the.com/sales funnel
where strangers go in and only the willing come out the other end.
means a staged model of how prospects move from awareness to purchase, narrowing at each step toward the few who actually buy.
from borrowed the funnel shape from 1898's aida model (attention, interest, desire, action), later renamed for marketing by e. st. elmo lewis and popularized in sales training decades later.
shape liesreal ones are leaky, not smooth cones.
aida rootspredates modern marketing by over a century.
top heavy mythmost leaks happen mid-funnel, not entry.
b2b versionoften called a pipeline instead.