From Funnels To Flywheels

From Funnels To Flywheels Rita McGrath I Thought Sparks

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:

Ah, the marketing funnel, we knew it well

Cracks in the funnel model But the funnel has its limitations, and the inflection point that is digital has exposed them. As Hubspot co-founder Brian Halligan points out in a recent Harvard Business Review article, it was born at a time when there were tremendous information inequalities between buyers and sellers. Those selling a product could leverage this information imbalance to create a role as a trusted partner because the buyer couldn’t solve their own problems.

Today, the relationship between buyers and sellers began to resemble a continuous flow of interactions. In many modern models, the sale isn’t even the end of the process – it’s somewhere in the middle (particularly true with subscription and software-as-a-service models). Here’s an example:

From winding journey to flywheel

A step beyond this revised view of an interactive customer journey is when a company can create what Jim Collins famously called a flywheel. As he puts it, imagine rolling a huge, heavy disc on its axel. The first few times you try to roll it, you have to put a huge amount of energy in for a seemingly insignificant response. But as it picks up momentum, the same amount of effort on your part yields faster turns.

The more you go at it, eventually the flywheel takes on momentum of its own and begins to turn without any particular effort from you.

Where from here?

So much for the sales funnel, bring on the flywheel! Think about expressing your business in these terms.

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