# The sales funnel is dead. Here comes the flywheel.

> A sales leader ditches 28 years of funnel thinking for a momentum-based model that puts customer delight at the centre.
- Title: The sales funnel is dead. Here comes the flywheel. | Shortify
- Summary: A sales leader ditches 28 years of funnel thinking for a momentum-based model that puts customer delight at the centre. The sales funnel no longer works…
- Keywords: sales strategy, customer retention, marketing, hubspot, business model, customer experience, business, management, sales, funnel, dead, Here
- Source: Harvard Business Review — https://hbr.org/2018/11/replacing-the-sales-funnel-with-the-sales-flywheel
- Author: Brian Halligan
- Published: 2018-11-20T13:05:57+00:00
- Read time: 3 min
- Topics: sales strategy, customer retention, marketing, hubspot, business model, customer experience, business, management
## Twenty eight years with the funnel
The author used the sales funnel throughout his entire career but retired it this year. Trust in traditional sources has eroded, making word-of-mouth from peers more powerful than ever.
## The funnel loses momentum
The funnel fails to capture momentum. Quarterly pushes wrung out all energy, leaving companies starting each new quarter from a standstill with no leverage or momentum.

> The sun rises and sets on the quarter.
## Inbound marketing builds assets
After years of inbound marketing, companies have evergreen content, backlinks, social media followings, and customer advocates. Marketing departments could take a month off and leads would still arrive.
## Enter the flywheel
The flywheel is a powerful metaphor. James Watt used it over two hundred years ago in his steam engine. It captures, stores, and releases energy efficiently, with a sense of leverage and momentum.
## Two dynamics make it spin
Force and friction are the two dynamics that make the flywheel spin fast. The more force applied and the more places force is added, the faster it spins.
## Where force has shifted
In the nineteen nineties, sales reps had information advantage. Around two thousand five, marketing became the bigger force. Today, delighted customers are the biggest new driver of growth.
## Changing the commission plan
In two thousand fifteen, sales reps earned commission on everything closed. Now there is a stick: clawing back commission if an account cancels within eight months. The carrot: higher rates for reps with high retention.
## Measuring lead quality
Prospects most likely to be successful customers get higher lead scores, not leads simply likely to close. Marketing success is measured by volume of most-likely-to-succeed leads, not just closed deals.
## Eliminating friction matters
Six companies, Purple, Warby Parker, Spotify, Dollar Shave Club, Trunk Club, and Lyft, all fewer than ten years old, sell undifferentiated commodities, and grow rapidly by removing friction from their flywheels.
## B2C must move fast
If your business is B2C, the train is about to leave the station. You must get ninety percent of the friction out of your model. For B2B, the train is parked but leaving soon.
## Product quality is not enough
In two thousand eighteen, customer experience must be ten times lighter than the competition. It used to be what you sell that mattered. Now it is how you sell that really matters.

> Your customer experience has to be ten times lighter than the competition.
## Shift to self-service
In a better product market, eighty percent of customer touches are handled by employees. In a lighter experience market, eighty percent must be self-service, with only twenty percent full service with humans.
## Hire T-shaped employees
In the better product era, specialists handled specific issues but created handoffs. In the better experience era, hire T-shaped employees who dive deep in one discipline but have other expertise to handle complex interactions.
## Key takeaway

The sales funnel no longer works because trust now flows through word-of-mouth and companies build momentum through customer delight, not quarterly pushes.