Study the concept of technical debt. Also, try to hang out with sales folks. Chances are that they are not evil or do not care; they just have been exposed to different stuff, have different skills and interests than you. Soft skills matter plenty. The biggest mistakes would be letting them know that "they do not understand computers". The easiest sales guy I ever worked with was ex-QA, so he got a lot of stuff. By the way, the job of sales folks is to bend the truth and keep those dollars coming. It is a delicate balance between not incurring too much technical debt, and not missing business opportunities.
