How are people managing outreach activity?

here’s an example… the Lifecycle Stage of a contact starts at Subscriber, then goes to Lead and then to MQL. technically, someone i’m reaching out to is QUALIFIED, but they really aren’t a LEAD per-se, at least not in the early stages. so i’m curious how to use a field like this. seems like someone must have a best practices guide or at least some helpful hints on how to work these early pre-lead stages while prospecting.