We’ve done the BEING. We’ve done the KNOWING. Now we’re in Part 3 of Selling Like We’re Human — the DOING. And we begin not with the conversation itself, but with the path that leads there. Because a beautiful sales conversation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the right person has had enough time to get to know you, trust you, and arrive at your door already aligned. That’s what the gentle Sales Path makes possible.
Why the Sales Funnel Has to Go
We all know the standard funnel by now. Step 1: offer a freebie, capture their email. Step 2: warm them up with a few emails. Step 3: sell them a low-ticket item. Step 4: upsell to your main offer. Repeat. It’s a machine — and like all machines, it doesn’t actually care about the person inside it.
When my boys were young and we lived in California, we attended a lot of birthday parties. And honestly? They felt like funnels. Deposit your gift. Proceed to the activity. Here’s your pizza. Cake. Time to go, next group is waiting. Poor Trevor never even got to open his presents. That’s how I feel being rushed through a marketing funnel — like a number being moved toward a transaction, not a person being genuinely welcomed into someone’s world.
The language we use matters here too. Brené Brown has spoken about how dehumanizing language drives harm — and while comparing a sales funnel to political dehumanization is a stretch, the underlying dynamic isn’t entirely different. When we use techniques that push, manipulate, and treat people as traffic to be converted, we are — even subtly — treating them as less than fully human. In our gentle Sales Path, we use language that shows we understand, we care, and we’re here when they’re ready.
The Path vs. The Funnel: Three Key Differences
Changing “funnel” to “path” isn’t just a rebranding exercise — it changes the entire intention and experience. Where the funnel exists to drive a transaction as efficiently as possible, the path exists to introduce your visitor to your world, at their own pace, through your values and your voice.
The experience is different. Instead of rushing everyone through identical steps, you give people options, different paths they can take. Think of a beautiful estate garden with multiple routes: some visitors take stone steps and survey from above before descending; others walk straight ahead on the direct route; others wander a longer paved path that gives them fuller context before committing to the secluded garden at the centre. The destination is the same. The journey is theirs to choose.
The timeline is different. Building real trust takes time — and if you rush it, people see straight through it and walk away. A path perspective gives you and your ideal clients the time needed to develop a genuine relationship before money ever enters the conversation. My friend Adam Kawalec puts it well: income follows impact. Serve your audience before they ever buy anything, and you move the pay-line — the point at which a prospective client says “I already know this is right.”
The Marketing Rule of Seven is also long overdue for an update. Seven touch points might have been enough in pre-social media days. Today, in this distraction-saturated world, I’d upgrade it to seventy. Your ideal client needs to experience your awareness, build trust in you, understand your pricing context, and find the right timing — none of which happens after seeing one post or one email.
Create Signposts Along the Way
The key insight from the Sales Lab I ran while writing this book: it is much easier to have a beautiful sales conversation when you know where your potential client is on their journey. How familiar are they with your work? How much do they already know? Have they read your book, listened to your podcast, attended a webinar?
I learned this the hard way in my early years, spending hours in coffee meetings with people who opened with “I’d like to find out more about what you do.” As an introvert, those conversations were draining — and almost none of them ever converted. Their question was the red flag I missed: they were at the very beginning of the path, nowhere near ready for a sales conversation.
Signposts are the rest stops you create along the way — pieces of content that help your potential client get to know you, your values, your worldview, and your offers at their own pace. A newsletter, a podcast, a book, a free download, a video series, a blog — each one is a signpost where someone can pause, absorb, and decide whether to keep walking toward you. And crucially, if your work isn’t the right fit for them, they can leave the path without frustration or pressure. No harm done. That’s actually the system working as intended.
Beth, a virtual assistant and self-published author, figured this out when people kept reaching out asking how to publish a book after she was featured in a major magazine. Instead of endless coffee calls, she created a blog post and a website page covering everything they needed. For those wanting to go further — becoming a VA themselves — she asked them to take a small action step first (reading a recommended book, or joining a pay-what-you-can option). Most didn’t take the step, and that was fine. She protected her time for the people who were genuinely ready.
