Just how the marketing channel works The earliest variation of a sales funnel that I'm able to locate is this from 1904 by Frank Hutchinson Dukesmith, editor of the Salesmanship magazine Below, Dukesmith presented the idea of 4 stages that bring about a sale: Focus, Passion, Desire and also Sentence. Virtually 50 years later on, an advertising and marketing and sales exec in the pharmaceutical sector, Arthur F Peterson, released the following image in his book, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Explaining, and Sales Educating: