Egbert Jan van Bel

Egbert Jan van Bel writes marketing and management books. In his most recent book, Kloteklanten (Crappy Customers) he argues for a more customer-friendly approach to business. The book is a bestseller in the Netherlands and Belgium. Van Bel won the ‘Marketing Literature Award’ for his book about customer-oriented business management, Event Driven Marketing, and he has written a new book which is now available in the USA with the same title (Racom Publishers).

Egbert Jan is a core subject lecturer at Beeckestijn Business School, chairman of the Marketing Executive Center (MEC), jury member of the International Webby Awards (Oscars for the internet) and member of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureaus) advisory board.

He is widely known for his practical and goal-oriented approach to business processes. He has been advising a wide range of businesses and organizations on customer-oriented business management for many years now. In this capacity he is often on the scene when businesses forge their plans and campaigns to win and keep customers. Van Bel is surprised at what he has seen: “There are of course exceptions, but I am often dismayed when I see how businesses treat their customers. The human touch has all but gone. Too much priority is given to Operational Excellence, at the expense of good relationships with customers and staff too! Sooner or later this will work against these organizations.”

Plenty of room for improvement... Egbert Jan van Bel turns the spotlights on cooperation between businesses and their customers in his practical, often amusing lectures and his new book Kloteklanten (Crappy Customers) and he throws in plenty of examples from the work floor, statistics from his research and useful advice.

One of Egbert Jan van Bel’s management concepts is the ‘Four Times Table’. Using this system, in a single day an organization can determine a new marketing campaign for the following year, plan commercial activities and ensure that all parties are pointed in the same direction. This is all carried out in cooperation, often between several departments. A participant’s comment: “It is incredible to see that you can get the same amount of work done in a day that would normally take three months!”

Egbert Jan provides lectures and workshops on the subjects of marketing, CRM and ‘How to keep customers’ in the Netherlands, the USA and throughout Europe.