The traditional sales funnel is dead

Here's how to think about it instead.

The traditional sales funnel is dead. Or at the very least, it’s outdated.

Here’s why.

1. The Buyer Journey Is No Longer Linear

In B2B, most buyer journeys are anything but predictable. Especially as you move upmarket, you're not selling to one person — you're selling to 6–10 stakeholders, all doing their research.

Buyers bounce between content, Slack groups, peer recommendations, and maybe—maybe—a conversation with sales. But often, that happens much later than it used to. 70–80% of the buying journey typically occurs before a buyer ever talks to a salesperson.

The first touchpoint used to be a cold call. Now it’s a blog post, a product comparison site, a LinkedIn comment, or a peer DM saying, “Hey, have you tried this?”

2. Marketing and Sales Have Swapped Roles

In this new world, sales has become more consultative, and marketing has taken the lead in driving education, trust, and influence.

We're not just running paid ads or optimizing landing pages anymore. We’re showing up in communities, on podcasts, and in comment sections. We’re building trust in places sales can’t reach.

Today’s go-to-market is about showing up where your buyer is already learning and making decisions.

3. The Funnel Ignores What Happens Post-Purchase

The traditional funnel ends at the point of sale.

But in SaaS, that’s just the beginning. Most companies don’t deliver value at the point of purchase — they deliver it over time, through implementation, adoption, and retention.

Your product needs to be set up, used, and integrated into a workflow before anyone sees real value. That’s where customer success, onboarding, and solutions architects come in — and it’s where most companies still underinvest.

4. 70–80% of Lifetime Value Comes After the Deal Closes

We still spend the bulk of our resources on getting the deal done. But in SaaS, post-sale is where you win or lose.

Renewals, expansion, referrals — that’s where sustainable growth happens. If you’re only optimizing for acquisition, you’re leaving most of your lifetime value on the table.

In SaaS businesses, the initial sale — the first-year contract — typically makes up only a small part of the overall customer value. The real revenue growth comes later, through things like:

• Renewals of the base subscription

• Expansion (upsells, cross-sells, adding more seats or usage)

• Gradual price increases

• Customer referrals and advocacy

Think of it this way: a customer signs a $10,000 contract in year one. They stick around, add more users, maybe upgrade their plan, and over five years, that original $10,000 turns out to be just a small slice of what they spend with you. Most of their lifetime value — 70–80% of it — appears after the first deal is completed.

That’s why Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is such a big deal in SaaS. If you're growing your customers after they sign, you’re not just hanging onto revenue — you're expanding it. The best companies hit NRR rates of 120% or higher, meaning their existing customers are worth 20% more each year without even adding a single new logo.

The traditional funnel doesn’t account for any of this. It was built for a world where value was delivered instantly. Today, value is delivered over time, and your go-to-market strategy has to reflect that.

So What Should You Do Instead?

Instead of forcing buyers through TOFU/MOFU/BOFU stages or stopping at the close, rethink your GTM around the entire customer journey — from first touch to full value realization.

Models like the bowtie model from Winning by Design are a step in the right direction. They expand the funnel to include what drives long-term growth: onboarding, product adoption, customer success, and expansion.

This is where RevOps comes in.

A modern RevOps function focuses on more than pipeline velocity or clean handoffs between sales and marketing. It builds connected systems, aligned data, and integrated processes across the entire revenue engine, including everything that happens after the deal closes.

That means aligning not just sales, marketing, and customer support, but also ensuring the tech stack, metrics, and incentives are set up to support the entire journey.

When RevOps is done right, it tracks the full spectrum of performance — from leads and MQLs to activation rates, time to value, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and expansion efficiency. It enables every team, from SDRs to Demand Gen to CSMs, to deliver value at every stage of the customer journey.

If you want to grow efficiently in today’s environment, you need more than a funnel. You need an operating model that earns trust early, delivers value continuously, and drives long-term revenue through retention and expansion.

The funnel might still have its place, but it’s not enough. If you’re serious about driving real, repeatable revenue, RevOps has to evolve to support the full customer lifecycle.