David Skok was on the board of HubSpot, the Marketing Automation company in its early days, so he knows a thing or two about how Sales Funnels work. In this presentation, he notes that when he asks people to describe their organisation's funnel, they frequently fail to do so concisely. 

The point he is making is that the process of trying to write down the steps that occur before, during and after a sale or instruction, causes people to identify problems and hence start to solve them. He asks firms to think about where there are blockages or bottlenecks that constrict flow, making the funnel only run at the speed of its slowest part. 

Thinking about how a funnel has changed thanks to lockdown and where bottlenecks are now is an extremely useful exercise. The conversations leading up to a sale have been dramatically altered, making buying processes faster and more efficient in many ways. However, it is essential that firms and their professionals are "present" in the new dialogue throughout the process, if they are to be competitive.