Sales Funnel Stages: From AIDA to Today's Four-Stage Models (and Where the Flywheel Fits)

What the stages describe

Pipedrive defines a sales funnel as the step-by-step journey from first hearing of a brand to the final purchase (Pipedrive). Stages are the checkpoints you draw along that journey. Buyers don't experience them as steps. They're a model for you: a way to decide what to show someone, what to offer next, and what to measure.

That's why stage definitions matter more than stage names. A stage is useful when everyone on your team gives the same answer to one question: what does a person have to do to count as being in it?

The competing four-stage models

Most current sources use four stages, but not the same four. Business.com uses awareness, interest, decision and action (Business.com). Dashly uses Awareness, Interest, Consideration and Decision (Dashly). The older AIDA model also has four: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. You'll also see the first A written as Attention.

Both modern models agree on the first two stages and split over the second half. Read literally, the Business.com version treats the decision as something that happens before the purchase, with action as the purchase itself. The Dashly version gives comparison shopping its own consideration stage, then ends at the decision. Neither is wrong. They're different zoom levels on the same narrowing path.

Where AIDA came from, and why the story is disputed

According to Wikipedia, E. St. Elmo Lewis created AIDA to explain how an advertisement should work, and the model has been in use for more than a century (Wikipedia: AIDA)). Lewis was born in Philadelphia and lived from March 23, 1872 to March 18, 1948 (Wikipedia: E. St. Elmo Lewis).

Educational sources tell a neat version: Lewis made his observations in 1898, and Edward K. Strong formalized or refined the model in 1925, or more loosely the 1920s, depending on the source (Varsity Tutors; EBSCO).

Not everyone accepts that version. An analysis on Yu-kai Chou's site says the acronym itself appeared decades later and that recent scholarship doubts the simple origin story (Yu-kai Chou). Our reading: the idea of leading someone from attention to action is old and well established, while the exact acronym and its single-inventor attribution are less certain. If you cite AIDA in a course or pitch deck, say “attributed to” rather than presenting it as settled fact.

Sales funnel vs marketing funnel

For most purposes they're the same idea. Wikipedia lists “customer funnel,” “marketing funnel” and “sales funnel” as other names for the AIDA model. The distinction tends to appear inside companies where marketing owns the early stages and a sales team owns the later ones.

If that's your setup, the handoff matters far more than the label. Agree on exactly when a lead moves from one team to the other, what information travels with it, and who follows up if nothing happens.

Where the flywheel fits

HubSpot's critique of the classic funnel is blunt. In its words, funnels:

produce customers but discard the momentum it took to win them.

HubSpot marketing blog

In HubSpot's flywheel model, happy customers generate word of mouth that brings in new ones (HubSpot). HubSpot is a software vendor, so treat this as a well-argued position from a company with a product to sell, not a neutral finding.

We think the funnel and the flywheel answer different questions. The funnel describes how a stranger becomes a first-time buyer. The flywheel describes what buyers do next. A funnel that stops at checkout leaves value on the table, and a flywheel with no working acquisition path has nothing to spin. The practical fix is simple: add an after-purchase stage to your funnel map and give it an owner, an offer and a metric.

What to build and measure at each stage

The benchmark figures come from Unbounce's 2024 report and ON24's 2025 data. Before comparing your own numbers, check how each source defines its metric. The metrics and benchmarks guide covers definitions and where sources conflict, and types of sales funnels explains tripwires, order bumps and one-time offers.

One stage map, four businesses

The same stages look different depending on what you sell. These sketches show where each stage tends to live for the four business models we cover. They're starting points, not formulas.

• Coach: awareness from talks, podcasts or social posts; interest through a free checklist; consideration through a webinar; decision through an application and a call.
• Course creator: awareness from free content; interest through an e-book or mini-lesson; consideration through a VSL or webinar; action at a checkout with an order bump; after purchase, a one-time offer and onboarding emails.
• SaaS: awareness from search content; interest through a landing page signup, where Unbounce's 2024 SaaS median is 3.8%; consideration during a trial or demo; decision at the upgrade.
• Ecommerce: awareness from ads; interest and consideration often collapse into a single product page; action at checkout with an order bump; after purchase, a one-time offer and email follow-up.