By Parker Trewin, Genius.com

As the quarter comes to an end there’s been a surprising twist to how marketing automation vendors have met and exceeded their quarterly revenue forecast which has literally turned sales and marketing processes on its side. Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketo, Genius.com, and MarketBright (plus inbound marketing pioneer Hubspot) have all seen their business goals achieved by reinventing and realigning their sales and marketing process around the paradigm-shifting Sales Cornucopia, which redefines sales and marketing processes that have been dramatically affected by marketing automation, social media, mobile apps and the Chatter revolution.

The new Cornucopia takes a hard look at demand generation to acknowledge that marketing accounts for less than 50% of generated demand but is greatly influenced by the reverberation of social media throughout Silicon Valley and beyond where Gobbledygook is unexpectedly expanding marketing’s ability to nurture prospects. The remaining market expansion is left up to inside sales, automatic dialers and Sales 1.0 professionals who bypass qualification steps altogether to call and close the low handing fruit that cascades out the bottom of the cornucopia.

Scott Mersy, VP of Marketing at Genius.com and the leading Cornucopiast declared a “New Cornucopia” in sales and marketing where collaboration will bear a harvest of wealth and prosperity. Not surprisingly, industry analysts are indignant at the recent coalition around the Cornucopia. SiriusDecisions issued a statement saying it was “appalled” at recent defection of Waterfallists and is threatening to cut off the entire marketing automation category from exhibiting the at next month’s Sirius Decisions Summit.

In his blog post, Sirius’ John Neeson stated, “We stand behind the Sales Waterfall as the best example of sales process and while diversity of ideas are good this represents a break from best practices that cannot be endorsed,” Funnelholic’s Craig Rosenberg stated quite simply “I get it but given the investment in my blog, who’s name says it all, I still have a Jones on for the traditional view—exponential results be damned.”

Sources also tell me that Laura Ramos’ embraced the Sales Cornucopia, and wanted to put it into practice immediately. It’s expected that in her new role as VP of Industry Marketing at Xerox she will be instrumental in rolling out the Cornucopia throughout North America. The “Next Big Thing” indeed.