It surprises me to see so many products in the CRM arena labeled as either a “sales” or “marketing” product. We have this notion that only CRM suites are “sales and marketing” tools (and usually “service” must be thrown in as well). But as we all know, sales starts with marketing, and sales feeds continued marketing.

All too often I see companies think of campaigns and marketing in general as an isolated concept. Denis Pombriant gives a great example in a recent blog post about old ideas of marketing as “seasonal.” But as we know, marketing is not like a one-time planting and harvest mentality. It is an ongoing, ever growing and evolving concept. Instead of a tree or flower, it is more like a vine, or even a virus - constantly changing based on how customer want to interact with a company.

I think one of the toughest things about selling CRM is that too often people start with the notion that “I need to equip my sales team.” Which is fine, but when it comes to technology, sometimes marketing tools (integrated inside a CRM system) that can flow quality leads to sales teams are more important than traditional sales automation tools. After all, without a continually revived pipeline, the salesperson is useless.