I work for an online media company with a range of websites, with online advertising being a decent chunk of our revenue. We have a full-time Director of Sales

I work for an online media company with a range of websites, with online advertising being a decent chunk of our revenue. We have a full-time Director of Sales who comes from a background of non-advertising sales (he worked for a UK hardware distributor previously), and he is by far the most talented salesman ("salesman" makes him sound like someone who goes round knocking on doors, but I can't think of a better word), and there's no way we would have ended up in a better situation if he wasn't with us. Obviously it depends on your situation, but I'd certainly suggest that there are many scenarios in which paying a high wage for someone who's really good at what they do will bring in more than they cost.