The first stage of the sales funnel is awareness, where your prospects are exposed to your business for the first time. They might have seen an online ad, found you via a search engine and landed on your homepage organically, downloaded en ebook, noticed a billboard on the highway, clicked on your social media posts, or discovered you through word of mouth.

You need to keep in mind that factors like conversion rates and sales cycle duration might differ depending on how they arrived on your website (organically or through a paid ad). Your objective at this stage is to keep your leads organized based on their lead source and curate an optimal customer experience for each of them.