From Funnels to Flywheels

For years, we were taught to treat sales like a funnel. Leads in. Prospects down. Customers out. But in 2025, that model no longer matches how people actually buy. The traditional funnel treats sales like a linear, one-way journey. But today's buyers move in loops, or spirals, not lines. They pause. Re-enter. Research again. Disappear off the face of the planet. Then loop in new decision-makers. Change direction.

If you're still forecasting with a linear mindset, you're flying blind. Today we'll compare the old funnel to modern best practices, highlight what's changed in buyer behavior, and show how a more dynamic, flywheel-like journey has emerged.

Trade your funnel for a flywheel

For small teams and technical founders, understanding this shift is essential. The old funnel model was all about control — "move them through the pipeline." Get enough leads and some will filter down to sales, so cast a wide net. But now your customers control the pace, timing, and process.

Modern buyers:

• Conduct research on their own
• Engage multiple vendors at once
• Consult peers and tools like ChatGPT or Reddit before talking to sales
• Pause mid-journey and re-emerge three months later, seemingly out of the blue, ready to pick up where you left off

The sales process is no longer a funnel. It's a flywheel.

And your job is to stay relevant at every turn. The flywheel sales model looks like:

• A lead downloads content… but doesn't respond for weeks.
• A buyer ghosts your demo… then loops back with a new stakeholder.
• A cold prospect from Q1… pops up in Q3, ready to buy.

The point? These buyers aren't flaky. They're overloaded. A buyer-first process accounts for that.

Old funnel vs. new flywheel

The good news is flywheels can be great for building momentum — actually much better than funnels. They're just different. With the tools available today, you can build a flywheel that keeps your revenue flowing in strong. See the full Revenue Flywheel System for how the three drivers fit together.

Action step

Map your last five closed deals and ask yourself:

• Did the buyer follow your sales steps, or did they skip around?
• When did they re-engage?
• What helped them feel confident?

Now identify one step in your current process that assumes linearity, and revise it to allow for loops. Where can you be more flexible?

Recommended reading

• Gartner: Why the Buyer's Journey Is No Longer a Funnel — why traditional pipeline stages fail to reflect modern B2B buying behavior.
• Harvard Business Review: Adapt Your Sales Process to a Nonlinear World — how to thrive when buyers come in out of order and loop back mid-deal.
• Forrester: How Buyer Behavior Has Changed — the top shifts in buyer behavior and how sales teams must respond.

This article was originally published on the ENG Sales newsletter.