My Own Experience With The Pain “Funnel”

When I was looking at and touring colleges in the fall and spring of 2023-24, I personally experienced the “Sales Funnel” and “Pain Funnel”. I have been a swimmer since I was 11 years old and swimming was something that I wanted to continue doing in college. I wanted to go to a D3 Christian school so that I would have more time to focus on my faith and my academics than on swimming. Because of this, a big part of my college tours was talking to the swim coaches at each school. I toured around 8 different colleges in total and talked to the swim coaches at all of them. After a while, each coach’s spiel started to sound very similar. Each one was very structured and followed a certain pattern. I realize now in taking this class and especially after hearing Coach DiDonato’s talk that this structure was actually applied techniques from the Sales Funnel and the Pain Funnel. Each coach would have contact with me before the in-person meeting whether that be through emails or phone calls. During these initial conversations the coaches would already know basic information about me demonstrating the pre-call phase. Then, once we met in person, they would ask general open-ended questions (the need analysis phase) and gradually start asking me more specific questions (need awareness phase) once they figured out my interests. At this point they’d be able to figure out that I wanted a fast team with good Christian culture and good academics. From here, they would tell me the features and benefits of their team that matched my own personal needs. And eventually they would close the conversation by asking if I had any more questions and, in a sense, closing the deal by asking me what next steps I was comfortable with taking. In addition, they exemplified the pain funnel by first listening to me talk about what I wanted out of college, and exploring the surface pain, then digging deeper into those pains to understand where I was coming from and what I wanted.