Ideate, Plan & Deliver method guide
Sales Funnel
Sales Funnel structures conversion from awareness through qualification, proposal, onboarding and retention.
Beginner-friendly guide · 4 min read
What Sales Funnel does
Sales Funnel structures conversion from awareness through qualification, proposal, onboarding and retention.
A sales funnel describes the stages through which a target customer moves from initial awareness to a qualified decision, implementation and continued use. It helps strategy teams connect positioning and pricing to real customer actions.
The funnel is a planning model, not a claim that every journey is linear. Define entry and exit conditions, evidence, friction and ownership for each stage, then test where and why progression breaks down.
This is a go-to-market planning surface rather than a CRM replacement. It connects positioning and pricing choices to stage-specific evidence, friction, ownership and experiments.[1][2]
Each stage needs a customer action, evidence and an owner for resolving friction.
- Awareness2,400
- Qualified problem680
- Evaluation220
- Commitment84
- Onboarding62
- Retention51
Do not just count volume. Define the observable customer action and evidence at each stage.
InnovationFlow explanatory schematic, synthesised from the method sources[1][2].
Understand the method
The parts in plain language
When to use it
- When a strategy needs a practical route to repeatable demand.
- After target, positioning and pricing hypotheses have been defined.
A practical workflow
- 1
Define the segment, offer and funnel stages.
- 2
State the customer action, qualification rule and evidence for each stage.
- 3
Record friction, messages, owners, status and conversion assumptions.
- 4
Create experiments and roadmap actions for blocked stages.
Fictional worked example
Example: selling an energy service
This example is illustrative rather than a reported case. A team designs the route from initial interest to a repeatable multi-site contract.
Observation:Many leads lack enough energy spend to justify the service.
Implication:Add an early suitability check.
Observation:Finance needs a credible baseline and sensitivity range.
Implication:Standardise the business-case evidence.
Observation:Successful pilots do not automatically reach other sites.
Implication:Add a multi-site adoption and procurement stage.
From analysis to decision
How to interpret the result
- 1Use customer behaviour to define stage movement.
- 2Compare conversion and friction by segment.
- 3Turn weak stages into owned experiments and roadmap actions.
The interpretation guidance is an InnovationFlow synthesis of[1][2].
What a useful output looks like
Common pitfalls
- A generic funnel can hide major differences between segments.
- Do not treat movement through stages as linear when the evidence says otherwise.
References and method basis
- [1]Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C. (2016). Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 69-96. Source ↗Peer-reviewed research
- [2]Hinterhuber, A. (2008). Customer value-based pricing strategies: why companies resist. Journal of Business Strategy, 29(4), 41-50. Source ↗Peer-reviewed research
This guide synthesises the named sources into practical questions for strategy and innovation work. It does not claim that using a tool by itself produces a successful decision.