Blaming slow sales on salespeople is almost always a scapegoat. Reality is that either the product sells or it doesn’t.
Not saying that sales is useless, far from it. But with an established product that people know about, the sales team is more of a conduit than they are a resource-gathering operation.
I worked car sales for years. The same large dealership can have a person anyone would call a decent salesperson, and they made $4k a month. There was also two people at that dealership making $25k+ a month each.
If your organization is filled with the $4k type and not the $25k type, you're going to have a bad time.
I was #7 in the US while working at a small dealership. I moved the the large dealership mentioned above and instantly that dealership became #1 for that brand in the country, something they had never done before. Because not only did I sell 34 cars a month without just cannibalizing others sales, I showed others that you can show up one day and do well so there weren't many excuses. The output of the entire place went up.
So, depending on the pay plan and hiring process, who exactly is working at Microsoft right now selling AI? I honestly have no idea. It could be rock stars and it could be the $4k guys happy they're making $10k at Microsoft.
No but several women that came to buy cars (some with male coworkers, or so they told me) eventually did over the years.
Tbh this wasn't some crazy brag post, as making $250-300k a year working 80 hours a week isn't all that impressive when software devs make more than that easily, and the top guys make many multiples of that.
Not saying that sales is useless, far from it. But with an established product that people know about, the sales team is more of a conduit than they are a resource-gathering operation.