What is a sales funnel and how does it work?

A sales funnel is the visual roadmap of the customer journey that guides prospects from first awareness to final purchase a marketing and sales framework that turns traffic into qualified leads and paying customers. Attracting visitors with content, ads, or SEO (top of funnel) feeds them into nurturing experiences like email sequences, landing pages, and retargeting (middle of funnel), and finally pushes motivated buyers toward conversion with clear calls-to-action, offers, and sales processes (bottom of funnel). It works by progressively filtering and qualifying prospects: awareness drives lead generation, interest and consideration build trust and intent through targeted messaging and value, and decision converts intent into revenue while tracking conversion rate and lifetime value. Marketers optimize each funnel stage with analytics, A/B testing, CRM-driven follow-ups, and tailored content to reduce leakages and increase ROI essentially turning broad audience reach into predictable, scalable sales.