B2B Sales Development Case Study: How OfficePro Used Comp Design and Trade Show Selling to Grow New Business Most b2b sales development advice never leaves the whiteboard. You get a definition of the SDR role, a generic six-step funnel, and a list of tools to buy. What you rarely get is a look at what actually changes behavior inside a
The Bowtie Funnel That Keeps Selling After the Close, the revenueify Way
For sales leaders who want revenue that compounds after the close
Most funnels stop at closed-won. The bowtie keeps going. revenueify's Bowtie Funnel, the funnel we call the REVUP Funnel, is a complete eleven-stage selling methodology your team can be trained and certified on, from territory planning through growing customer lifetime value. The left side narrows to the close. The right side expands into the revenue most teams leave on the table.
What Is the revenueify Bowtie Funnel?
The bowtie funnel is a sales and revenue model shaped like a bowtie. The left side narrows as prospects move through qualification and presentation toward a close, the knot in the center is the moment of conversion, and the right side expands again through onboarding, retention, and account growth. Unlike a traditional linear funnel that ends at the sale, the bowtie funnel treats the post-sale relationship as the larger half of revenue, where renewals, expansion, and customer lifetime value are won.
The model is a reaction to a simple problem. The classic marketing and sales funnel draws a single shape narrowing to a purchase, then stops. In a subscription and recurring-revenue world, that picture is missing most of the revenue. The bowtie adds the second half: keep the funnel going past the close and the retention and expansion stages come into view.
Most versions of the bowtie are diagrams. They show four stages and a knot, and they leave it there. revenueify built something a team can actually run: an eleven-stage selling methodology, with a named framework at each stage and an execution layer underneath. That is the rest of this page.
Where the Traditional Funnel Quietly Loses Money
The linear funnel was built for a world of one-time transactions. In a world of recurring revenue, the shape itself is the problem.
The funnel ends at closed-won
When the model stops at the sale, so does the attention. Onboarding, renewal, and expansion happen in the dark, with no stage, no owner, and no name. The biggest part of the relationship is run on instinct.
Renewals and growth are left to chance
A linear funnel has no picture for the right side, so there is no repeatable play for keeping and growing an account. Reps move on to the next new logo while existing customers quietly drift.
Reps optimize for the close, not the customer
If the only milestone that counts is signed, behavior bends toward short-term tactics that win the deal and strain the relationship. The personal win for the buyer gets lost.
Forecasting only sees new deals
Pipeline math built on a one-way funnel cannot see the recurring and expansion revenue that often dwarfs new business. Leaders forecast half the picture and call it the number.
There is a better shape for revenue, and it is one your team can be trained to run end to end.
See how the funnel works for your teamThe Methodology Behind the Funnel
The bowtie is the picture. Customer Focused Selling is the method it draws. Built and refined over more than thirty years, it is the methodology revenueify trains, certifies, and runs.
Customer Focused Selling replaces random acts of selling with a disciplined, repeatable system built around behavioral awareness, structured discovery, outcome-based selling, and customer lifetime value. The funnel you just explored is simply how that system looks when you lay it end to end. The history below shows how it grew into the methodology your team can adopt today.
Customer Focused Selling®
Explore our Full Sales Methodology with the Interactive CFS® Bowtie Funnel Below
Foundational Sales Skills
The Eleven Stages of the revenueify Bowtie Funnel
Read it left to right. The left side narrows toward the close, the knot is conversion, and the right side expands into the revenue most teams never plan for. Each stage carries a named framework your team can be trained on.
The Left Side Narrows
Acquire
Find the right opportunities and qualify them with discipline
Stage 1
Industry Customized
The funnel reflects how your business actually sells. revenueify delivers industry-specific training built on Customer Focused Selling, not generic content, adapting the methodology to your processes, culture, and sales cycle from the ground up. That customization carries through every stage that follows, from territory planning to strategic account management. The A.I.M. Assessment ensures the funnel aligns to your goals and earns adoption.
Stage 2
Territory Planning and Ideal Customer Profile
Effective selling starts by treating a territory like a business. Reps align time and effort to the highest-impact opportunities, grounded in the Ideal Customer Profile rather than geography. They analyze accounts, rank prospects, and focus on the relationships that drive long-term value, so every interaction is intentional and outcome-focused, and growth becomes scalable instead of random.
Stage 3
Qualifying and Interviewing Opportunities
Qualification is the hallmark of every consultative engagement. Using the F.I.N.D. Interview System®, reps move past surface discovery to uncover business objectives, identify the personal win, and align solutions to what truly matters. It is a disciplined, repeatable process that separates serious opportunities from distractions and shifts conversations from product-driven to outcome-focused.
