For decades, the standard model for growing a business has been the sales funnel. This familiar diagram maps the customer journey linearly: people enter at the wide top (Awareness), are qualified in the middle (Consideration), and ideally, exit as paying customers at the narrow bottom (Conversion). While simple, the funnel has a critical flaw: it assumes growth stops after the sale is made. Once a customer reaches the bottom, the process ends, forcing you to pour energy into the top to maintain momentum continually. This outdated model fails to recognize the most powerful force in modern commerce—the influence of your existing customer base—and this inefficiency is precisely why it's time to replace the funnel with the "Flywheel".
The HubSpot Flywheel is a new, circular model that puts the customer experience at the center of your strategy. Instead of seeing customers as the end product, the Flywheel views them as a source of energy that fuels new growth. It's the forces you apply and the friction you remove that determine the speed and momentum. The forces are grouped into three primary stages: Attract, Engage, and Delight. When aligned, the energy from a happy customer in the Delight stage automatically feeds back into the Attract stage, bringing in new prospects through referrals and testimonials. The more you invest in making your customers successful, the faster your wheel spins, creating a perpetual, self-sustaining growth engine.
The first stage, Attract, is about pulling strangers into your orbit by offering value. Unlike the old funnel's interruption tactics, the Flywheel relies on inbound marketing, creating educational content, optimizing for search, and utilizing social media to answer prospective customers' questions. Positioning your company as a trusted resource, ensuring that the people entering your system are highly qualified leads, not just random traffic. Once drawn in, the Engage stage takes over, focused on building relationships. Sales teams act as consultants, tailoring solutions and providing transparent, timely communication to make the purchasing process as smooth as possible.
However, the real power lies in the Delight stage, which is often under-resourced in the funnel model. This phase is dedicated entirely to customer success, providing proactive support, streamlined onboarding, and ongoing assistance. When you invest heavily in delighting customers, you create a powerful advocacy machine. They leave positive reviews, provide valuable testimonials, and, most importantly, refer new business directly into your Attract stage. Every happy customer becomes a miniature sales and marketing representative for your brand, reducing your reliance on expensive advertising to acquire new leads.
Ultimately, the goal of adopting the Flywheel is to reduce friction dramatically—the points where disconnected teams, inefficient processes, or poor service slow a customer's journey. By focusing your entire organization on the customer experience and eliminating these internal roadblocks, you allow the energy from happy customers to flow freely back into new growth. The funnel is obsolete because growth in the modern economy isn't linear; it's circular. By deciding to stop the funnel and start the spin of the Flywheel, you create the momentum needed for truly sustainable, customer-driven growth.