There’s a saying that good things happen when you least expect it. Such is the case this past week.

As part of its CRM Evolution ’10 conference, CRM Magazine announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Market Awards. I’m proud to say that I was listed as one of eight CRM “Influential Leaders” by the magazine, to which I am quite literally speechless. To say that this came as a surprise would be an understatement. To be included among a list of mentors whom I greatly admire is nothing short of dreamlike.

The list of 2010 Influential Leaders:

Marc Benioff, cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer at Salesforce.com (see CRM’s November 2009 issue for our cover-to-cover special report on Benioff and Salesforce.com)

Bill McDermott, co-chief executive officer at SAP

Doc Searls, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, head of the individual-empowerment initiative ProjectVRM, and one of the co-authors of the landmark Cluetrain Manifesto

Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks, cofounder of the Social Media Club, and author of Engage! (see this month’s Required Reading for an interview about the new book)

Ray Wang, partner at Altimeter Group, a new and noteworthy analyst firm

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a unit of Microsoft Business Solutions at Microsoft

Michael Wu, principal scientist of analytics at social CRM innovator Lithium Technologies

Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder and chief executive officer of social networking behemoth Facebook

The magazine also inducted Paul Greenberg, one of my heroes, to the CRM Hall of Fame. Paul is the president and founder of consultancy The 56 Group LLC, author of industry bible CRM at the Speed of Light, and prolific industry consultant, blogger, and columnist.

CRM Magazine named eight Rising Stars this year:

Wunderkind analyst firm Altimeter Group

Small-business CRM specialist BatchBlue Software

Email marketing provider (and CoTweet acquirer) ExactTarget

Location-based social gaming site Foursquare

Content conductor Open Text

Listening platform Radian6

A pair of companies providing human resources software, SuccessFactors and Workday, that may help expand the parameters of CRM itself.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

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