Funnels: The One Big Mental Model from Sales & Marketing
The traditional funnel is a measurement device for, say, number of people converting in your product.
But funnels are a lot more universal, and you can use them to answer tough questions in Physics and Chemistry, not just for human behaviour. This post shows you how to use funnels more often, what are the general principles behind funnels, and finally, why this flexibility makes funnels the one big mental model from sales and marketing.
We’ll start with 4 weird examples of funnels in the wild.
Then, we’ll use the examples to decipher the general principles. We investigate what are the similarities and differences between the examples to come up with a general model for Funnels.
Overall, we’ll answer what exactly are funnels, why they’re cool, and where to apply them. Let’s dig in.
Crude Oil Distillation
To dissolve all connotations with existing usage of funnels, let’s start with something more arcane. Let’s go to Chemistry & fractional distillation.
Why do you think crude oil is called black gold? It’s not just because it produces petrol. It’s because it produces several kinds of fuels: gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, petrochemical feedstocks, waxes, lubricating oils…
