Oskar Lingqvist, Candace Lun Plotkin, Jennifer Stanley

[New] dynamics are undermining the traditional sales approach of pushing products to customers along a linear funnel comprising lead generation, lead qualification, proposal, negotiation, and close. In that world, funnel metrics kept track of what the sales force was up to and tallied daily win rates. The problem is that many of today’s customers no longer buy this way. Nor does the tracking approach shed much light on what drives purchases or cements loyalty.

The proliferation of decision influencers—along with the growing amount of data about them and their behavior—reverses the funnel logic. It’s now possible to follow the lead of customers rather than force them to follow the sales organization. Armed with state-of-the-art information, suppliers often find new buying patterns that defy well-trod linear paths.

Although challenging, this world of 24/7 multichannel customer experiences creates additional opportunities to influence purchases. More complex interactions reflect strands of customer behavior—previously hidden—that companies can evaluate using big data and analytics. Those proprietary insights, in turn, can form the basis of much more targeted sales actions.