I agree, you can't apply this as a rule, but in my experience (unfortunately) it's often the case. From what I've seen, a typical 'assault team' consists of: '

I agree, you can't apply this as a rule, but in my experience (unfortunately) it's often the case. From what I've seen, a typical 'assault team' consists of: 'account manager' (usually clueless), 'sales manager' (same) and a 'technical person' (varies). There's hardly anything interesting coming out of the former two. The 'techie' guy competence seems to be a function of a company size. The smaller the company, the better his/her pitch would be and more useful information you'd get out of him. If the company is large, they tend to send 'technical sales' chap, who usually knows a bit or two, but largely delivers 'I'll have to check this with our technical team and come back to you on this'. Bear in mind, this is my largely technical POV. YMMV.