To really understand HubSpot’s flywheel, think of it as a dynamic, customer-powered engine for growth, rather than a traditional, linear sales funnel. This model emphasizes putting your customers at the very heart of your business strategy, recognizing that their satisfaction and success are the most powerful forces for attracting new clients and propelling your company forward. It’s all about building momentum, where happy customers don’t just “exit” your business, but instead become advocates, fueling a continuous cycle of growth through referrals and repeat business.

Unlike the old funnel model, which often views customers as an outcome or a “drop-off” point, the flywheel sees them as a vital input, continuously generating energy for your business. HubSpot shifted to this model because they realized the traditional funnel, while useful for tracking linear progress, didn’t fully account for the modern buyer’s journey or the immense influence of customer reviews and word-of-mouth . Today’s customers are knowledgeable, skeptical, and have higher expectations, often doing significant research before even contacting a seller. The flywheel concept helps companies align their entire organization – marketing, sales, and service – to deliver an exceptional customer experience, which in turn drives delight, loyalty, and organic growth. It’s a holistic view that ensures every team contributes to the customer’s success, transforming them into enthusiastic promoters of your brand.

So, let’s break down what this “flywheel” actually is. At its core, the flywheel is a business model that HubSpot adapted to explain how a company gains momentum when all its departments align to deliver a remarkable customer experience. Think of a physical flywheel: it’s a wheel that’s incredibly efficient at storing and releasing energy. The more force you apply to it, the faster it spins. The less friction it encounters, the more efficiently it rotates and maintains its speed. And the bigger and heavier it is, the more momentum it carries, making it harder to stop.

HubSpot took this mechanical concept and applied it to business growth. In this model, customers are positioned at the center, and the energy you put into providing a great experience for them creates momentum. This momentum then helps your business grow. It’s a continuous, self-reinforcing cycle where customer satisfaction isn’t just a byproduct. it’s the main driver of future success.

Back in 2018, HubSpot’s CEO, Brian Halligan, introduced this shift, arguing that the traditional sales funnel was becoming outdated. He highlighted that in a world driven by social media, reviews, and referrals, customers aren’t just an “output” at the bottom of a funnel. they’re a powerful force that can input new business back into the system. The flywheel, with its continuous, circular motion, better represents this reality.

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Why HubSpot Ditched the Funnel

You might be thinking, “What was wrong with the funnel anyway? We’ve used it forever!” And you’re right, the marketing and sales funnel has been a staple for decades, guiding leads through stages like awareness, interest, desire, and action. But, as much as it helped us visualize the customer journey, it had a big flaw: it viewed customers as an endpoint. Once a customer converted, they essentially “fell out” of the bottom of the funnel, and the energy you spent acquiring them was, in a way, lost. You’d then have to start all over again, pouring more leads into the top to maintain growth.

This linear perspective didn’t quite capture the reality of modern business, especially with the rise of digital platforms and the sheer power of word-of-mouth. Today, customer referrals and positive reviews have a massive impact on the sales process. Research shows that a huge majority of people, like 81% according to some studies, trust advice from friends and family more than traditional advertising. So, if your business model isn’t actively leveraging those happy customers, you’re missing out on a tremendous growth opportunity.

HubSpot’s move to the flywheel was a recognition that customer success isn’t just about closing a deal. it’s about nurturing relationships that turn customers into promoters. It’s about building a business where every team, from marketing to sales to customer service, is aligned around delivering an exceptional experience, because that experience directly fuels future growth.

The Three Stages of the Flywheel: Attract, Engage, Delight

The HubSpot flywheel isn’t just a fancy circle. it’s structured around three key phases that mirror the inbound methodology: Attract, Engage, and Delight. Each phase plays a crucial role in maintaining and accelerating your business’s momentum.

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Attract: Drawing in Your Audience

This first phase is all about earning your audience’s attention, not forcing it. world, people are actively looking for solutions, and you want your business to be the one they find. This means creating valuable content and experiences that genuinely help potential customers. The goal here is to attract qualified traffic and build brand recognition without being intrusive.

Think about it: how often do you ignore traditional ads? A lot, probably. Modern customers are proactive, searching for information and solutions themselves. So, instead of shouting about your product, you attract them by providing answers to their questions and naturally intercepting their interest.

