In action
From left to right, a horizontal funnel with a full bowtie starts with awareness, moves into education, and ends with selection, before narrowing to the marketing and sales portion of the funnel.
Once the funnel starts to widen again (towards the CS=Customer Success side), it’s Onboarding, then Achieving Impact (the end result has been achieved), and finally Recurring Impact, where retention/renewal, upsells, or cross-sells occur. When Recurring Impact is achieved, it means the customer is satisfied. It means they want more of you and your product/service.
Because models typically identify or name each stage only once, it can be tempting to think of the path through this funnel as linear, with one stage on the left side of the butterfly diagram smoothly transitioning into the next.
No, not once.
The reality is that a potential customer often goes through an infinite loop of information, education, and choice before (perhaps) making it through the narrow part of the funnel.
The story on the right side of the funnel is no rich people database different. The counterargument is that after the trade closes, there may actually be more nonlinear movement than before. The road to repeat impact is not without its challenges, but if you can get there, it’s worth it.
Right side of BowTie funnel = important
While all phases of this model are vital, as a result of the shift from ownership to subscription and consumption models, the last two phases, impact and repeat impact, have become the areas that require the most focus and attention.
Bowtie Funnel Building Blocks: Metrics
Volume Metrics = Volume Metrics
When the scientific approach is properly applied to the horizontal bowtie funnel, a company can begin to create tracking measures and achieve impact. These are essential to success. One such tracking measure is volume, which is the number of leads, deals, or accounts you have at the beginning of each stage. These volume metrics can then be applied to each of the six stages of the bowtie funnel.
8 stages of volume metrics
Essentially, it is a volume measurement that involves counting the number of people who have gone through the process of taking a certain action to fanto data move from one stage of the funnel to the next. For example, the action of joining a project is what causes the move from the education stage to the selection stage. There are eight volume metrics in total:
- Identified (VM1)
- Interested party (VM2)
- Connection (VM3)
- Priority (VM4)
- Liabilities (VM5)
- Ready (VM6)
- Repetitive impact (VM7)
- Max Impact (VM8)
This type of tracking is both old and new. Companies how to create a landing page correctly have long tracked leads, deals, and accounts through the marketing and sales parts of the funnel; however, what companies traditionally don’t do is continue this type of tracking into the CS (Customer Success) side of the funnel, which is the most important part!
While volume indicators have their own value, they are also beneficial because their use creates the opportunity to carry out other monitoring measures.