I’ve been on sales calls as the primary tech contact with 10 other people on the line. After 4 months on that account, only one other person actually did anything in my opinion. Perhaps the other bodies gave the perception that a lot of people “cared” about the customer?

Unfortunately, this is a common outcome. Sales/marketing will quantify revenue/profit goals, these goals often implicitly assume that it is only because of sales that those numbers were hit. Sales then grows headcount and gains influence in the organization. Eventually, you get some insane ratio of dev:sales and things get strange. The terminal state of such firms is the sales team driving acquisitions of products - so that they can sell the new product. By the time you’ve reached this point “technical” innovation is impossible.

On the flip side, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with driving a business from the sales side. There is lots of room for business process innovation. However, as an engineer - I’d much rather work at an engineering driven firm.