From the beginning, Sales 2.0 has promised massive productivity and efficiency gains for Sales and Marketing.  Starting with the Sales 2.0 technology funnel which I first published in “ Sales 2.0 for Dummies ”, the movement has focused on both the short and long term promise of cloud technology to shorten the BUYING cycle (and yes, by implication the Sales cycle, but this is an essential mentality shift brought about by Sales 2.0). It is remarkable how rich the Sales 2.0 technology arsenal has become in 4 years.  solution. Who won the showdown?  Neither.  Who had the best product. work flow. MORE >>

Salesforce’s purchase of radian6 raises fascinating, hard questions, way beyond just whether it’s the beginning of the “marketing cloud&#. It represents a deep existential question about whether marketing makes sense as a separate category from sales/services at all and whether the “marketing automation&# category is toast. Marc benioff has predicted the “end of email&# , which may account for why he hasn’t bought an email based marketing company.  And Facebook is well on it’s way to undermining the email paradigm.  movement. Tweet This! Digg this! MORE >>

Just got done reading Jessica Groopman’s excellent survey of Marketing Automation  (MA) buyers by Focus ( download here ).  After 10 years as an automation user and vendor, I’m both encouraged and depressed by the results.  The most striking improvement the survey shows is that 69% of respondents said that MA had met or exceeded their expectations. When I founded Genius.com in 2004, our internal research showed that number at less than 10%.  Clearly the space has made leaps and bounds improvements since then.  Now 80% of MA users say they get positive ROI in less than 12 months (but still, 12?) MORE >>

This week Salesforce.com announced the intention to acquire Radian6 , a young company with a great web listening platform allowing marketing teams to monitor a wide variety of sources. There is much conjecture from other marketing vendors , luminaries and industry analysts on the importance of this move as it relates to the oft discussed Marketing Cloud and SocialCRM movement. While I think this is a great move for salesforce.com (and a huge win for Radian6), I don’t buy the belief that it’s really about Marketing or SocialCRM for that matter.  Tweet This! Share this on LinkedIn. Digg this! MORE >>

As Craig Rosenberg summarizes in this infographic  [link] , the marketing automation space is o n fire. The infographic highlights that growth will be even faster over the next few years with adoption hitting 50% and there are currently over 100 MA vendors and it hasn’t stopped there.  Marketers are literally flooded with options for marketing automation.  So what is the best approach to buying a solution? This quest ion is particularly tough for us marketers.  We love marketing and like to chase the shiniest new thing, or feature set.  1 What is your best source of leads today? Tweet This! MORE >>