A common Revenue Operations concept is the Bow Tie Funnel which is an alternative RevOps take on the traditional sales funnel.  

Everpeak has borrowed from this concept to create its Net Promoter Funnel which illustrates the same concept but visually incorporates other terminology like MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), adds actions, and then condenses one side of "tie" in favor of the Net Promoter concept. Before discussing it though, let's review the Bow Tie Funnel and why it matters.

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The Traditional Sales Funnel

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Here is the traditional sales funnel: 

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It is probably the most widely recognized representation of the customer journey. It effectively narrows the audience from prospects to qualified leads to customers.

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However, it stops at the sale. The critical stages of customer retention, upselling, and advocacy—where much of the long-term value lies—are ignored. 60-70% of a customer’s lifetime value is after the initial contract in the form of renewals, upsells, and referrals. Revenue growth is not just about closing deals—it’s about creating lasting value across the entire customer journey.

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What is the Bow Tie Funnel?

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Unlike traditional models that separate pre-sale and post-sale efforts, the Bow Tie Funnel brings these stages together into a continuous loop. It provides a complete view of the customer lifecycle, enabling businesses to maximize value at every stage—from initial engagement to long-term loyalty.

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The Key Stages

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The Left Side: From Awareness to Conversion

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The left side is the Pre-Sale Funnel. This mirrors the traditional funnel, focusing on attracting, nurturing, and converting prospects into customers. It includes stages like Awareness, Education, and Selection.

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Attract: Your brand reaches potential customers through strategic visibility where your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) operates.

Nurture: Engage prospects with tailored, value-driven content that highlights how your solution addresses their pain points.

Convert: Simplify the decision-making process with trust-building tools and frictionless communication.

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The Center: Close the Deal the Right Way

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The center section is the Transition Point. This is the critical handoff between pre-sale and post-sale teams. This is where the customer officially enters the onboarding phase, setting the stage for long-term success.

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The Transition Point relies upon effective onboarding to bridge pre- and post-sale efforts. It ensures customers understand your product and start experiencing its value immediately.

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The Right Side: Achieving Recurring Impact

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The right side is the Post-Sale Funnel. This section expands outward, emphasizing customer retention, impact realization, and revenue growth through renewals, upsells, and cross-sells.

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Onboard: Customers realize a high-caliber implementation and training experience to understand your product or service.

Deliver: Customers realize the promised value of your product, fostering trust and satisfaction.

Expand: Renewals, upsells, and advocacy grow as customers see continued value, turning them into long-term partners.

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The traditional sales funnel creates silos almost by definition—marketing generates leads, sales closes deals, and customer success handles the rest. The Bowtie Funnel eliminates these divisions by emphasizing collaboration at every stage.

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• Marketing drives Awareness and Education, generating leads that align with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
• Sales takes over at Selection, converting qualified leads while preparing them for a seamless onboarding experience.
• Customer Success manages the post-sale stages, focusing on delivering impact and fostering long-term value through renewals and upsells.

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When teams share KPIs—like customer lifetime value (CLV), churn rate, or expansion revenue—they stay focused on outcomes that matter across the funnel. Clear handoffs, supported by well-documented processes, ensure no customer falls through the cracks.

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The Net Promoter Funnel

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We created the Net Promoter funnel for a very simple reason: to save time.

In 100% of the conversations we had around the Bow Tie Funnel, we found ourselves speaking to a few concepts repeatedly, needing to define them, and having no visualization for how they fit.  They were:

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• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) - a potential customer who has shown interest in a company's products or services through marketing efforts.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) -a potential customer who has expressed an interest in purchasing a company's products or services and is ready to advance to the sales process.
• Net Promoter - a customer who anwers the question, "On a 1-10 scale with 10 being the best, how likely are you to refer this company to a friend." A 9 or 10 is considered a Net Promoter. 7 and 8 are considered passive (neutral).
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - these are the actions on the right side of the funnel. Every company should have them defined and measure, but they will vary between companies. T

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The MQLs and SQLs were helpful to see overlayed the different stages. And the Net Promoters made the customer growth post-transaction clearer and quantifiable.  If you can achieve an 8.0 average or higher, your customers are Net Promoters. This score is rare.  While associated with brands like Apple and social media companies, companies with the "average" customer a Net Promoter do happen often for B2B companies.  

We prefer the Client Success conversation to be grounded in the concept of Net Promoter Scores. Why? Actually gathering the data is the first step and something that many companies do not do or do not do particularly well. The goal is still the same as in the Bow Tie Funnel - Onboard, Delivery and Expand. But it is difficult to put much detail into that because it can be so different between business models and companies. We prefer to have separate frameworks and just distill this to NPS. Contrast that with the actual Marketing and Sales funnel. While the customer acquisition channels, technology, and actions vary from company to company, the terms and concepts stay the same. The Net Promoter Funnel gets these teams aligned around the ideas to shorten the Go-To-Market planning cycle.

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A Better Way to Grow Revenue

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We have seen that in the long-term, simplicity usually wins.  Systems can be complex over time, but each section needs to very easy for someone to understand who is qualified. The Net Promoter Funnel focuses the conversation on a shared set of definitions and a metrics-driven approach.  And it doesn't stop there.  Each section of the funnel deserves its own KPI dashboard and standard operating processes (SOPs).

Layering over the software platforms and "tech stack" is also an exercise that we do with each client. This further increases the probability of alignment across teams and accelerates the go-to-market cycle.