Common tactics in the Attract stage include:

Content Marketing: Creating helpful blog posts, videos, guides, and e-books that address your audience’s pain points and interests.
Search Engine Optimization SEO: Making sure your content ranks high on search engines so people can easily find you when they’re looking for information.
Social Media: Sharing valuable content, engaging in conversations, and building a community around your brand on platforms where your audience spends their time.
Targeted Ads: Running ads that are highly relevant to specific audience segments, ensuring your message reaches the right people at the right time.

The idea is to break down any barriers that stop people from learning about your company, making it easy and appealing for them to discover what you offer.

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Engage: Building Meaningful Relationships

Once you’ve attracted potential customers, the next step is to engage with them in a way that builds trust and fosters a deeper connection. This phase focuses on transforming visitors into qualified leads and, ultimately, into customers by offering relevant solutions and a smooth buying process.

This isn’t just about “closing the deal.” It’s about enabling buyers to interact with you on their terms, through their preferred channels and timelines. You want to offer insights and solutions that truly align with their goals and challenges.

Common tactics in the Engage stage include:

Personalized Email Marketing: Sending targeted emails that offer value, answer questions, and guide prospects through their buying journey.
Live Chat and Chatbots: Providing instant support and answers to questions on your website, making it easy for prospects to get the information they need.
Tailored Offers: Presenting products or services that directly address the prospect’s specific needs, often after understanding their preferences through their interactions with your content.
CRM Customer Relationship Management Software: Using a CRM to track interactions, gather insights, and ensure every team member has a complete picture of the prospect’s journey, allowing for consistent and personalized communication.
Frictionless Selling: Making the buying process as simple and enjoyable as possible, removing any obstacles that might slow down or frustrate the customer.

The goal here is to establish deep connections, showing prospects that you understand their needs and can provide genuine value.

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Delight: Turning Customers into Advocates

The Delight phase is where the “magic happens” in the flywheel. It’s about surpassing customer expectations and providing exceptional support and guidance after the purchase, ensuring their long-term success. This is crucial because delighted customers aren’t just satisfied. they become loyal advocates for your brand, feeding new energy back into the “Attract” stage of your flywheel.

Think about a product or service you absolutely love. Chances are, you tell your friends, right? That’s the power of delight. It’s what turns customers into spontaneous ambassadors who spread positive word-of-mouth and contribute significantly to your organic growth.

Common tactics in the Delight stage include:

Exceptional Customer Service: Providing ongoing support, proactive help, and quick resolutions to issues. This can involve a responsive help desk, knowledgeable support teams, and AI-powered solutions to scale support.
Customer Success Programs: Actively helping customers achieve their goals with your product or service through training, onboarding, and continuous check-ins.
Surveys and Feedback: Regularly asking for customer feedback to understand their needs, identify areas for improvement, and show that their opinions matter.
Community Building: Creating forums, user groups, or social media communities where customers can connect, share tips, and feel part of your brand.
Loyalty Programs and Referrals: Rewarding existing customers for their loyalty and incentivizing them to refer new business.

By focusing on helping customers achieve their goals, you empower them, build lasting relationships, and turn them into your best marketing asset.

How the Flywheel Works: Understanding Forces and Friction

To truly leverage the flywheel, you need to understand two critical concepts from its mechanical inspiration: force and friction. These are what determine how fast and efficiently your business flywheel spins. Does HubSpot Have Email Marketing? Your Complete Guide to Mastering Email with HubSpot

Adding Force to Your Flywheel

Force represents all the strategies and programs you put in place to accelerate your flywheel. It’s the deliberate effort you apply to the Attract, Engage, and Delight stages to make them more effective and powerful. When you add force effectively, you increase your flywheel’s speed and momentum.

Examples of adding force:

Investing in Inbound Marketing: Creating high-quality, relevant content that genuinely helps your target audience. The more valuable content you produce, the more people you attract.
Frictionless Selling: Streamlining your sales process to make it easy for prospects to buy. This could mean clear pricing, flexible communication channels, or quick response times from your sales team.
Customer Referral Programs: Actively encouraging and rewarding happy customers for spreading the word about your business. A strong referral program directly turns delighted customers into a force for attraction.
Investing in Customer Service: Providing exceptional post-purchase support that ensures customer success. A well-trained, proactive customer service team can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one, reinforcing loyalty and advocacy.
Personalized Experiences: Tailoring interactions, offers, and content based on individual customer data and preferences, making them feel valued and understood.

Essentially, anything that makes your customers more successful and more likely to advocate for you is a force that speeds up your flywheel.

