Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

Preface

What if we got it all wrong? What if everything we held about doing business was backwards? What if all our theories, assumptions, and best practices were, in fact, flawed?

Those are some of the questions I hope to answer—or, at the very minimum, stress test—in this book. And in doing so, I hope I’m able to offer up a few paths less traveled for you to explore and ultimately venture down when it comes to building businesses, brands, and relationships.

In many respects, Flip the Funnel is a logical evolution and inevitable conclusion of sorts from my first book, Life after the 30-Second Spot, through my second, Join the Conversation, to “this.” In all three books, I’ve done my utmost to debunk some of the worst-kept secrets in the business and marketing worlds. In all three books, I essentially take aim at dirty little secrets, unafraid to say the things most dare not, and am prepared to ask the questions that many wish were put out there yet that remain relegated to back-office conversations.

Starting with Life after the 30-Second Spot (which is slowly but surely becoming required reading across university campuses), I focused on the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue—or television, radio, and print—and claimed that in its existing form, the 30-second spot (as a metaphor for a certain way of doing business) is either dead, dying, or has outlived its usefulness. I essentially interrogated what we call paid media as nothing more than an unnecessary evil, a ...