No self-respecting business leader would profess to caring about anything else more these days, other than an earnest and heartfelt focus on the customer.

Entrance lobbies and reception rooms everywhere bear testament to how seriously companies take their commitment to customer focus, enshrined as it is in 'Our Corporate Values' that hang framed or engraved in metalised plaques featuring mock-vintage ornate scrolls.

All the more surprising then that large organisations struggle to coordinate their efforts in communicating to customers or prospects. The problem seems largely organisational: with different divisions and teams all responsible for promoting their own products or services, and operating in marketing silos.

A recent press report highlighted (admittedly in a B2C context) a financial services company who managed to produce 92 million direct mail pieces focused on acquisition. A spokesman was reported as saying that this simply reflected the size of the bank and the volume of products it offered. "It is never sent to customers who explicitly say they don't want it," he was quoted as saying.

These comments are hardly going to win any industry awards for PR deftness, but more importantly it betrays the customer focus ethic, and reaches to the heart of the challenge.

On the one hand is the desire for a customer-centric organisation and approach to business. On the other is a company divisionalised according to what they sell. Best customers and prospects are considered ideal candidates by most, if not all, of these business areas, and so they receive a blizzard of offers, some complementary and some downright contradictory. Customers in B2B marketing being at least reasonably inteligent human beings, tend not to feel particularly special or well-understood as a result.

So what to do?

Well, surely it has to start with better profiling and segmentation. Whether a customer or prospect, information about the target audience is essential, so that significant characteristics can be used to define the kind of message and offer the intended target receives.

I am also starting to hear a different language used by large companies to help customers make more sense of their kalaidescope of products and services. In place of 'product offers' come themes. Themes allow products and services to be attached to them, and combine together propositions, offers and invitations to enable customers to find out, view, validate, trial and treat - all in a meaningful context.

This doesn't mean that the customer gains absolute control of the 'relationship' (after all that implies that organisations no longer should execute demand push marketing) but it does provide a context for a bit more of a dialogue, whereby the customer can choose what is of most interest, and the marketing organisation can start to segment at what stage of a buying cycle they are as a consequence. This in  turn helps to target the kind of help and information that can influence a current or future buying decision.

Themes are designed to rationalise messages, and to engage with customers no matter what stage of the buying cycle they are. In B2B that cycle can be rather long, so it is an imperative to try to appeal to, and get on a future buyer's shortlist, no matter what stage of the researching and buying cycle.

The challenge with taking a themed approach to pulling products together that are properly aligned with customer actual or propsective needs is a big one. A great deal of planning, collaboration and customer research is needed to get the themes right in the first place, and ensure they reflect the brand values of the selling organisation.

The 'science side' of marketing is catching up here as well, with marketing systems that feed off a single customer view now capable of executing the results of all that planning.

Is this talk just trigger-based marketing, a grand theme from the 1990s, dressed up in new clothes? Well, yes, it is. The difference is arguably that this time around it is much cheaper to implement this kind of strategy than before; the web and e-marketing allows for much more scope in customer segmentation; and tools are more integrated with all the marketing channels at our disposal.  Whereas trigger-based marketing was expounded at conferences by suppliers a decade ago, now it is the business client who is talking the talk. I believe there is the will to walk it as well.