B2B Sales Funnel: Everything You Need to Know

In this guide, we’ll go over the 6-stage B2B sales funnel and then dive deeper into how to create a sales funnel for your organization.

We’ll also provide you with actionable tips on how to improve every stage of the sales funnel.

What Is The B2B Sales Funnel?

The B2B sales funnel is the buying journey of your prospective clients – from becoming aware of your brand to converting into customers.

The sales funnel is important for B2B businesses as it helps them identify and address drop-off points and address pain points and challenges faced by prospects at each stage.

The goal of marketing and sales teams is to optimize each stage of the B2B sales funnel so they can move customers quickly and effectively through the funnel.

💡 Unlike the B2B sales pipeline, which is the series of steps to convert leads, the sales funnel looks at the volume of leads that have passed through each stage of the buyer’s journey and aims to optimize each stage.

B2B vs. B2C Sales Funnel: What Is The Difference?

The main differences between the B2B and B2C sales funnel are the sales cycle length, the depth of due diligence prospects conduct, and the touchpoints required before prospects can make the final decision.

As deals are more complex and with a higher price tag in B2B, companies have to involve multiple decision-makers to approve the purchase of your solution.

The result is that B2B sales funnels can take up to a few months, more steps, and more complex sales strategies, such as getting buy-in from different stakeholders.

➡️ B2C sales funnels focus on individual customers and use catchy and engaging content to drive impulse purchases, while the B2B sales funnel aims to educate prospects about your solution and why you are the best choice out of the other alternatives.

What Are The Stages Of The B2B Sales Funnel?

There are 6 stages of the B2B sales funnel:

• Awareness: A potential customer discovers your brand or solution.
• Interest: The prospect shows interest in your solution.
• Consideration: The prospects weigh in if your solution can help them solve their problems.
• Evaluation: The prospective client is requesting a demo of your solution and is actively comparing multiple solutions.
• Conversion: The lead is ready to convert and becomes a paying customer.
• Loyalty: Your new client is so happy with your solution that they’re recommending you to other professionals.

Here’s what the B2B sales funnel looks like: 👇

These 6 stages of the B2B sales funnel are then divided into 3 categories – top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

We’ll now go into greater detail about each stage of the B2B sales funnel and provide you with actionable advice on each stage: 👇

#1: Awareness (TOFU)

The first stage, awareness, is when potential buyers become aware of your brand.

This could be a result of social media activity, finding your website through an article, or word of mouth.

At this top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) stage, customers may know what your brand does, but it does not how it’s different from your competitors.

➡️ The main objective at this stage is to attract attention to your website and your offering and to generate brand awareness.

How To Generate Awareness For Your B2B Brand

The best ways to generate awareness for your B2B organization include:

• Being active on B2B social media platforms such as LinkedIn, where you can post informational content.
• SEO and content marketing by producing top-of-the-funnel content pieces, such as industry-leading guides.
• Video marketing on YouTube where you can educate your audience on industry best practices, how to deal with challenges and how your solution can help.

The director of marketing for Simform, Rohit Akiwatkar, recommends focusing on awareness and education at this stage of the sales funnel.

Rohit also suggests creating PPC and advertising campaigns to drive relevant traffic through high-volume keywords and LinkedIn ads.

#2: Interest (TOFU)

The 2nd stage of the B2B sales funnel is interested, where your prospective clients are showing interest in your offering.

How it looks like in reality is that prospects are browsing through your product and services pages, or have provided you with their email on your lead magnet.

The prospective customers are now showing signs of curiosity about your product or service and are ready to spend time learning more about your brand.

➡️ The main objective at this stage is to nurture your leads with educational materials and valuable information about your solution.

How To Drive Interest In Your Product

Once customers have become aware of your brand, you can gain their interest with:

• Lead magnets, such as e-books and white papers, can be in-depth how-to guides, checklists, and informative content. You can position your solution there.
• BOFU content, such as competitor alternatives, features a detailed comparison of multiple solutions for your customer (e.g., best project management software in 2025).
• Nurture leads with email campaigns that educate them on your product, and the industry, and emails that build your authority.

#3: Consideration (MOFU)

When buyers have entered their consideration stage, this is they have entered the middle of the funnel (MOFU).

The clients are now problem and solution-aware and are weighing in on whether your solution can really solve their problem.

At this stage, buyers are going to be reading your product reviews, testimonials, and case studies, and re-visiting your product and services pages.

➡️ The main objective at this stage is to stand out from your competitors and to schedule a call with your prospects so you can tell them more about your solution.

Consideration Stage Tips

According to Moshe Pesach, a B2B GTM growth advisor, the B2B sales funnel has changed in 2025, as users are now researching your solution without you and are only calling you when they are ready.

According to the expert, your brand should be building success stories and demonstrating the impact of your services.

