[georgespencer]

Probably that the people assessing the sales team at a hiring stage made mistakes. You're right, though: it is hard to hire sales/marcomms people.

In the same way as a layman hiring a technical guy might not know what to look out for ("This guy knows ActionScript and says that's what we should build our web app in! He's a great developer!"), a layman hiring sales or marketing people is going to get shafted.

Good sales people are at least as scarce as good engineers. The best ones can sell anything, so why would they bother selling subscriptions to your web app for a $20 commission when they can sell oil refinery equipment for a $200k commission? They aren't interested in challenges or doing new and innovative things like engineers are. They're economically driven.