Isn’t it time to get rid of sales funnel thinking? Consider all the ways it’s inconsistent with the ethos of Social Media:
It emphasizes the company’s perspective, not the customer’s,
Funnels are for homogenous liquids. Customers are all different,
Stickiness is anathema to funnels, yet essential to Social Media,
The customer isn’t even visible,
No give to get,
It suggests the customer comes to the company, instead of the company going to where the customer is,
It’s opaque, yet social media is about transparency,
It’s a hierarchical and closed system. Everyone enters at the top and moves to the bottom, completely isolated from the outside world,
It suggests a single process, but every customer’s journey is different, and
It ignores the role of the community.
Models are way more than cute pictures. They structure our perceptions, provide the foundation for our actions and inform our theories.
If we’re really going to create a social business, we can’t have a model of the fundamental customer-company interaction that yokes us to an obsolete way of thinking.
Let’s create something that better describes reality. I’ve started a crowd sourcing campaign to find a replacement at unfunnel.crowdcampaign.com
Please participate, encourage your friends and make a substantial contribution to the changing in thinking we all know is needed.