As customers are controlling the research process, trust signals and buying confidence have become the most important metrics of this stage.

This is why you should look to produce detailed case studies, and trust signals on your website, and to create solid product or service pages that contain genuine testimonials.

#4: Evaluation (BOFU)

At this stage of the B2B sales process, customers have already expressed their buying intent.

Prospects are requesting a meeting with you, downloading pricing brochures, or requesting a quote.

Since they are in the market, at this stage they are more than likely to be considering different alternatives and products.

➡️ This is why the goal is to persuade your customers that your solution is the right fit for their organization.

How To Showcase Your Solution To Your Customers

You can showcase the value of your solution by using Arrows sales rooms to equip decision-makers with an organized space for every resource, update and next step in the buying process.

Sales teams can send out digital sales rooms to your prospects to control the narrative, build momentum, and close more high-value deals.

Built with a best-in-class HubSpot integration, Arrows sales rooms equip your sales team with:

• Engagement activity sync back into your HubSpot account in real-time, including creating and associating new contacts discovered with the deal in the CRM.
• Real-time alerts of when tasks are completed or when your prospects ask questions in the sales funnel.
• Next meeting sync: A component that stays up-to-date in real-time based on your next scheduled meeting in HubSpot. You would not have to rely on link-dumping.

• Resource sharing: Consolidate all resources and data about each prospective client.
• Track buyer engagement: See which prospects are viewing the sales rooms in real-time.

💡 Our users achieve a 44% higher win rate with our sales rooms than the average win rate for deals over the last 12 months.

How To Set Up Arrows Sales Rooms In HubSpot

Once activated in your HubSpot account, Arrows sales rooms can be set up from any existing deal that you have in the CRM.

You can edit and publish the digital sales rooms directly through Arrows, which lets you personalize each room to your prospects.

Your team will then receive updates on room engagement, including views and updates, via the deal’s activity feed.

💡 You can link sales rooms in email snippets sent from your HubSpot account, keeping everything connected.

Arrows lets you personalize the room’s content based on your lead’s needs and HubSpot data to tailor the sales rooms to each prospect.

➡️ You can equip champions with perfectly packaged information that they can share with their internal teams to get buy-in.

❗Note: Arrows was built for teams that run on HubSpot.

#5: Conversion (BOFU)

The 5th stage of the B2B sales funnel is the conversion, where your potential customers have evaluated all of their options and now only need a final push.

Despite the lead taking an interest in your offer and being willing to sign the contract, the sale is not over yet.

This is because the prospect might need to involve multiple decision-makers from within their organization to close the deal.

➡️ This is why the goal of the conversion stage is to close the deal by getting sign-off from all stakeholders.

Closing Tips

Here are a few closing tips from our guide on how to close high ticket deals:

• Be prepared to handle any objections: Different stakeholders will have different objections that range from pricing objections to solution-related ones.
• Send out personalized sales proposals that include interactive pricing tables and ROI calculators.
• Leverage scarcity using limitations, such as limited seats to your solution, or an offer that is expiring soon.

#6: Loyalty

The last stage of the B2B sales funnel is the loyalty stage, where you have closed the deal and are about to onboard your new clients.

➡️ The goal at this stage is to retain your customers after the purchase by fostering a great relationship with them and assisting them along the way to achieve their desired goals.

This is the time when the customer success team takes over, but your sales team can come back and ask for referrals.

How To Nail Onboarding

How you onboard new B2B customers plays a major role in retaining them in the long run and then being able to ask them for referrals later on.

You can use new client onboarding software like Arrows to streamline your onboarding process in HubSpot to bring your customers to value quickly.

Arrows onboarding plans help you create client-facing onboarding plans that attach to your HubSpot deals, tickets, and custom objects.

Our post-sales software gives your team shared visibility into the onboarding progress of all of your clients and an easy-to-follow path to success for your new customers.

Arrows’ best-in-class HubSpot integration makes it possible to keep all your onboarding out of the platform.

The platform is designed to let your customers access their onboarding plans and complete their assigned tasks.

💡 Arrows is rated the #1 App for Customer Success in the HubSpot Marketplace.

How Do Arrows Onboarding Plans Work?

Each plan has tasks that are grouped into phases. Our tool guides your new clients to the next task they need to complete.

You can take your clients to a focused view of each task, which has different task types (from inserting a Google Doc to scheduling a meeting).

Our tool then syncs 50+ data points with your HubSpot property, enabling your customer success team to run and keep track of your entire onboarding process inside HubSpot.

Each deal is connected to an Arrows plan powered by our data, which is synced in real-time to your HubSpot platform. 

There, you can trigger automation and get live reports.

What is different about Arrows? Our solution combines workflow automation with a simple UI embedded in HubSpot. 

Our tool aims to keep prospects engaged and focused on the deal.

