Wil Wurtz sees the gap between sales and marketing as the biggest challenge for B2B marketers. But thinking about it a bit more, he comes to more and more gaps in organisations keeping them from offering relevant marketing content to (potential) customers.

Wurtz is founder of the platform klantgericht ondernemen (PvKO – former CRM Association NL). As founder he noticed that there was too little interest for marketing that focussed on customers.

“A very scary question for marketers is when you ask them when they last spoke to a client. Sales people talk to clients everyday. If you want to communicate with you client you need to go to your best source, and often these are your sales people”, said Wil Wurtz in an interview with spotONvision.

“Because many companies have big sales and marketing departments that work independently, they have lost touch with each other rendering them inappropriate marketing materials. We need to close this gap and not be afraid to allocate budgets differently. Focus on social media in order to find out what your customers are talking about. Force your marketing people to really go out and meet customers. But first and foremost, listen to what your customers are saying.”

PvKO is one of the branch partners of the B2B Marketing Forum 2011