The Knot
Convert
Earn commitment, then close as a confirmation of alignment
Stage 4
Presenting Solutions and Gaining Commitment
The presentation stage earns commitment before a proposal is written. With OBJECTIVELens®, reps confirm priorities and decision criteria early, bringing together discovery, customer matching, and business outcomes to test assumptions and surface concerns. Presentations become decision-making conversations, not product overviews, which cuts wasted effort and builds proposals on a foundation of trust.
Stage 5
Overcoming Objections, Negotiating, and Closing
Closing is confirmation of alignment, not a negotiation battle. Building on the commitment earned earlier, reps use customer matching to adapt their style, reduce friction, and handle objections naturally because the conversation stays grounded in business objectives. Done this way, closing protects value, strengthens the relationship, and sets up the expansion half of the funnel.
The Right Side Widens
Expand
Where recurring revenue and customer lifetime value are won
Stage 6
Team Selling and Executive Bridging
Past the close, the funnel widens. Reps expand relationships inside an account by creating multiple points of influence and internal advocates, and by bridging your leadership to customer executives around shared objectives. The right resources, from sales engineers to subject matter experts, are orchestrated to deepen trust and turn complex accounts into predictable growth.
Stage 7
Selling Advanced Solutions and Recurring Revenue
The right side is where recurring revenue is won. Teams apply the same discovery and commitment discipline to subscriptions, managed services, and high-value solutions that one-time funnels overlook. Advanced offerings are positioned as strategic investments tied to outcomes, creating predictable growth and a durable advantage in a recurring-revenue economy.
Stage 8
Strategic Account Management
Existing accounts become growth engines. Built for mid-market and enterprise relationships, this stage adds disciplined planning, the VITALS framework, and a structured Customer Business Review cadence. Reps map stakeholders, protect existing business, and identify expansion, so account management is proactive and strategic rather than reactive.
Stage 9
Growing Customer Lifetime Value
This is the point of the whole shape: revenue, amplified. The funnel is built to create meaningful customer experiences, solve real business issues, and deliver measurable outcomes over time. By expanding solutions, protecting margins, and strengthening relationships, teams turn each customer into compounding value instead of a single transaction.
Where Most Sales Training Stops, We Amplify
Most sales training stops at the close. Beneath the funnel sits the layer that makes the whole methodology work, the part abstract bowtie diagrams do not have.
The Amplify layer is the foundational and execution infrastructure underneath every stage. It is what keeps a methodology from fading into a binder. Two parts build the foundation, three more drive execution, and together they are why revenueify's funnel survives past kickoff.
The Foundation
Foundation
Foundational Sales Skills
A shared base for every role in the revenue organization, from reps and inside sales to customer success and sales engineers. Common language, customer matching, communication that lands with decision makers, so the whole team runs the funnel the same way.
Foundation
Building Credibility and Trust
Trust is built early and reinforced at every interaction through active listening, consultative communication, and behavioral adaptation. Reps become trusted advisors, which is what makes the expansion half of the funnel possible.
The Execution Layer
Execution
Goal Setting and Time Management
The 12 Week Year® turns strategy into action. Reps break goals into focused twelve-week cycles with weekly and daily discipline, so the funnel is something they actually do, not just understand.
Execution
A.I.M. Sales Planning
A disciplined annual and monthly planning rhythm that improves forecasting, strengthens pipeline, and connects daily execution to revenue goals, for both reps managing their book and leaders coaching the team.
Execution
Sales Coaching
One-on-one coaching tailored to how each person sells, using the methodology, the 12 Week Year, and behavioral insight. It is how the funnel sticks after training and keeps improving.
DiSC Runs Through Every Stage of the Funnel
Everything DiSC for Sales is the thread, not a bolt-on. The same behavioral awareness that helps a rep qualify on the left side helps them negotiate at the knot and grow the account on the right. Customer matching shapes how your team communicates, gains commitment, and expands solutions, from the first call to the executive review.
For a sales leader, that means coaching that adapts to each rep and conversations that adapt to each buyer, the behavioral consistency that makes the whole funnel repeatable. DiSC is a practical driver of consistent outcomes and long-term customer value.
Get the Everything DiSC Sales ProfileWhat Makes revenueify's Bowtie Different
The bowtie is a recognized model. What is rare is a version a team can be trained, certified, and measured on. That is the whole wedge.
01 A methodology, not a diagram
Every other bowtie on the internet is a picture: four stages, a knot, a caption. revenueify's Bowtie Funnel is the visual of Customer Focused Selling®, an eleven-stage methodology with a named framework at each stage that your team can be trained and certified on. You do not hang it on the wall. You run it.
