Fueling Your Forces With the Flywheel Model

Align your teams and fuel revenue fast.

Everyone knows the funnel. Marketing attracts leads, who are then qualified and handed off to sales. The sales team follows their process and closes as many customers as they can.

At the bottom of the funnel, what happens next?

Unfortunately, that’s where most companies make the mistake of leaving the customer as an afterthought.

That’s the inherent issue with most business methodologies: They don’t put the customer first in any of their practices.

A better way to think about your business structure is by looking at it as a flywheel.

What Is a Flywheel?

A flywheel is a piece of machinery that includes a mass rotating around an axis that stores kinetic energy. It operates by accelerating a rotor at high speeds, with the energy being maintained in the flywheel system as rotational energy.

This concept can also be applied as a business model.

In 2018, HubSpot introduced the concept of the flywheel model to address the fact that companies are stuck in the mindset of considering customers as an output of short-term efforts.

This is a limited belief. Customers are actually accelerants for your business in today’s world, and this model puts that to practice. The flywheel is focused on long-term, sustainable growth, which you can achieve through an excellent customer experience.

How the Flywheel Works

The success of your business is directly tied to a few key aspects of your flywheel:

- The speed

- The friction

- The size

You want strategies that impact all of these areas.

Applying force to your flywheel model translates to making changes to the biggest areas of impact for your business, like your content marketing strategy as well as referral marketing efforts. Your forces are the strategies you implement. The better your forces, the more speed you gain.

You can increase speed by reducing friction. Most businesses experience friction when their teams are siloed or at various areas in the customer journey where prospects fall off.

The more you increase speed through strategies and decrease friction throughout the customer lifecycle, the bigger your flywheel will grow.

For us, flywheel is a powerful metaphor. The flywheel was used by James Watt over 200 years ago in his steam engine, the invention that powered the Industrial Revolution. It is highly efficient at capturing, storing, and releasing energy.

- Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO & Co-Founder

Optimizing your flywheel model starts with focusing on the biggest impact areas of your business model. Every company is different, so you want to first look at your internal teams and processes.

Think long term. What are the most important areas of your business that impact the customer experience? How can you leverage those areas to make your customers more successful?

That's your best starting point.

Flywheel Model Components

There are four primary components within your flywheel model. All of these pieces work together to attract new customers to you.

Click the different segments of the flywheel to learn more.

Marketing

This is where every potential customer enters your flywheel. They’re attracted and engaged through content, and those who are qualified leads get handed off to sales.

Sales

Leads and prospects are engaged with and nurtured in your sales cycle. The sales team maintains these relationships and closes real opportunities as happy customers.

Service

The customer is supported and guided to success. Your customer service team continually optimizes the customer experience, turning happy customers into advocates who drive referral business.

Customer

Your customer is in the middle of your flywheel model. When you customers are satisfied and supported, your business will grow. They will stay longer and even refer more business to you.

The Flywheel Model & the Inbound Methodology

The inbound methodology aligns perfectly with the flywheel model. It’s circular by nature – when customers are the priority for every aspect of your business, they will stay with you, make more purchases, and even refer more customers to you.

The Attract Phase Earn your target audience’s attention by delivering helpful content
addressing their pain points while enticing them to learn more about
your brand.
The Engage Phase Establish and maintain relationships with potential customers,
customizing their experience to a timeline that suits them and takes
place in the channels they prefer.
The Delight Phase Emphasize supporting customers so they continue to succeed and
feel valued throughout the entire customer journey.

Your customers are human beings. They want to be treated like a person, not a number.

By applying inbound best practices and adopting a customer-centric philosophy throughout your organization, you’re demonstrating that you value your customers as people.

A positive customer experience that is consistent at every touchpoint throughout the lifecycle is how you increase revenue and ensure sustainable growth.

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Optimize Your Flywheel & Hit Your Revenue Goals Now

The flywheel model is a proven process for setting companies up for sustainable growth. You can evolve your business and adopt this methodology to drive more revenue in less time. The first step: Sign up for your complimentary flywheel assessment.

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