By providing onboarding checklists for your clients to complete, you can reduce the onboarding time and increase your team’s capacity.

Here’s why customer success teams choose Arrows onboarding plans:

• Onboard your new clients faster: Keep your new customers on task with clear, easy-to-follow plans tailored to them.
• Increase your team’s capacity: Enable your sales and customer success teams to work out of HubSpot instead of jumping between tools.
• Track progress: Monitor every step of your user’s onboarding journey, from adding their brand’s guidelines to scheduling the initial audit.
• Best-in-class HubSpot integration, which helps you keep your entire team working in HubSpot without creating new inboxes.

Our platform makes it easy for your customers to perform tasks such as uploading files and filling out form fields. The data then syncs back to HubSpot.

Your customer success team will also get access to Arrows onboarding insights, which will help your team uncover insights from your customer onboarding process.

With Arrows onboarding insights, your customer success team will be able to uncover:

• How are plans performing over time for your new clients?
• How long does it take to complete the first task?
• Which tasks are taking too long to complete?
• Where are your customers getting stuck the most?

Interested in trying Arrows out at no cost? You can connect with HubSpot right away and test out our platform for free.

Not ready to sign up, yet? Request a demo to receive a walkthrough of Arrows to see how it connects to your sales and onboarding process inside HubSpot. 

How To Create A Sales Funnel For Your B2B Brand

You can build a sales funnel for your B2B organization by building out your ideal customer personas, and your B2B sales process, and aligning your marketing and sales teams.

After that, it’s all about tracking and evaluating progress to see where leads are dropping off and optimizing each stage of the funnel.

Let’s dive into deeper detail on how you can do that: 👇

#1: Build Ideal Customer Personas

The first step of building your B2B sales funnel is to understand your target audience so you can build a detailed ideal customer persona (ICP).

As your sales process revolves around your customers, both sales teams and marketing teams need to know as much about your target audience as possible.

That includes understanding your ideal customers:

• Current problems and pain points.
• Their desired state – where do they see themselves if they were to solve their problem?
• Their personal goals, such as getting a promotion or growing their small business.
• The current solutions that they are using to solve their problems.

The more detailed and nuanced that research is, the more relevant your messaging and content strategy can be.

➡️ Your team can conduct user interviews and run surveys of ideal customers to get a better understanding of them.

#2: Build Out Your B2B Sales Process

The sales process is the structured series of steps that your sales team will follow to generate the leads, pitch them your solution, and convert them into paying clients.

Your goal is to create a well-defined and documented sales process that is scalable, repeatable, and coachable to newer sales reps.

The sales process should be data-driven, incorporating measurable milestones for your team to track progress and optimize performance over time.

💡 In our guide to the B2B sales process, we went over how you can build a sales process for your sales team that can find and qualify leads, pitch them your solution and then close the deal.

#3: Align Your Marketing & Sales Team

After you’ve got your ideal customer persona and sales process written out, you want to ensure cross-functional alignment between your marketing and sales teams.

That involves ensuring that both your marketing and sales teams work towards the same goals, share information with one another, and collaborate on strategies to engage and convert buyers.

💡 Here are a few actionable strategies of how marketing teams can assist B2B sales enablement:

• The marketing time can produce case studies, white papers, and pieces of content for the blog.
• The marketing experts can also work on optimizing the website and key pages for SEO and conversions to get more leads to sign up for product demos.
• Both teams can collaborate on building out ideal customer personas and identifying customer pain points.

#4: Track & Evaluate Progress

Lastly, your team wants to be able to track and measure the performance of your B2B sales funnel.

That involves monitoring your KPIs throughout the sales funnel to identify areas for improvement across the funnel.

For example, your sales team can conduct a lead drop-off analysis that goes over where prospects are dropping off the most in your sales funnel.

Mahesh Iyaer, a revenue leader, shared on LinkedIn a story where they worked with a B2B SaaS company to identify why the revenue of the brand had stuck.

His agency conducted a lead drop-off analysis to identify what bottlenecks were holding up their conversions and what part of their pipeline was not performing as it should be.

Drive B2B Prospects From Consideration To Loyalty With Arrows

Our digital sales rooms help sales teams close more high-ticket deals by keeping prospects engaged with mutual action plans, resource sharing and milestone tracking.

Arrows also offers purpose-built onboarding plans and client portals that help you manage the entire customer lifecycle out of one platform, instead of jumping between tools.

If you’re a sales leader looking for a B2B sales solution that offers:

• Effective buyer engagement tracking to help you see which leads are viewing the sales rooms in real-time and insights into buyer intent.
• A best-in-class HubSpot integration, which is available for all pricing tiers and lets you sync 50+ real-time data points.
• Other presale features, such as real-time alerts, buyer engagement tracking, and next meeting sync.

Then you can start with Arrows sales rooms for free.

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