02 The Amplify layer
Beneath the funnel sits the execution infrastructure that makes it stick: foundational skills, credibility and trust, goal setting, planning, and coaching. Abstract bowtie diagrams have nothing underneath them. This is the part other training leaves out, and the reason the methodology survives past kickoff.
03 Everything DiSC® as the thread
Behavioral science is not a bolt-on here. Everything DiSC for Sales runs through every stage of the funnel, shaping how reps qualify, present, negotiate, and grow accounts. The funnel adapts to the person across the table, not just the deal in the pipeline.
04 Industry customized
Stage one of the funnel is literally Industry Customized. The language, the buyer behavior, and the sales cycle are tuned to your vertical from the ground up, because one-size-fits-all selling does not move a real number. The funnel is built for how your business actually sells.
Three Ways to Put the Funnel to Work
The bowtie is a methodology, which means it is something you adopt, not a download you skim. There is more than one way to bring it into your business.
You can teach the team to run the funnel themselves, you can have revenueify run it alongside them, or you can license the methodology and certify reps in house. The funnel does not change between these paths. What changes is who holds the wheel while it becomes the way your team sells.
Every path starts the same way, with an A.I.M. Assessment that reads where your sales organization actually stands before anyone commits to a plan.
Train your team on it
Your salespeople learn the full eleven-stage funnel through Sales Training built on Customer Focused Selling, reinforced in the REVUP Portal so it becomes how they sell, not a workshop they forget. Best when you have a team and want to lift how they run the whole lifecycle.
Explore Sales TrainingTrain them and have us run it
Pair the training with Outsourced Sales Management. revenueify installs the funnel, leads the cadence, and manages the team to it, so the methodology is executed, not just understood. Best when you want the funnel running now and the team coming up to speed at the same time.
Explore OSMLicense it and teach it yourself
Bring the funnel in house with a train-the-trainer license, so your own enablement team certifies reps on the methodology at your pace and scale. Best when you have the internal capacity and want to own delivery long term.
Talk to us about licensingEvery Funnel Starts With the A.I.M. Assessment
A.I.M. stands for Analyze, Implement, Move Forward. Before a single stage is installed, we read the data on where your sales organization actually stands.
The funnel does not get bolted onto guesswork. The A.I.M. Assessment is the data-driven front door to the whole methodology: it shows where deals stall on the left side, where accounts leak on the right side, and which stages will move your number first. From there A.I.M. runs as a monthly operating rhythm, so the funnel is measured and adjusted instead of fading after kickoff.
It is the same tool revenueify runs on its own business. We do not teach a funnel we would not run ourselves.
Start with an A.I.M. AssessmentWant a closer look at the funnel before a conversation
Get the sample playbook that walks through the bowtie funnel in action: the stages, the frameworks behind them, and how the right side keeps selling after the close. No call required.
Download the sample playbookWhat Our Clients Say
Real Results from Real Organizations
When you are leading a commercial interiors and workplace solutions company like Circadia and your market demands sales professionals who can navigate complex, multi-stakeholder deals across furniture, AV technology, construction, and design, finding the right tech sales recruiters is not a Google search away. Jim Scheer needed to add sales capacity without disrupting the momentum his team had already built.
When you are leading a business that delivers communication solutions for business clients across Atlantic Canada, and your sales team is selling complex, high-stakes AV systems to hospitals, government agencies, and corporate clients, generic sales training is not enough. Backman Vidcom needed a way to help their salespeople connect more effectively with different buyer types. And when the time came
revenueify helped PCD Inc., a Northern California AV integrator, get clear on strengths, opportunities, and priorities, then turn that clarity into a practical action plan. The outcome was measurable progress toward managed services and stronger design build execution, supported by consistent sales training and coaching that the team could use in real customer conversations. PCD is based in Santa Rosa and
To deliver successful construction projects that improve the built environment, VVA prides itself on acting as an extension of its clients’ organizations. As a national project management and cost management service provider, VVA adds value at every stage of a project and makes sure client spaces are built for success.
SiteOne Landscape Supply serves landscape and maintenance contractors, golf courses, and municipalities across the United States and Canada. As the nation’s largest and only national wholesale distributor of landscape and irrigation supplies, SiteOne offers more than 90,000 products through nearly 600 branches across 45 states and five provinces, supported by approximately 8,000 industry experts.
What Adopting the Funnel Looks Like
From first assessment to compounding revenue, the path is the same five moves.
1
Start with an A.I.M. Assessment
We read your data first, so the funnel is tuned to where deals actually stall and where accounts actually leak, not to assumptions.
2
Install Customer Focused Selling
The eleven stages are customized to your industry and built into how your team sells, with the named frameworks at each stage.
