The traditional process of "sales" doesn't provide nearly as much value as it once did. We now have google and more efficient social networking available as a means of locating solutions to various business problems one may have.
I remember the halcyon days of the dot com era when hot redheaded sales reps from Exodus would take you on datacenter tours and treat you to dinner to secure a lucrative two-rack deal.
I remember pushy but friendly Oracle salespeople selling you on a $250k six-processor O7 license predicated on "well ebay's using it".
Nowadays I refuse to take vendor phone calls. If I need a solution, I google it or ask around my circle of tech friends.
The claim that sales is "valuable" is lost on me at this point.
They still have that sort of sales process in other industries.
I know a girl who works for a company that sells Expensive Things to a Big Lumber Company. Her full time job is to be fun to be around. Every weekend you'll find her and a few random BigCo executives (or formen depending on the weekend) riding jetskis, snowboarding or just buying rounds of tequila at the Mexican restaurant. Her office is at the BigCo plant.
It still happens in tech too. Drive past the Microsoft campus next time you're in Redmond. Notice how Intel has an office building next door?
I this case though people probably give him there details in expectation of getting in on something at some point if they are the right fit, whether it be mentoring, investing or deals startups and them. Doubt hes going, "need investors?, here I'll spam out 1000 of them".
