What’s the True Size of the CRM Market?

I guess it’s how you define the market, right? Doing a quick search on Google tells me there are a lot of marketers (I’m assuming) out there being charged

with understanding this market with searches like:

• How is the CRM market defined?

• How large is the CRM market?

• How big is the market?

They are doing this most likely because they are new players in the market and they want to validate their focus. However, the way the market is defined today doesn’t leave much room for new entrants to seize a huge share. The real successes are going to redefine the market; kind of like Salesforce did over 10 years ago — only much differently. Unfortunately, new innovation will go hand in hand with a new definition of the market and the markets actual size (potential), not an annual figure put out by analyst groups.

My understanding is that analysts size the market by talking to the vendors who typically know what they have in their pipeline and/or their channel partner pipelines. This could very well be t…