Why sales and marketing alignment matters for business growth

The way businesses engage with customers is shifting fast. Aligning sales and marketing teams is no longer optional—it’s essential for delivering a seamless customer journey and driving sustainable growth. In this episode of CX Minutes, we sat down with Philip Kerr from SalesScreen to explore how companies can create a unified approach to the customer journey, ensuring impact-driven growth and collaboration across teams.

CX Minutes with Philip Kerr, SalesScreen and our host Sabina Persson, Custellence.

FAQ

Key takeaways

Final thoughts

Read the transcript

What you can expect in this episode

Breaking down silos: How to create a seamless customer journey

Too often, organizations operate in silos—marketing generates leads, sales works to convert them, and customer success focuses on retention. This fragmented approach leads to misalignment, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities. Philip Kerr emphasizes that real customer impact comes from a seamless, interconnected strategy where every team works toward a shared goal: delivering measurable business value.

Moving beyond sales funnels: Why the revenue bow tie matters

Traditionally, companies have relied on the sales funnel, a linear journey from awareness to purchase. However, Philip Kerr suggests shifting away from this model and embracing a more holistic revenue approach that prioritizes impact from the start. He mentions new frameworks like the revenue bow tie, which focuses on continuous customer engagement rather than just acquisition.

Key advantages of the revenue bow tie

• Customer-centric focus – Prioritizing customer impact over simple lead conversion.
• Seamless collaboration – Aligning sales and marketing teams to work as one.
• Sustainable growth – Creating long-term relationships rather than one-time transactions.

Further Reading: The Bowtie Model: Revenue Growth and the Customer Journey.

AI is changing the game for sales and marketing alignment

Artificial intelligence is transforming customer education, decision-making, and experience management. Philip Kerr highlights that AI can eliminate repetitive tasks, empower customers with insights, and ensure businesses measure actual business impact rather than relying on assumptions.

Related Read: How AI Is Revolutionizing Customer Experience

What B2B companies can learn from B2C strategies

B2B businesses are increasingly adopting customer-centric strategies inspired by B2C. Philip Kerr highlights that modern customers expect fast, intuitive, and personalized purchasing experiences—whether they’re buying software or shoes.

He highlights that businesses need to educate and empower their customers to reduce reliance on human intervention and create seamless digital interactions. By embracing personalization and customer-driven models, B2B companies can drive stronger engagement and long-term relationships.

Further Reading: B2C vs. B2B Customer Experience

Key takeaways

• Aligning sales and marketing teams is essential for sustainable business growth.
• AI is revolutionizing customer engagement and decision-making.
• The traditional sales funnel is outdated—companies should embrace continuous engagement models like the revenue bow tie.
• B2B companies can learn from B2C strategies to create more personalized and seamless customer experiences.

👉 Curious to learn more? Watch the full CX Minutes episode with Philip Kerr here.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Final thoughts

At the core of this shift is one essential truth: Companies must stop thinking in silos and start working as one unified team. Whether it’s sales, marketing, or expansion, every department plays a crucial role in driving customer success and business growth.

By breaking down silos, integrating AI-driven insights, and focusing on customer impact, businesses can craft a more cohesive, scalable, and future-proof approach to growth. The future belongs to companies that align their teams and focus on delivering real value.

Transcript

Intro

0:09 Sabina Persson, Custellence: I’m Sabina Persson from Custellence, and you’re very welcome to the videocast, CX minutes. it’s six questions six minutes and it’s all about customer experience. So this is a series of episodes where we want to bring you actionable insights, practical  knowhow, and personal stories. From top professionals, all in just six minutes.   

Welcome Philip

0:36 Sabina: And with me today I have  the wonderful Philip Kerr from SalesScreen. You are so welcome!

0:42 Philip Kerr, SalesScreen: Thank you very much, nice to be here. 

0:45 Sabina: Great, how are you?

0:46 Philip: Amazing! We got a kickstart of the year, and I’m pumped up, so I’m good.

0:49: Sabina: Brilliant! So we’re gonna jump into the questions in a minute. But do you just first want to share  with me, you know who you are and what you do?  

Who are you and what do you do?

0:59 Philip: Who am I what do I do. My name is Philip Kerr, I’m Swedish, been living in Norway for eight years. I’ve been spending my previous 12 years within SaaS. Started off as a founder, entrepreneur, trying to build and sell CRM software. I learned back then that I was not that good at selling so decided to, okay if this is going to work, I need to master the art of sales.

So I went on to a Swedish company called Lime Technologies or Lundalogik back in the days. I joined their trainee program, and since then I like, account manager, account executive, team lead, and eventually sales manager and country manager.

