As a former tech guy it was amazing how sales people would fuck up so badly and skate from responsibility. Not following up on leads. Not calling the customer after. Not keeping in touch during the project. Not showing up for the presentation, getting the wrong time for a meeting, setting the wrong agenda, not being prepared at all, etc. The good sales people were always on top of stuff like this. They were a huge asset to the organization and helped build relationships beyond what the tech guys could do. The mediocre to bad sales people rode their coattails and undid so much goodwill and then tried to blame the service/product for not working. I have told people point blank, “this won’t work”. Sales were pissed, client was pissed. I have told them, I don’t know if this will work but we can minimize the risk to you by doing x, or cutting costs by doing y. Shit the good sales people were miles ahead of me on. The only challenge was sometimes they would try to push the science/technology beyond what we could do at the moment, or what we could offer. Those were fun conversations to have in front of the client when shit didn’t work, it wasn’t vetted, and everyone is pissed off at you for not polishing the turd from the north west territories in your downtime while having an idiot boss ask you to do impossibly stupid tasks which were a total waste of effort, only to then have them wonder why it didn’t work and then the next few days wonder why you did what they asked because they forgot the conversation and your objections.