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Eliminating Friction from Your Flywheel

Friction, on the other hand, is anything that slows down your flywheel or makes it harder to spin. It represents obstacles, inefficiencies, and poor experiences that impede customer satisfaction and growth. Identifying and removing friction is just as crucial as adding force.

Examples of common friction points:

Poor Internal Processes: Lack of communication or misalignment between your marketing, sales, and service teams can lead to clumsy handoffs and a fragmented customer experience. Imagine a customer talking to sales, then having to re-explain everything to customer service – that’s friction.
Complicated Pricing: Confusing or hidden fees can frustrate potential buyers and make them hesitant to commit.
Unresponsive Support: Slow or unhelpful customer service can quickly turn a happy customer into a detractor, leading to negative reviews and churn.
Difficult Buyer’s Journey: If prospects get stuck at various points – perhaps a website that’s hard to navigate, complex forms, or a lack of clear information – they’re likely to drop off.
Lack of Customer-Centricity: When a business prioritizes transactions over relationships, it creates a feeling of being undervalued, which generates significant friction.
Rigid Processes: Forcing customers to follow your strict internal processes rather than allowing them to engage on their preferred terms.

To reduce friction, you need to constantly analyze your customer journey, identify pain points, and look at how your teams are structured and collaborate. Using a unified platform like HubSpot’s CRM can help immensely by bringing all customer data and interactions into one place, ensuring seamless communication across departments and a smoother experience for the customer.

Key Principles of the Flywheel

Beyond the stages and the mechanics of force and friction, a few core principles underpin the entire flywheel philosophy:

Customer-Centricity

This is probably the most important principle. The flywheel model explicitly places the customer at the very center of your business strategy. This isn’t just a marketing slogan. it’s a fundamental shift in mindset. Every decision, every action, and every team is focused on delivering value and ensuring the customer’s success. When customers feel valued and successful, they are more likely to stay, spend more, and tell others about you. Supercharge Your Outlook: The Ultimate Guide to the HubSpot Sales Extension for New Outlook

Momentum

The concept of momentum is central to the flywheel. It’s about building a self-reinforcing cycle where initial efforts create energy that fuels subsequent growth. This means understanding that growth isn’t always linear. it’s compounding. Small, consistent actions build upon each other over time, eventually leading to significant and sustainable acceleration. It takes effort to get the flywheel spinning, but once it’s moving, it takes less effort to keep it going and even less to accelerate it.

Cross-Functional Alignment

For the flywheel to spin effectively, all your teams – marketing, sales, and customer service – need to work together seamlessly. The traditional funnel often created silos, with each department having its own goals and metrics. The flywheel, however, demands collaboration. Marketing efforts impact sales, sales efforts impact service, and service excellence fuels marketing through advocacy. When teams are aligned, communication flows smoothly, handoffs are frictionless, and the customer experience is consistent and positive. HubSpot’s platform, by integrating these functions, helps to break down those silos.

Implementing the Flywheel in Your Business

Adopting the flywheel model isn’t just about changing a diagram. it’s about transforming your business operations and mindset. Here’s how you can start implementing it:

Map Out Your Customer Journey: Really understand every touchpoint a customer has with your business, from their first interaction to post-purchase support. Where do they find you? What questions do they have? What makes them happy, and where do they get frustrated? Identifying these points is key to understanding where to apply force and remove friction.
Identify Forces and Friction Points: For each stage Attract, Engage, Delight, pinpoint what’s currently driving positive momentum forces and what’s slowing things down friction. For example, a great blog might be a force in “Attract,” while a slow response time on customer service might be friction in “Delight”. Be honest about your internal processes and customer feedback. Mastering the HubSpot Digital Marketing Certification: Your Honest Guide to Acing the Exam
Align Your Teams Around the Customer: Break down departmental silos. Encourage marketing, sales, and service teams to communicate and collaborate regularly. Their incentives should be aligned with customer success, not just individual metrics. For instance, sales shouldn’t just focus on closing a deal, but on ensuring the customer is a good fit and will be successful, which eases the load on the service team later.
Leverage Technology like CRM: A unified platform is incredibly helpful here. Tools like HubSpot’s CRM, marketing automation, and customer support software can bring all your customer data into one place, making it accessible to every team. This enables personalized communication, tracks customer journeys, and helps identify friction points more easily.
Continuously Measure and Optimize: The flywheel is not a one-and-done setup. You need to constantly track key metrics related to customer satisfaction, referrals, repeat purchases, and efficiency across your attract, engage, and delight stages. Use this data to refine your strategies, amplify your forces, and eliminate new sources of friction as they arise. Are your NPS Net Promoter Score or customer loyalty metrics improving? Are leads moving through stages faster?

