Funnels Aren’t Dead. They Just Grew Up.

The Old Game Is Dead (The Funnel Apocalypse)

The relationship between a click and a conversion used to be simple:

Show product → They buy.

Now? Show product → They vanish → Ghost you on every platform → Buy from a competitor they “heard about somewhere.”

The straight line broke.

These days, you can’t go from “Hey, I exist” to “Give me $5,000” in a single scroll. (or even $500. Or even $50. Seriously – it’s gotten that bad.) You need touchpoints. Small yeses that earn the next one. A funnel, done right, is just orchestrated buy-in. 

I teach, as a matter of page narrative, that we have to constantly be earning the next scroll. This is like that, but in a non-page format. 

Funnels = Engagement Systems (Not Shouting Tunnels)

I’ve been neck-deep in this stuff lately, rethinking onboarding, testing new software, writing cold emails that don’t sound like they were written by a robot with ADHD. 

Somewhere in there, I had the epiphany:

A funnel is just engagement. That’s it. 

If it’s interactive, even better. Think short, smart, and mobile-first. A funnel can be as simple as a quiz that asks:

“Hey, are you B2B or B2C?”

“Do you print things?”

“What’s your biggest problem with getting new customers?”

You answer a few, hit submit, and the system says, “Cool, I’ve got something for you.” You check your inbox, you see a little case study, and before you know it, you’ve booked a call.

No psychological warfare. No 14-scroll landing pages. Just conversation.

ClickFunnels Walked So Perspective Could Run

Enter Perspective, the first funnel platform I’ve used that doesn’t make me want to throw my laptop. It’s gorgeous. It’s mobile-first. It loads in half a second.

They call it “breathtaking funnels,” which sounds a bit self-congratulatory, but they’re not wrong.

Perspective talks to HubSpot, Mailchimp, Calendly, and Monday, which means everything plays nicely together. That’s my stack, btw. In case you were wondering. 

It’s also fast, like blink and you’re there fast. If your page takes more than two seconds to load, your funnel has already failed and Perspective has solved for this.

Funnels That Don’t Feel Like Funnels

Here’s the system I’m building:

Cold outreach with Instantly.

• Clean lists, warmed emails, three messages max.
• First email? No links. Just conversation.
• Success metric: “Yes, I’m interested.”

Quiz funnel next.

• Ask a couple of smart, qualifying questions.
• At the end: “Book a quick chat.”

Appointment funnel after that.

• Calendly at the end, tied into HubSpot.
• It’s smooth, human, and measurable.

Some go straight from the first email into booking. Others need the quiz or a case study first. Either way, every click is a micro-commitment. And that’s what works now.

The goal isn’t the sale; it’s the conversation.

“But Chris, Why Not Just Use a Landing Page?”

Because landing pages don’t learn. And there’s not a whole hell of a lot that we can learn from landing page engagement. 

Funnels adapt. They qualify. They show you what’s working, who’s engaging, and where trust drops off.

Your funnel’s job isn’t to impress everyone; it’s to filter out everyone who isn’t ready. That’s actually an incredibly liberating position when you stop to think about it. 

Building Trust, One Scroll at a Time

The first thing a funnel has to do is establish relatedness.

That’s the moment someone thinks, “This person gets me.”

Then: earn the scroll.

Then: build trust.

Every section is a handshake, not a pitch. And yes, design matters. Clean, modern type. Real photos. Not a stock model in a blazer pointing at your CTA button.

Perspective’s funnels feel like a conversation in a clean studio, not a carnival barker screaming through a megaphone. 

Funnels for Everyone (and Everything)

I’m building funnels for:

• Hosting upgrades (“Life’s too short for crappy hosting.”)
• High-ticket consulting (because $5K offers need more than a button)
• Speaker onboarding (short quiz → case study → consult)
• Even client reuse. HubSpot lets me drop existing clients back into funnels when a new offer drops. Everyone becomes a lead again. (any decent CRM will allow you to re-lead existing customers.) 

It’s not about manipulation. It’s about context. And opportunity. When your customers thank you for bringing your latest offer to their attention you know you’ve got a good thing. Before I got into Perspective, building out new campaigns was a huge slog and I ended up leaving a lot of money on the table every year when I could have been reengaging existing customers with some frequency. What you pay attention to you become aware of. 

The Future Is Smaller, Smarter, and More Human (Irony Incoming)

We’re moving from massive sales pages to micro experiences, fast, mobile, conversational, and beautifully designed.

And soon, the faces in them will literally talk to you.

(Yes, my AI avatar reads scripts from my own meeting transcripts. No, I’m not sorry. And it’s amazing.)

If you land on one of my funnels and see a talking head that looks vaguely familiar saying, “Hey, let’s fix that,” just know it’s me. Kind of. I should have a contest. Can you tell which videos are actually me and which ones are my AI avatar? 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve written off funnels because of the bro marketing days, I get it. I was there. But don’t confuse bad execution with a bad idea.

Funnels done right are about earning attention, not demanding it. They’re how you move someone from “Huh, interesting” to “Let’s talk.”

You don’t need fifteen scrolls of copy. You just need a conversation that makes sense, loads fast, and ends with a “Yeah, that’s exactly what I need.”

That’s Funnel World 2026.

And I’m all in.

Cheers,
Chris