How the advertising and marketing funnel works The earliest version of a sales funnel that I have the ability to discover is this set from 1904 by Frank Hutchinson Dukesmith, editor of the Salesmanship publication Here, Dukesmith introduced the idea of 4 stages that cause a sale: Interest, Interest, Desire as well as Sentence. Nearly 50 years later, a marketing and sales executive in the pharmaceutical sector, Arthur F Peterson, published the adhering to image in his book, Drug Selling, Describing, as well as Sales Educating: