From Funnels to Flywheels
Traditional sales organizations used the concept of a sales “funnel” to describe the process through which potential customers move, ending up with sales at the end. Winners today have abandoned that way of thinking in favor of building flywheels — business models in which every element reinforces every other.
Ah, the marketing funnel, we knew it well
A staple of the required business school marketing course, students are taught that prospective customers move through a predictable set of experiences. It is usually depicted as something like this:
Understanding the funnel makes sense when one is trying to evaluate the leading indicators of future sales success. Gail Goodwin, the onetime CEO of small business direct mail service Constant Contact observed that looking after the pipeline — the flow through the funnel — was essential to the company escaping the “long, slow SaaS, ramp of death.”
The funnel concept has a lot to like. For starters, you could begin to anticipate how well your business would do by measuring how many potential customers got in at the…
