Funnels at SANE/REBELS · 04
How to build one
Diagnose first, pick the shape, commit to the non-negotiables, find the leak.
First, diagnose
Answer these before touching copy, structure, or tools. Wrong answers here make the rest irrelevant.
What does the market already know? Low awareness means educate first; high awareness means the job is removing friction.
One buyer or a group? The average B2B buying group is about ten people. A funnel built for one decision-maker fails when nine others are involved.
Self-evident or must it be experienced? If it lands in ten seconds, words are enough. If not, it needs a demo, trial, or interactive moment.
How long is the natural decision cycle? B2B cycles averaged about ten months in 2025, and pushing harder accelerates rejection.
Where does the visitor arrive? Most are mid-journey, not at zero: 94% have a favourite at first contact and buy from them 77% of the time. 6sense
One visitor type or several? Product-aware and problem-aware need different paths. Route before you sell.
B2B or B2C? Logic, ROI, and a group, or emotion, identity, and one person. The mechanics differ.
Which loop compounds? Content and SEO, referral, sales-led, paid, or product-led, designed into the converted stage.
Four shapes
Two axes set the structure: how well the market understands the category, and how much is at stake for the buyer.
High awareness · low complexity
Friction removal
The visitor knows what they need. CTA in the hero, minimal copy, one step.
Barmer, AOK
High awareness · high complexity
Trust-first
Category known, stakes high. Heavy named proof, case studies with numbers.
Ignition, Teamwork
Low awareness · low complexity
Problem-first
The problem exists, the solution is unknown. Lead with the pain, introduce the product after.
Typefully, Perspective
Low awareness · high complexity
Consultative, hand-holding
The hardest funnel. Educate first, guide to understanding, then close. Conversation hand-holds one buyer at a time.
Getsafe, Sierra
This is where we operate
The non-negotiables
These hold regardless of industry, ICP, or funnel type. Breaking any of them costs conversions.
One CTA at a time. Scattered asks scatter attention.
Proof goes where the doubt lives, not at the bottom of the page.
Numbers in proof convert; words do not. '10 to 100 clients in 6 months' beats 'our clients love us'.
Route before you sell. Let visitors choose their path before you present the offer.
Block the output, not the experience. Let people feel the full value before the paywall lands.
Raw beats polished. Unedited founder video and real customer calls outperform produced assets.
The loop closes at Converted. Every customer should feed the top of the next funnel.
Mobile-first or it does not ship. Most traffic arrives on a phone, so test on a real device.
What to measure
One leading signal per stage, not a lagging one. And at the end, one number matters more than the close rate.
The number it comes down to. A funnel is broken if conversion is the end. It works if conversion is the start of the next one. Track loop closure, not just close rate.
Find the leak
Funnels fail in six predictable ways. Each has a stage, a signal you can watch, and a fix that already exists above.
Visibility
Too few, or the wrong people arrive.
Fix the Stranger stage: structured content, answer-engine presence, comparison pages.
Relevance
High bounce, low scroll depth.
Re-check awareness and route by source.
Clarity
They read but do not click.
One CTA at a time. Cut competing asks.
Proof
Stuck at Considering.
Put proof where the doubt lives, next to the CTA.
Friction
Clicks high, conversions low.
Shrink the form, reverse the risk.
Loop
No referrals, no return traffic.
Build the next step into the converted moment.
Where we build
From framework to software
Each shift is a clue about what to build. We turn the framework into software: adaptive pages that assemble themselves per visitor from signals we already own, because we run the ad layer; an exit-intelligence layer that watches a funnel, classifies each leak by the six failure modes, and turns it into a revenue figure with a fix; and an answer-engine layer that gets a client cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers, where the Stranger stage now begins.
One thing we keep coming back to. The funnel is only the path. The loop, the part most people skip, is what makes the next one cheaper to fill than the last.
Sources
What this stands on
- 16sense, The 2025 B2B buyer experience report (4,000 buyers) (2025)
This is the work we like most: the tricky, high-stakes funnels where a conversation beats a landing page. Sound like yours? We would genuinely like to see it.
Show us your funnelRelated content
Last updated June 2026
Citation rule: if you use or build on these ideas, credit SANE/REBELS (KNUS GmbH) and link to sanerebels.com/thinking/funnels.