The funnel is dead.

Say what?

Yup, that funnel that you’ve been using for decades in your marketing and sales to generate traffic and then convert and close leads into customers is dead.

Let me explain:

The problem with most companies is that they have built their company designed with my dad in mind and not me in mind. In a world where customers’ main source of info was vendors, you thought of your business like a funnel. In a world where customer’s main source of info is other customers, you cannot continue to use a funnel where the Loyalty stage (where you build trust and referrals) is not even considered part of the process.

If you want to grow better in 2019, you need to match your business to the modern buyer, throw away the funnel and embrace the MBS2.0

In the past marketers followed a communication model called AIDA. The acronym stood for awareness, interest, desire, and action. So, what's missing in the AIDA model? The customer experience.

The sales funnel (based on this concept) represent the hierarchical models and it is limited due to the absence of post-purchase effects such as satisfaction, consumption, referrals etc.

Another important criticism of the hierarchical models include their reliance on the concept of a linear, hierarchical response process. Indeed, some research suggests that consumers process promotional information via dual pathways, namely both cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) simultaneously.

The 3 major issues during a sales journey using AIDA model:

First: we can’t truly and accurately predict where a lead is at. Your lead could be ready to buy, or they could be months away from buying. It’s their decision, not yours, on how and where they should spend their money.

Secondly: I consistently see one of the most important stages left off all sales funnels that is the Loyalty stage, so their actions after that first purchase denote their loyalty to your brand and subsequently more business for you, and maintaining a good relationship is a way that encourages them to tell others about your product or service and generate referalls.

Thirdly: The metrics and KPIs around the “stages of the sales funnel” are complete inadeguate today, there is no consideration of the conversation you are having with your leads, the allignment of the sales person has with your marketing narrative.

The sales funnel really gives companies, and executive teams, the wrong idea of who is buying from them.

A human is buying from us. Not a percentage. Not a robot. Not a “conversion ratio.” A human, in the end.

Customer Experience Determines the Success of Your Business

The fundamental problem with the funnel is that it shows the customers as an output whereas customers nowadays are an input. In addition the beginning of the buying process has changed. It’s worth-of-mouth now that drives the majority of new customers.

The death of the funnel is not the end of sales and marketing. They just need to adjust their energy and release it in a much more efficient way.

Why the MBS2.0 works is because it doesn’t just explain the needs you have as a business for the month or the quarter, but digs into the entirety of the customer journey.

To make the MBS2.0 work, you need 4 key ingredients:

1- Design your marketing around delighting customer not closing customer

2- Your business should move to serve the customer, bulding customer experience

3- Hard and Soft Sales skills alligned with a Marketing narrative.

4- Mantain relationship, cosistenly building trust and customer loyalty.

Does all this make sense?

A quick recap:

The Sales Funnel is Outdated: The sales funnel is a model that’s been around for nearly 100 years. It’s time to put it to bed.

The MBS2.0 Replaces the Sales Funnel: Instead of tracking leads and following blindly the linear hierarchical models we constantly optimizing each element of customer journey, we’re able to generate a big impact in term of branding and trust building. Yes it’s a lot of hard work, but in most cases it pays for itself.

If you want to learn about MBS2.0 Schedule a discussion with our expert

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