ChatGPT Funnels
What does AI really tell us?
I asked Chat GPT to define the SaaS funnels (sales and marketing separately) from the perspective of a chief revenue officer. What it returned is below, and outlines in numbered form the traditional view of what a funnel is step-by-step.
Given that Chat GPT is not a human writing from experience gained by topical reading and understanding, it is natural that it came back with sounds a lot like an essay from an eighth grader who just skimmed a pamphlet given out at career day about a specific job type available when he or she gets older.
It’s not to say that the summaries are wrong – it is that they miss a lot of the detail involved in the funnels themselves. Hundreds of decisions come together to form the foundations of the funnels, from what software to use in a cadence to how much to spend on a specific campaign on social media. At the highest level I understand where it’s coming from – at a basic level I was surprised how much each answer looked the same. It seems that the basic shape of the funnel provided the standard buzz words that are as shapeless as meaningless when found out of context.
As a CRO, is the funnel more about data or people? Is it important the speed at which information moves through a funnel, or is it better that the process exists and is followed to the letter of the law? Before we dig into these questions, let’s see what it came up with when asked:
Prompt to Chat GPT 4: Define the SaaS SALES funnel from the perspective of a chief revenue officer.
Answer: As a Chief Revenue Officer, your primary objective is to ensure your company's revenue growth. To achieve this objective, you need to have a deep understanding of your sales funnel, particularly in the context of Software as a Service (SaaS) products. Here is a typical SaaS sales funnel broken down into four stages, from the perspective of a Chief Revenue Officer:
Awareness: The first stage of the SaaS sales funnel is awareness. This stage is about creating brand awareness and generating interest in your product. As a CRO, you should be focused on creating marketing campaigns that reach your target audience through different channels such as social media, PPC, content marketing, email marketing, etc. The primary goal at this stage is to get potential customers to know about your brand and product.
Interest: Once potential customers become aware of your product, they move to the interest stage. In this stage, you need to educate and inform potential customers about your product's features and benefits. You can do this by providing educational content such as whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, or product demos. As a CRO, your goal at this stage is to ensure that your potential customers are aware of the benefits and features of your product.
Decision: Once potential customers have shown interest in your product, they move to the decision stage. In this stage, potential customers evaluate whether your product is the right fit for their needs. This stage is where the sales team comes in, and it's important to ensure they are equipped with the right information, tools, and skills to close deals. As a CRO, your goal is to ensure that your sales team is well-trained, and the right sales processes are in place to help close deals.
Action: essay from an The final stage of the SaaS sales funnel is the action stage. This is where the potential customer becomes a paying customer. Once the deal is closed, it's important to keep the customer engaged and happy with your product. This is where customer success comes in, and you need to have the right customer success team in place to ensure that your customers are happy and satisfied with your product. As a CRO, your goal at this stage is to ensure that your customer success team is well-trained and has the right tools to keep your customers happy and loyal.
Prompt to Chat GPT 4: Define the SaaS MARKETING funnel from the perspective of a chief revenue officer.
Answer: As a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), the SaaS marketing funnel is a critical tool for understanding and optimizing the customer journey from initial awareness to becoming a paying customer. The SaaS marketing funnel typically consists of several stages that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase decision. The key stages in the SaaS marketing funnel include:
Awareness: At this stage, potential customers become aware of your product or service through various channels such as advertising, social media, or search engines.
Interest: Once the potential customer is aware of your product or service, they may show interest by visiting your website, signing up for a free trial, or requesting more information.
Evaluation: During this stage, potential customers evaluate your product or service by comparing it with competitors and assessing its value proposition.
Purchase: After evaluating your product or service, the potential customer may decide to make a purchase.
Retention: Once the customer has made a purchase, the goal is to retain them by delivering exceptional customer service, providing ongoing value, and promoting upgrades or additional services.
Advocacy: Finally, satisfied customers may become advocates by recommending your product or service to others, leaving positive reviews, or sharing their experience on social media.
As a CRO, it's essential to track key metrics at each stage of the funnel, such as website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value. By optimizing each stage of the funnel, you can improve your overall revenue and ensure long-term customer success.
Analyzing the Responses
Defining the Funnels
The sales and marketing funnels all point to the conclusion of a paying customer, although described differently. Interestingly, the sales answer references revenue growth while the marketing answer focuses on the customer journey. While both are correct, it highlights a major difference in how teams view themselves when in reality everyone is involved in revenue generation and the customer journey.
The language used is filtered through the traditional definitions of sales and marketing, for example the sales definition includes “product’s features and benefits” and “right fit for their needs.” The marketing answer talks about “showing interest” and “comparing with competitors” – with the latter true of both sales and marketing but doesn’t appear in the sales answer.
Funnel Breakdown (Steps 1-4 and 1-6):
Similarities – Both funnels start with the same two steps – Awareness and Interest. Both talk about using tools like social media, demos, campaigns, and trials to get the attention of potential customers.
Differences – The words in steps 3-4 differ depending on the funnel. On the sales side, they are Decision and Action. For marketing, they are Evaluation and Purchase. Across the steps, they basically mean the same thing, but purchase is only on the marketing side. It is also interesting that on the sales side, the answer is to immediately handoff the customer to a Customer Success team and on the marketing side Retention and Advocacy seem to be included in their responsibilities. These are even broken out separately in two steps on the marketing side that don’t appear for sales.
Summary Statements
Part of the last Action section in sales details how there needs to be the right Customer Success team – essentially a washing of hands of the deal and a handoff to someone else. Marketing, however, focuses on metrics and optimization to do it all over again. Does this mean that marketing is inherently more quantitative? There is no handoff mentioned, and not even a passing word about the existence of a sales team.
Conclusion
See what I did there with the headings of similarities and differences? I attempted to write in the style without being a blatant AI myself. As someone who can use data to come to a conclusion myself, I saw the value in the large amount of inputs gathered and used to come up with an answer. I also know that understanding why something is different or an anomaly is just as important as regurgitating what appeared somewhere else.
Think about this in your business. You probably do or have done it by the book (whatever that book may be – from Challenger Sale to Zero to One to Blitzscaling). However, the conversations you have had with your teams up and down the org chart bring about as much change as numbers on a page. What exactly does that number mean (number of leads, number of deals) when compared to last year, or is there a story about what it is different?
By knowing the totality of your business from a granular level to a CEO level, you can anticipate things ahead and come to conclusions about what worked or didn’t work. By connecting teams (and of course funnels) you can grow revenue and successes across your entire company without losing efficiency or speed. When the work is done while you are closing deals and spearheading campaigns, it becomes a valuable addition to your daily routine without costing one of the most important things you have – time.
How does AI help and how will it help you in your daily life? Time will tell, and it seems to only be getting better. How will understanding what is already proven and what can work for you will help you now, just like AI can be a helpful tool but one of many in your tool kit.
Bring things together, create organic excitement, and drive results at the same time by being well-versed up and down the team and up and down the metrics. These include a quote about your product from one of your new customers and your ARR today.