Your Customers Don't Use a Funnel. So Why Do You?

That neat, orderly sales funnel diagram that’s been on marketing PowerPoints for 30 years? Take it, print it out, and put it in the bin.

Your Customers Don't Use a Funnel. So Why Do You?

Because in 2025, it’s not just outdated; it’s actively misleading your business. We love the funnel because it’s simple. It’s a tidy, linear image that makes us feel in control. But our customers have never seen our funnel diagram. They don’t care about our ‘stages’. They are on their own messy, chaotic, and completely unpredictable journey.

And by clinging to our tidy little map, we’re getting hopelessly lost.

The Power Has Shifted (And It's Not Coming Back)

The sales funnel was invented for a world that no longer exists—a world where the salesperson held all the information. That era is over. Today, the buyer is in complete control.

Research from groups like Gartner has shown that B2B buyers can spend as little as 17% of their purchasing journey actually meeting with potential suppliers. The other 83% of the time? They’re on their own: reading independent reviews, watching demo videos from third parties, asking for advice in Slack communities, and comparing pricing on their own terms.

By the time they finally decide to talk to your sales team, they are already experts. Trying to force them back to the "top of the funnel" with generic ‘awareness’ content isn't just ineffective; it's insulting to them.

A Story: How the Funnel Kills Deals

I saw this happen with a SaaS client here in Singapore just last year. A potential buyer, a senior manager at a target company, read a detailed comparison on a tech blog and went straight to their pricing page. She was educated, interested, and ready for a serious conversation about value.

But their marketing automation system, built on a rigid funnel logic, saw her only as a ‘new contact.’ Instead of getting a prompt to book a demo with an expert, the system automatically dumped her into the top-of-funnel email sequence. She started getting a series of ‘Welcome to our brand!’ emails.

She told me later she just laughed and closed the tab. The funnel didn't just fail to help; it actively got in the way and annoyed a high-intent buyer.

The Alternative? Think Like a Flywheel, Not a Funnel

So if the funnel is broken, what’s the replacement? The smartest companies today think less about a linear path and more about a continuous cycle.

HubSpot famously threw out its funnel and replaced it with a ‘flywheel’. The idea is simple but profound: the goal isn’t to push a customer out the bottom of a process. The goal is to create such a good experience that your happy customers add energy back into the business through referrals, repeat purchases, and positive reviews, spinning the wheel faster. It’s a model of perpetual motion, not a one-way street to a single transaction.

How to Navigate the New Reality

You don't need to perfectly predict every customer's journey. You just need to build a system that is flexible enough to respond helpfully whenever and wherever they appear.

• Be a Detective, Not a Cartographer. Stop drawing the map you want customers to follow. Instead, use your analytics and CRM data to investigate the paths they actually take. You might discover your best customers are coming from a niche online community you’ve been ignoring.

  
  

• Build an Arsenal, Not a Pathway. Instead of creating content for rigid stages ("read this blog, then this ebook"), build a library of valuable, standalone resources. Things like ROI calculators, interactive demos, or in-depth case studies are useful to someone at any point in their journey.

  
  

• Follow the Signal, Not the Stage. A person's actions tell you more than their theoretical position in your funnel. If someone is repeatedly visiting your integration and pricing pages, that’s a massive signal of intent. Your system should respond to that behaviour with a relevant offer (like a personalised demo), not treat them like a brand-new lead.

  
  

• Value the Hand-Raise, Not Just the Handshake. Not every interaction needs to be a sales meeting. A newsletter sign-up, a free tool download, or a webinar attendance are all valuable hand-raises. Companies like Canva and Notion built empires on this idea, letting people get value for free for months or even years before they ever considered upgrading.

  
  

• The Sale Is Just the Start of the Next Journey. The funnel model incorrectly assumes the journey ends at the purchase. In the flywheel model, a happy customer is a powerful new beginning—a source for a great case study, an advocate who provides referrals, or an opportunity for a future upsell.

  
  

Stop Controlling the Journey. Start Improving It.

The comfort of the old sales funnel is tempting. It gives us neat stages and tidy reports that look good in a presentation. But it's a fiction.

The job of a modern marketing and sales leader isn't to be a tour guide on a fixed, linear route. It’s to be more like a helpful park ranger in a vast national park—providing useful maps, putting up helpful signs, and being ready to offer expert advice whenever and wherever a traveller decides they need it.

Stop trying to force your buyers down a path they don't want to take. Be ready to meet them where they are.