Real-World Business Flywheel Examples

While HubSpot popularized the flywheel for marketing and sales, the core concept of a self-reinforcing loop that builds momentum was initially introduced by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great”. Many successful companies, even before HubSpot, were unknowingly or knowingly leveraging this idea.

Amazon: This is often cited as a classic flywheel example. Amazon’s flywheel starts with lower prices attracts more customers, which leads to more customers attracts more third-party sellers, resulting in a wider selection of products. This wider selection and lower prices enhance the customer experience, bringing in even more traffic and word-of-mouth. Increased traffic allows Amazon to operate at a larger scale, which in turn enables them to further lower prices. It’s a continuous, self-reinforcing cycle of growth.
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Netflix: Their flywheel could be described as: more subscribers attracts more content creators, which leads to more diverse content attracts even more subscribers. More subscribers also mean more data on viewing habits, allowing them to create better original content tailored to their audience, which again attracts more subscribers.
Nike: Nike’s flywheel focuses on famous athletes wearing Nike amplifies brand power, which attracts more customers builds brand power, allowing them to set higher prices/generate more revenue. This revenue is then reinvested to invent better shoes and innovate, which then attracts more famous athletes, and the cycle continues.

These examples show that a business flywheel isn’t just for tech companies. it’s a strategic framework that can be applied to almost any industry by identifying the core elements that drive continuous growth and reinforce each other.

Flywheel vs. Funnel: A Deeper Look

Let’s quickly recap the fundamental difference between the flywheel and the traditional funnel, because this often causes a bit of confusion. What Are HubSpot Extensions Anyway?

The Traditional Funnel:

Linear: It’s a straight line or cone where prospects enter at the top and, ideally, exit as customers at the bottom.
Finite: The process typically ends once a sale is made. The customer is the output.
Energy Loss: All the effort and resources invested in acquiring that customer are essentially “lost” at the bottom of the funnel, requiring constant new input at the top.
Siloed Teams: Often encourages marketing, sales, and service teams to work independently, each focused on their specific stage of the funnel.

The Flywheel:

Circular: It’s a continuous, self-reinforcing loop where customers feed growth.
Infinite: The customer journey doesn’t end. it rotates back into driving more growth. Customers are a central input.
Energy Generation: Happy customers generate positive momentum force through referrals, reviews, and repeat business, effectively fueling the “attract” stage for new customers.
Aligned Teams: Necessitates that all teams work collaboratively to deliver an outstanding end-to-end customer experience.

The funnel served its purpose, but customer-driven economy, the flywheel offers a more realistic and powerful model for sustainable growth. It acknowledges that the biggest threat to your company’s growth isn’t always competitors, but a bad customer experience.

Benefits of the Flywheel Model

Embracing the flywheel model offers several compelling advantages for businesses aiming for sustainable, long-term growth:

Sustainable Growth: By making customers the engine of your growth, you create a self-sustaining cycle that reduces reliance on constantly acquiring new leads from scratch. This leads to more efficient and organic growth over time.
Increased Customer Loyalty and Retention: When you prioritize delighting your customers, you build stronger relationships, leading to higher retention rates and repeat business. Loyal customers are less likely to churn and more likely to purchase additional products or services.
Enhanced Brand Reputation and Advocacy: Happy customers become your most effective marketers. Their positive word-of-mouth, reviews, and referrals build trust and attract new prospects more effectively than traditional advertising. Studies show that customer satisfaction and retention are often at the heart of a successful flywheel.
Improved Operational Efficiency: By focusing on reducing friction across your customer journey and aligning teams, you streamline internal processes, minimize clumsy handoffs, and ensure a more seamless experience for both customers and employees. This can lead to significant cost savings and better resource allocation.
Deeper Customer Insights: The continuous interaction and feedback loops inherent in the flywheel model provide a wealth of data about customer needs, preferences, and pain points. This allows for better product development, more personalized marketing, and proactive customer service.
Better Adaptability: Because the flywheel emphasizes continuous improvement and feedback, businesses using this model can react more quickly to market changes and customer needs, making them more resilient.

