Hey Peter!
great info, thanks. Will be nice the next time that you know or someone else in the community about an online event that is worth to hear, to announce in the forums or in the news.
I'm complete agree with that thoughts, is better to grow a company in the way of having a good amount of external consultants (this will make openacs community stronger, and that also makes your own business stronger) nowadays the internet enable it, you get great thoughts (because they are not fully related to your business), high motivation, and is a better business model for small companies.
About the comment on end-user & application is true. You can sale rocks!, but for a long term relation with clients first you need to care about the relationship, have a great customer service that is related in how much you really care about them, and this is where the final user don't care about programming languages or good design thing, they care of having something that they like (an here really influence an attractive UI) and gets the job done. As a company you really care for doing the things good (just makes your life easier).
Finally, there is no better way to make someone (your client) to take a decision for hiring your services than showing them a good list of happy and recognized customers (that makes them to feel that the risk in the decision is lower or almost doesn't exists)
