step.

  3. Verify Sender Health: Review your sender's capacity and deliverability score. Low deliverability scores or reaching daily send limits can cause email steps to be throttled and queued as pending.

  4. Diagnose Failed Leads: To identify the exact failure reason for leads showing Failed status, open the sequence's Leads tab, sort by Sequence status = Failed, click into individual failed leads, and open the Activity panel to view the exact failure reason or error message. If you need further clarification, open the AI Agent and ask something like "Why did this contact fail?" or "Why is this sequence stuck?": this is the fastest way to identify what is blocking those specific leads.

  5. Check Exclusion Lists: Review your organization's exclusion settings at Settings > Organization > Exclusions to ensure leads have not been automatically excluded due to reply behavior. You can customize these settings at the sequence level if needed.

Diagnosing Sequence Progression Issues

If leads aren't progressing through your sequence, the best way to diagnose stalled sequences is to ask the in-app AI Agent, with a prompt along the lines of: "Why is the sequences @[sequence name] stalled?"