3
Train and certify the team
Reps learn to run the full funnel, left to right, and are certified on the methodology rather than exposed to it once in a workshop.
4
Reinforce in the REVUP Portal
Playbooks, coaching, and daily reinforcement keep the funnel alive after training, so it becomes habit instead of a memory.
5
Measure and amplify
A.I.M. runs as a monthly rhythm. You watch both halves of the funnel improve and compound, quarter over quarter, into customer lifetime value.
Start Small at a Group Training Event
You do not have to commit the whole team to find out if the bowtie funnel is right for you. An upcoming group training event is the easiest place to start.
01 A low-cost way to test the system
Sit in on a live group session and watch the bowtie funnel taught in full before committing to a program. It is the lowest-risk way to see whether the methodology fits how your team sells.
02 Invest in one or two people, not the whole team
Send a rep or two to learn the funnel and bring it back, instead of rolling it out everywhere at once. You get a real read on the value with a fraction of the commitment.
03 Lay the groundwork for a larger program
Use the event as the first step. It primes your people and your business for a full Customer Focused Selling® rollout later, so the bigger investment lands on prepared ground.
What the Funnel Optimizes
For: Customer Lifetime Value
The right side of the bowtie is the whole point. Each problem the linear funnel hid becomes a number the bowtie puts back on the board.
When the funnel ended at closed-won, everything after the sale ran in the dark. The bowtie brings it into the light as net revenue retention, the measure of whether the customers you already won are worth more this year than last. When renewals and growth were left to chance, there was no number for the right side; now expansion revenue tracks exactly how much each account grows after the first deal.
When reps optimized only for the close, the relationship paid for it. The funnel moves the scoreboard to customer lifetime value, the total worth of a relationship over its life, so behavior bends toward the personal win instead of the quick one. And when forecasting only saw new deals, leaders called half the picture the number. With both halves of the funnel measured, forecast accuracy across the full lifecycle finally reflects the recurring and expansion revenue that was always there.
That is what revenueify means by revenue, amplified: not more transactions, but more value from every relationship you have already earned.
Want the Funnel Run for You
Some leaders want the methodology installed and managed, not just taught.
With Outsourced Sales Management, revenueify leads the team to the funnel, runs the A.I.M. cadence, and owns the operating rhythm while your people come up to speed. The bowtie gets executed from day one, on both halves, while you keep your focus on the business.
Explore Outsourced Sales ManagementEleven Stages
One Methodology
Both Halves of the Funnel
A named framework at every stage, an execution layer underneath, and behavioral science running straight through. That is what turns a bowtie diagram into a funnel a team can actually run.
Need the People to Run It?
A funnel is only as good as the team running it. Sometimes the gap is talent, not method.
revenueify Sales Recruiting hires for fit against the same methodology and behavioral science the funnel runs on, so the people you bring in are built to sell the way the bowtie does, from qualification on the left to account growth on the right.
Explore Sales RecruitingThe Funnel Connects to the Rest of the System
However you adopt the bowtie, it links into the wider way revenueify builds revenue. Follow the thread that fits where you are.
Sales Training
Learn the full eleven-stage funnel and the Customer Focused Selling methodology behind it.
Explore Sales TrainingOutsourced Sales Management
Have revenueify install and run the funnel with your team on a managed cadence.
Explore OSMSales Recruiting
Hire reps built to sell the way the funnel does, against the same methodology.
Explore RecruitingSales Communication
The discovery and presentation stages run on communication skill; sharpen how your team listens, frames, and adapts.
Explore Sales CommunicationEverything DiSC for Sales
The behavioral thread that runs through every stage of the funnel. Profile your team and adapt to every buyer style, from the first call to the executive review.
Get the DiSC Sales ProfileThe Funnel Lives Inside a Bigger Operating Model
The Bowtie Funnel is one part of how revenueify builds revenue. Follow it up to the framework it sits in, or across to the rest of the model.
Where the Funnel Becomes a Habit
The REVUP Portal is how the methodology keeps working after training, with playbooks, coaching, and daily reinforcement that keep both halves of the funnel alive.
Go Deeper on the Thinking Behind the Funnel
Three reads on the methodology, the behavioral science, and the process discipline the bowtie is built on.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Bowtie Funnel
Ways to Bring the Funnel In
Async, in-person, virtual, or hybrid: the methodology does not change with the format. Choose the delivery that fits your team.
Revenue That Does Not End at the Sale
Start With a No-Obligation Assessment
The bowtie funnel is how revenueify turns one sale into a lifetime of value, and it is a methodology your team can be trained, certified, and measured on. Start with an A.I.M. Assessment and see where your funnel narrows too soon and where the right side is leaking.
