I'm a fervent reader of business books and blogs.  Seth Godin is one of my favorites, and in a recent post entitled "A Sad Truth About Most Traditional B2B Marketing", his wisdom shines through.  Seth highlights how many organizations, in an effort to save money and gain efficiency, become dispassionate about the relationships they build along the way.  RFPs are his main target.

RFPs dehumanize the sales process.  From the buyer's perspective, they can get a great deal of information from a number of vendors quickly.  However, I think that those efficiencies come at the cost of understanding who you will be working with once a product is selected.  How does the sales organization treat you?  Are they responsive to your needs?  Do you feel valued as a prospective customer, and do you think that feeling will continue once you become a customer?  

These questions are, arguably, more important than price (Liferay always wins on price, by the way).  When you buy anything of value (a cell phone, a car, an enterprise portal), you're making an investment in a relationship.  
My car is great, but how does the dealer treat me when it needs service?  My cell phone is amazing, but what is the reliability of the network that I'll be using for the next 2 years.  My portal rocks, but will the company that makes it support me when things go bad while continuing to innovate in ways that I can't imagine?

RFPs tend to be about the short-term "here are my requirements -- can you fulfill them and what will it cost?"  They don't speak to the longer term relationships that are built.  

From my perspective, the best relationships are built early in the sales cycle.  When I demonstrate Liferay, I do my best to understand what people need to accomplish and answer questions to the best of my ability.  Sometimes my style takes people aback because they are used to being "sold to."  I don't do that.  I try to help them envision how Liferay can help them reach their goals.  I tell them what works out-of-the-box, what doesn't and potential gotchas that they might encounter.  

Once people become our customers, they have a comfort level with the product and company in which they have invested.  They know who to call or email when they need something.  They know that we will do our best to keep them happy and to realize their goals.  They know that relationships are just as important as bottom line for Liferay.  They know that we value integrity in our interactions above all else.  They know that we're human.

To me, those factors are some of the most important considerations when buying a product.  And one of these days, I would like to see this question on an RFP:
"Please detail your company's core values as they pertain to integrity, vision, personnel development and community involvement."

Our friends at Sesame Street continue to reach out to children in new and innovative ways.  Last year, they won an Emmy Award for their use of new media, and they have recently introduced a couple of brilliant videos that parody the famous Google Search advertisement that appeared during this year's Super Bowl.

It's really great to see Sesame Street changing, expanding and growing as they maintain their relevance to today's children (and children like me who watched them 30 years ago on PBS).  

And of course, SesameStreet.org is running on Liferay.

 TechCrunch published an interview with Mark Andreessen about how enterprise software is on the cusp of a renaissance.  Silicon Valley is cheering.  Jobs will be created.  Innovations will be the norm as enterprises look to make changes to their internal offerings.

As someone who has been working for and with a company whose software was created with an Enterprise (capital E) mindset, my response is "what took so long?".  When Brian Chan wrote the first line of code for Liferay 10 years ago, the fabric of Enterprise Software was changed forever.  With the advent of Liferay, companies had a robust, feature-rich, scalable option to the expensive, expansive and limiting offerings by other vendors.  Because of our open source model, the community has helped Liferay to grow and mature organically.  While other vendors have crippled innovation on other platforms, Liferay has encouraged and fostered it.  

So, to all of the upstarts who will be entering into the Enterprise market, I recommend that you follow Liferay's philosophy.  Be open.  Foster a community.  Innovate ruthlessly.  Play well with others.  Create value while not being cheap.  

Enterprises are waiting for the next innovations.  Software creators need to make something worth buying.  Software vendors need to have a business model that makes buying from the traditional players less risky.  

Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, wrote a guest post for TechCrunch entitled "The Facebook Imperative." In it, Mark discusses the needs for increased collaboration for the enterprise and also notes how a the more traditional enterprise software (Lotus Notes, Sharepoint, etc.) hasn't really changed since it's inception.  Sure there are add-ons and "socially" things you can do with them that you couldn't 10 - 15 years ago, but nevertheless, proprietary enterprise applications are fundamentally unchanged.

That's one of the things that excites me so much about our upcoming Social Office release.  I see where we are headed with it, and I am confident in saying that Social Office is, indeed, a game changer.  This application is being designed to facilitate the natural social interactions and need to collaborate that knowledge workers have.  It is done with an intuitive interface that is easy to use, understand and master.  From a sales perspective, I know that Social Office is scratching an itch felt by companies worldwide because the pre-release interest has been massive.

Say what you will about Mark Benioff, but his vision for software as a service fundamentally changed the ecosystem of corporate acceptance of how software can be delivered.  I think the vision he presents in "The Facebook Imperative" is a worthwhile read and something that businesses should react to.

I believe in the power of technology to bring people together.  Although our society lives in more physical isolation than 20 years ago, I think that we are seeing people remove those barriers through self-expression online via Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Yelp, and on and on.  It is powerful to watch people express themselves. Social media breaks down barriors by allowing the free flow of conversation and personal expression.

Twistori let's you see, in real time, Tweets from people who use the words love, hate, think, believe, feel or wish in their posts. It's powerful stuff. As I type this, I have Twistori open in another window, and here are a few of the thoughts from people who I will never meet but nonetheless have the opportunity to impact millions:

• if i has to choose between loving you, and breathing. I would use my last breath to say i love YOU
• The more i think about the #ipad product category, the more it makes sense to me. I must be in Job's reality distortion field
• I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies. Elvis Costello
• i think I'm done blaming people for broken systems.
• i wish life was easy. anyone have that staples button handy?

I'm not sure if we are approaching the visual representation of Carl Jung's collective consciousness here, but we're getting close. Neat stuff.