So I’ve been doing  the sales journey within SaaS. And recently I’ve been looking into more about revenue architecture and how to scale businesses, and bringing that approach into my expertise, helping customer scale their business basically.

2:03 Sabina: Thank you! Wow what a career, that’s cool. Okay let’s talk about  the future of CX.

What’s one overlooked CX trend, that you think people should pay more attention to right now?

2:11 Sabina: So what’s one overlooked trend that you think, CX trend, that you think  people should pay more attention to right now?  

2:18 Philip: There’s many different trends going on, like since the SaaS crash and the covid there’s a lot of buying patterns that have been changing, but also the financial landscape is different. But I’m also seeing that revenue teams or companies they need to come together more as one. Doesn’t really matter if you work with marketing, customer acquisitions, onboarding or expansions, they need to work as one. 

And I believe, and this is like, if we look into the future in the next coming years. I think we will see a trend where customer journeys becomes more focused on impact from start, than just like here’s the software, here’s the value. Because value is pretty much just a promise about what you might get, but true business impact is actually when it’s working. So that’s my lookout for like, the changes within customer experience for next coming year, more impact. Good totally agree on that actually as well.

How do you see AI shaping the future of customer experience?

3:23 Sabina: So how do you see AI shaping the future of customer experience? This is a very small question.

3:29 Philip: But it’s cool because it’s happening a lot as we speak, and I mean I think, as AI is like a big innovation like electricity and the toaster has not been invented yet so we’re just seeing the beginning of it right.

So when it comes to CX, I think we will start to utilize AI in a way to eliminate all these repetitive tasks, we humans spend a lot of time doing. And creating more value for the customers by doing that, giving them the information they want, maybe even before they know they want it. But serving them more efficiently. And that’s going to have a big impact.

And I also believe, I mentioned critical business impact, when it comes to customer journey  and experience. I also believe that AI will help us to provide the customers with the insights about that actual business impact, provided by your provider. Because that’s a big gap today. We’ invested this much money, but what did we get?

There’s so many parts about decisions today that is still very much emotional driven. And when it comes to customer experience and the customer journey, that’s a big risk for churning customers, when to change position and so on. So that’s something I believe will change with AI.

How do you see the role of CX evolving in organizations?

4:45 Sabina: And actually that’s sort of like, and the next question I was going to ask you was, how do you see  the role of CX evolving in organizations? It’s kind of connected to that isn’t it?

5:00 Philip: Yes, I mean we need to adapt that role more, but like in the board meetings, in the management  meetings, we need to have an empty chair we’re representing the customer. We can’t think about a buying journey like pushing people through a funnel, that’s not how it works anymore. It’s a buying experience, and the trends we’re seeing in B2C, they have a tendency to come our way in B2B, a few years later. So just look at how like Shopify, or Spotify, or those players are doing it right now. That will be our reality with the next two years I guess.

5:41 Sabina: Yes, good thanks. And what’s one thing about, this is also a bit similar, but if you were  

What’s one thing about CX that will look completely different in 10 years?

5:48 Sabina: And what’s one thing about, this is also a bit similar, but if you were to kind of look into the, you know the crystal ball. What’s one thing about CX that will look completely different, within let’s say 10 years?  Maybe you’ve already answered that with the AI question.

6:02 Philip: No but I mean it’s relevant, because if I need to sum it up. Customers will not be depending on humans, to leverage the knowledge to do good purchases, and having a good experience. The knowledge has shifted already, but it will be even be more. Like you as a customer, you will be more educated and aware about what’s out there, the competitive landscape, the value provided, the goods and the bads. And that will be something we as providers of software or services need to adapt. Like they don’t really need us to educate them  at the same extent anymore.  

If you we’re to give one piece of advice, what would that be?

6:46 Sabina: Great, and finally we’re getting to the last question. If you were to give one single piece of advice on this topic that we’ve been talking about, what would  that be?  

7:04 Philip: It would be to come together as one team. If you’re providing a service or a software we need to stop think about marketing, sales, onboarding, expansion. We need to come together as one. And I mentioned the business impact a few times now. But we need to make that our core messaging, through the whole, like we’re going from sales funnel to revenue bow tie. Like there’s new models to make sense out of this new world we’re living in. So come together as one, and really look into the same messaging, through whole bow tie, not just working in silos. That’s the the biggest tip I would say, right now.  

Wrap up

7:45 Sabina: Yes very good tip, and that tip is, we could you know, could do a deep dive into that in another longer videocast. Thank you so much for all of these fantastic advices. And it was great to have you here!

We’re actually going to wrap this up now. So good to have you here Philip and hope to see you soon. And with that, it’s a wrap! So thank you for watching and I’ll see you again.

Check out other episodes of CX Minutes here.

By Tove Lundell