Despite a history of more than 11 years in the marketplace, Content Management technology remains misunderstood. At the same time the field of vendors has never been larger or noisier. Most CMS salespeople I know are poor educators, looking after nothing more than quotas and their BMW payments. These vendors short cut important qualification about functionality and pricing and are not always completely accurate with their responses.  Nor do they necessarily have a product platform that ensures interoperability with all their clients software infrastructure.

Here is a list of myths heard during the sales cycle.

"You only need ten thousand to get started"
Salespeople lure prospects with low pricetags, and CMS salespeople are no different.  Set realistic 2-year budgets parallel too the size of your project.

"An open-source CMS is cheap"
Licensing constitutes a small fraction of the total cost of ownership. The really big expense lies in the custom and integration work, here open-source costs more than commercial products.

"Most clients deploy our CMS in 4-6 weeks"
Most enterprises deploy a full CMS over a year. You can implement small pilots over 3-4 months. IT projects need to be broken into bite-sized pieces, so set goals for every 4-6 weeks. And then count on a lot of them.

The big problem with the CMS selection is as much the salespeople as naive buyers. Be smart about your needs current and near future.  Examine also your content contributors opinions and give your consultants proper time to evaluate.  A CMS is not an 11th hour purchase.