From Funnels to Flywheels

Why the traditional sales funnel is failing modern small businesses and what to use instead

Jun 24, 2025

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 has changed in buyer behavior, and show how a more dynamic “funnel” (or rather, flywheel-like journey) has emerged.

Do you know someone struggling with their sales process? Do they need to lean about the flywheel sales process? Share this post with them, so we can all learn something today.

Have you subscribed yet? No? Why No? It’s the only way to ensure that you keep your sales journey moving forward and up revenue mountain!

Trade Your Funnel for a Fly-Wheel

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 people
Pause mid-journey and re-emerge 3 months later (seeming out of the blue ready to pick up where you left off).

The sale 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 are just different. With the tools available today (more on that next week) you can build a great flywheel that keeps your revenue flowing in strong. You just have to stay relevant and have a flexible process to ensure you stay engaged with your current and future customers.

Action Step:

Walk step by step through your last 5 sales 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 1 step in your current process that assumes linearity and revise it to allow for loops. Where can you be more flexible?

Engineering Sales Substack

Discussion about this post