For decades, companies have treated sales and marketing as separate functions that somehow need to be “aligned”.AI is making that distinction harder to defend. A recent Harvard Business Review article argues that AI is starting to blur the line between the two, connecting activities across the customer journey.
Start with the sale
Years ago, I wrote about Bitsing, the methodology developed by Frans de Groot. Predictable marketing. Its logic is simple: start with the commercial outcome and work backwards. Sales → Traffic → Image → Branding. Instead of asking how much marketing activity you can produce, ask what level of awareness, preference, and traffic is required to generate the sales you actually need. That makes marketing accountable.
AI closes the loop
AI makes that logic far more powerful. It can analyse behaviour, identify buying signals, personalise communication, prioritise prospects, and feed what sales learns straight back into marketing. The funnel becomes a loop. At that point, the question is no longer whether something belongs to sales or marketing. The question is whether it moves the customer towards a profitable outcome.
Faster is not better
There is a danger here. AI can just as easily create more content, more campaigns, more emails, and more dashboards without improving commercial performance. That is not a transformation. It is the automation of activity. The better model is to start with the desired revenue outcome and use AI to continuously work backwards through the variables that create it.
The commercial function changes
The real opportunity is not better sales and marketing alignment. It is the emergence of a single commercial operating system built around customer behaviour, revenue, and accountability. AI is not just blurring the line between sales and marketing. It is exposing how artificial that line was in the first place.
If you want to find out more about the BITS methodology, DM me “BITS”. The methodology is now also available in Spain.
