2012 Sales And Marketing Integration Awards: Seeing The Big Picture
Next week, we’ll roll out one of our most popular and talked-about reports: The DGR Sales and Marketing Integration Awards. It’s no surprise that so many readers checked out our 2011 award winners. These are companies that faced huge sales and marketing challenges – and they found solutions to those challenges that paid off handsomely. In a market where even the experts often find themselves in uncharted territory, these success stories are worth a closer look.
I won’t give away too much about our 2012 winners, but I will say this: A lot of these companies dealt with extremely complex technology challenges. This included integrating new marketing automation solutions with existing salesforce.com environments; migrating from legacy CRM and data sources; and rolling out additional integrations for everything from Microsoft Outlook to the latest web conferencing platforms.
As we pointed out in a recent DGR feature, sales and marketing alignment/integration isn’t just about the technology; if your people and processes aren’t ready to roll, then even the best technology will fall flat. Even so, it’s clear that the best of these companies are investing a lot of time and effort in their technology infrastructures.
In other words, alignment is a classic big-picture challenge: You can’t win unless you’re able to see both the forest and the trees. That’s a trick our 2012 award winners can show you how to pull off.
-Matthew McKenzie
Stay tuned for the 2012 Sales and Marketing Integration Awards Report, launching on DemandGen Report on Tues. June 26.
