John - Thank you! That's a great point. I was just on a call last week with a company that had bought from one of the best on the Magic Quadrant (for once I'm being vendor neutral!)- and they had the unfortunate experience of finding out the hard way that having an SI that does not know the package well - can lead not just to further expense - but delays in getting the most use out of your new WCM! It was pointed out on Twitter that the Magic Quadrant is good for developing a short list, but a good SI can help you through the maze of options to understand which is likely to deliver the best ROI. And Tony - they didn't "just" get a ticket...though I guess they just got a new season ticket!

Well there are great sales people and there are really great sales people. The really great sales people look at the long term ROI on deals: will the client stay, will they renew, what are their long term needs, do they flip vendors alot? They also know that by being upfront and building relationships they will build a pipeline of referrals - because decision makers change jobs and people change jobs to become decision makers - and they will remember the good guy. The great sales people are great at closing deals - but they are great closers - not great relationship builders. They go fast and hard and they close - and sales quotas are modeled after them. But nobody seems to go back and vet out which clients signed up and left. Was it the B players or the A players that signed them up? When I worked at Citi I followed an A player AND a long line of pissed off clients that were pissed off because they were not getting what was promised: they got a good pitched, signed up and then were looking for the escape hatch.

I really liked your post. I was tired of working with people who just talked the talk but no matter what they SAID - they were not really truly worried about the long term experience of the client. And that is unfortunate because when you factor in the cost of acquisition it's often costly to deal with what Mr. A Player brings in. Often Mr. B Player who actually cares and is passionate about the job/industry gets wrapped up in customer services and is thus penalized.

Theresa Regeli of The Real Story, recently gave a talk at Internet World in London where she talked about how Sharepoint was never designed for CMS and should likely not be used as one.http://www.oshyn.com/_blog/Web_Content_Management...