To effectively compete with commercial content management systems, Drupal needs to start moving in a new direction. This is a direction towards the marketing department and away from the IT department.

Features that excite developers and have an immediate impact on their jobs don't have the same impact to the people who write the checks. The CEO doesn't care about content modeling or workflow -- she cares about conversions. She cares about the bottom line. If you want to talk to her about some next technical feature that makes it the right CMS for the organization, then you better end that conversation with "...and here's how this is going to make us more money."

Open-source content management in general is developer-centric. But the commercial content management market is moving away from developers. Features that have to do with building sites have given way to features that help market content -- features that result in more conversions and more money on the bottom line.

Stop thinking about content modeling. Start thinking about A/B testing.

Stop thinking about APIs. Start thinking about marketing automation.

Stop thinking about developers. Start thinking about marketers.

Stop thinking about yourself. Start thinking about the guy holding the checkbook.