Potential Challenges and How to Overcome Them

While the flywheel offers immense benefits, implementing it isn’t without its challenges. It requires a significant shift in mindset and operations. Supercharge Your Inbox: The Ultimate Guide to the HubSpot Gmail Extension

Mindset Shift from Transactional to Relational: Many businesses are deeply ingrained in a transactional “funnel” mentality.
- Overcoming this: Leaders need to champion the change. Clearly communicate why the shift is happening and how it benefits everyone, from employees to customers to the business’s bottom line. Emphasize that long-term relationships yield greater returns than short-term sales.
Breaking Down Departmental Silos: Getting marketing, sales, and service teams to genuinely collaborate can be tough if they’ve historically worked independently.
- Overcoming this: Foster collaboration through shared goals, unified metrics like customer lifetime value or Net Promoter Score, and a common CRM platform. Regular inter-departmental meetings and joint projects can help build empathy and understanding between teams. Aligning sales incentives with customer success, not just closing rates, can also make a huge difference.
Identifying and Reducing Friction: Pinpointing where customers experience friction can be challenging, especially without robust feedback mechanisms.
- Overcoming this: Implement customer feedback loops surveys, reviews, direct interviews, analyze customer journey data in your CRM, and empower customer-facing teams to identify and report friction points. Regularly review processes and actively seek input from customers who have churned to understand why.
Measuring Momentum: Quantifying the “spin” of your flywheel and the impact of forces can feel less straightforward than counting leads in a funnel.
- Overcoming this: Focus on metrics like customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, referral rates, Net Promoter Score NPS, and customer satisfaction CSAT. Track how quickly leads move through the attract-engage-delight stages and how effectively new strategies forces impact these numbers.
Initial Effort and Patience: Getting a flywheel moving takes significant initial effort, and results may not be immediate. HubSpot Demo Login: Your Ultimate Guide to Free Trials, CRM Access, & Test Accounts
- Overcoming this: Stay persistent and disciplined. Celebrate small wins and clearly communicate progress to keep teams motivated. Remember, the momentum builds exponentially over time, but it needs that consistent initial push.

By proactively addressing these challenges, businesses can successfully transition to a flywheel model and unlock its full potential for sustained, customer-centric growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary purpose of HubSpot’s flywheel model?

The primary purpose of HubSpot’s flywheel model is to explain the momentum a business gains when its entire organization aligns around delivering a remarkable customer experience, with satisfied customers fueling continuous growth through referrals and repeat business. It’s a shift from the linear sales funnel to a circular, customer-centric system.

Who invented the original flywheel concept in a business context?

The concept of the “flywheel effect” in a business context was popularized by management consultant Jim Collins in his 2001 book “Good to Great”. HubSpot later adapted and applied this concept specifically to inbound marketing and sales, replacing their traditional funnel model. HubSpot CRM Demo: Unlock Your Business Potential (Even the Free Stuff!)

What are the three key stages of the HubSpot flywheel?

The three key stages of the HubSpot flywheel are Attract, Engage, and Delight. These stages represent the continuous cycle of drawing in potential customers with valuable content, building relationships by offering relevant solutions, and exceeding their expectations to turn them into loyal advocates.

How does the flywheel model differ from the traditional sales funnel?

The flywheel model differs from the traditional sales funnel by being circular and continuous instead of linear and finite. The funnel views customers as an output, dropping off after a sale, while the flywheel places customers at its center, recognizing them as a vital input that generates momentum and drives future growth through advocacy and referrals. Also, the flywheel emphasizes cross-departmental alignment, whereas the funnel often created silos between marketing, sales, and service teams.

What do “force” and “friction” mean in the context of the flywheel?

In the flywheel model, force refers to any strategies, investments, or programs that add energy and accelerate the spin of your flywheel, such as excellent customer service or effective inbound marketing. Friction represents anything that slows down your flywheel’s momentum, like poor internal processes, confusing pricing, or unresponsive customer support. To grow faster, businesses need to maximize force and minimize friction.

Can the flywheel model be used by any type of business, not just large corporations?

Yes, absolutely! The flywheel concept is a strategic framework that can be applied by businesses of any size, from small startups to large corporations. While examples like Amazon are prominent, the core principles of customer-centricity, building momentum, and reducing friction are universal and beneficial for achieving sustainable growth in any business.

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How does customer success contribute to the flywheel’s momentum?

Customer success is incredibly important for the flywheel’s momentum because delighted customers become powerful advocates for your brand. Their positive reviews, testimonials, and word-of-mouth referrals act as a significant “force” that attracts new prospects to your business, effectively feeding new leads into the “Attract” stage of your flywheel. This creates a self-reinforcing loop where customer success directly fuels future growth.

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