Re: I wonder if...
I agree with you that undoubtedly being a good sales person is hard and becoming one requires experience and skills. But then the exact same can be said for the senior technical people who put at least as much time, skill and effort into ensuring that a potential bid can be converted into a sale (and then have to live with the consequences of what exaggerated claims have been made).
But there appears to be this weird expectation that sales people have to be bribed to do the their job, if they weren't getting bribes (sorry sales based bonuses) then they will just sit back and not do their job properly. Unlike other roles where people are (rightly) expected to do the job they are being paid for well and where, if they are lucky, get a bonus as a multiplier of their salary based upon their and the companies general performance not tied to individual sales.
All I can think is it was some very good sales people that managed to sell that idea to management.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
