CRM Watchlist 2013: The Preseason Final Call

I figured I’d do one last CRM Watchlist post before the actual first of the Watchlist 2013 posts in December and January.  This is so that those of you who want to apply and haven’t are told about it one last time on the bigger blog stage (Twitter will see more notices).  Here’s the deal:

CRM Watchlist: What is It?

This is my 5^th CRM Watchlist. It’s an impact award that I give out every year to the companies that I think will have the most impact in the year of the award – in this case 2013.  The criteria for impact could include:

1. A breakout product
2. Seizing thought leadership in some related area
3. Market impact
4. The company's sheer size and continued long term existence guarantees them impact pretty much regardless of who they are and how well they do.
5. A major initiative that will change the way the market works.
6. Continued really good performance year over year with an expectation that they will be seen and recognized for that in 2012
7. Fabulous customer achievements but to the level of setting an industry standard
8. Impact in a particular distinguishable geographic market
9. Faith that they will do something worthy of public recognition (that's the subjective part).
10. All of the above
11. Other things I didn’t mention.

Who Qualifies?

Any company in the CRMish world qualifies – meaning customer facing technology companies – or consulting companies with a CRM or Social or other customer-facing practice.  There is some leeway – for example, last year, Financialforce.com and Zuora won the “Broad Brush” category – for companies that aren’t strictly customer facing but do interface with those technologies. 

Size or maturity is not relevant to this award but unlike CRM Idol which encourages and favors emerging technology companies, this one is an impact award so established companies with clear paths are going to be better situated to win.  That doesn’t mean an emerging technology company or small consultancy can’t win – last year Solvis Consulting and The Pedowitz Group, both relatively small consulting firms won because of their enormous impact in a particular area – Solvis in Latin America and TPG in the marketing automation world.  So there is that possibility. Plus I have a surprise in order that will probably at least mitigate that bias a little.  But I encourage everyone who thinks they qualify to submit a questionnaire.

What’s the Process?

To win it is a rigorous process.  You are judged by me ONLY on a significant number of criteria which I won’t talk about here but will eventually talk about. All of them are weighted (the weights change incrementally from year to year). All of them count. As of this year, the process is very different than it has been in the past.  This year to win you have to follow this procedure:

1. Get a registration form from me at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com. You have right up to November 20, 2012 to ask for one. No requests after that.
2. Once you fill out the registration form, send it back to me at that email address.
3. I will send you the questionnaire and the CRM Watchlist 2012 Yearbook (111 pages) which as the 2013 rules in the back of the document.
4. You MUST submit the questionnaire completed in FULL by November 30, 2012 at 6:00pm ET.  There is no leeway on completing it nor is there any lateness allowed.
5. I will then choose a number of contestants from the total questionnaires submitted by December 7, 2012. They will be announced on both ZDNet and PGreenblog sites.
6. Then I will choose finalists from the list of contestants by the week after Christmas.  They will be announced on both sites.
7. I will then announce the winners January 7, 2013.  Badges for the winners use will be send to all companies.
8. Following that announcement, I will then write reviews over the next roughly 4-6 weeks of every single company who won the CRM Watchlist 2013. 

The State of Things Now

As of now, I have 152 registration forms in hand though of course, not a single questionnaire yet.  Again, feel no constraints about becoming part of this.  Neither size, nor geography, nor...anything actually, except you should have some relationship to customer facing technology or consulting. But please recognize if you request the questionnaire, my expectation is that you’re going to fill it out.  Thus, I will start tracking you immediately if I don’t track you already.   But in return I’m expecting a questionnaire by November 30, 2012.  Please. 

Okay, only tweets and Facebook references beyond this.  I guess that’s good, huh? Means I more or less shut up.