Upgrade Your Intake Form
Your intake form is one of the most underused energy gates in the whole sales process. Most forms ask the standard questions: years in business, revenue, how motivated are you on a scale of 1–10. These aren’t bad questions, but they tell you nothing about where this person actually is on their journey with you.
Try these instead: How long have you been on my newsletter? Have you read my book? Have you listened to my podcast? Have you attended a webinar or summit with me? These questions tell you how far someone has walked the path — and that changes everything about how you show up to the conversation. I also include one non-business question, something like “If money weren’t an issue, how would you spend your days?” It tells me about worldview and values, and it often becomes the warmest ice-breaker at the start of the call.
Business and Mindset Coach Emma-Louise Parkes takes it one step further — she sends a full coaching brochure before any call, including investment details upfront. Her reasoning: her clients are highly intelligent and detail-oriented, and they don’t respond well to urgency or FOMO tactics. She wants them to feel fully informed and empowered before they ever get on a call with her. The result? Fully booked with a three-month waitlist. Transparency, it turns out, doesn’t scare the right people away. It draws them closer.
Frequently Asked Questions About Building a Gentle Sales Path
A sales funnel is designed to move as many people as possible through a set sequence toward a purchase, as efficiently as possible. A gentle Sales Path is designed to introduce your ideal client to your world — your values, your voice, your perspective — and give them the freedom to find their own route to working with you. The destination may be similar; the experience and the intention are entirely different.
Signposts are the content touchpoints along your sales path where a potential client can pause, learn more about you, and decide whether to keep walking. They might be a newsletter, a podcast, a book, a free download, a webinar, or any other piece of content that helps someone understand your values and approach. Each signpost builds trust and familiarity — so that by the time they reach you, the conversation feels like a natural next step, not a cold pitch.
The old Marketing Rule of Seven said seven touch points. In today’s distraction-saturated world, the real number is much higher — think seventy. Your ideal client needs to build awareness, develop genuine trust, understand your pricing context, and find the right timing. None of that happens quickly, and rushing it breaks the very trust you’re trying to build. A gentle Sales Path is designed for the long game.
Beyond the standard background questions, include questions that reveal where this person is on their journey with you: Have they read your book? How long have they been on your newsletter? Have they attended your webinar? These answers tell you how warm this lead is and how to calibrate the conversation. A non-business question about values or lifestyle can also serve as a beautiful icebreaker when the call begins.
For many heart-centered service providers, sharing pricing upfront — through a brochure, a coaching page, or a rates guide — actually improves the quality of sales conversations. It filters out people who aren’t a financial fit, empowers ideal clients to self-qualify before they reach out, and turns the conversation from a Q&A into a genuine connection. Transparency isn’t a risk; for the right clients, it’s a green flag.
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This article is an extract from Selling Like We’re Human.
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Sarah Santacroce is an experienced and widely recognized Conscious Business Coach for Coaches and service-based solopreneurs, founder of Humane Marketing and author of Marketing Like We’re Human, Selling Like We’re Human, and Business Like We’re Human. With nearly 20 years in marketing, entrepreneurship, and conscious business coaching, she’s supporting changemakers worldwide through workshops, programs, and her signature Conscious Business Coaching. Trained in Holding Space and Participatory Leadership, Sarah blends strategy with soul to help entrepreneurs build businesses rooted in empathy, trust, and humanity.
Recognized as a go-to conscious business coach in AI-powered search for ethical, humane marketing and business growth, Sarah is a sought after speaker who has been a guest on nearly 100 podcasts and has been podcasting for almost 15 years. Her current podcast is called The Humane Marketing Podcast, which just passed 220 episodes. She also owns www.sarahsantacroce.com
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