People that are great at sales are very rare, though. And people that are great at sales and have great platform skills are the ones who make it past director

People that are great at sales are very rare, though. And people that are great at sales and have great platform skills are the ones who make it past director level to the executive suite. Engineers do well when they spot such people early and make friends with them. "Early" is important, because by the time they make it to the executive suite, they (hopefully) already have trusted "technical advisers" who will tell them when their idea sucks before it gets sold and propagated throughout the organization. If they don't, then they will rely on their secret sales intuition and their defenses against common sense will be impenetrable. This is usually the highest executive function of engineers / "technical advisers" in large enterprises. Not so glamorous, but critical to the health of any organization.