Back in the day I used MS C/C++ 5.1 (one of their finer products IMHO). This was classical command line suite with compiler, linker, make and a nice editor (called me I think).

Based on an idea in .EXE magazine I wrote a special make file and a batch script that:

1) Run the special make file to generate a new temp batch script to compile the code (only one file) as needed
2) Ran the new temp batch file
3) Saved the error report if present
4) If the error report was present then parse the errors and source code to the editor for correction
5) Jump to step 1 until all files were made

It was so bloody arcane so that as little was running in memory at one. It was either make, the compiler or the editor using the precious 640K at at time. But it certainly felt a lit faster in the compile/edit/cycle once I got it working.

I wouldn't even try.

Sales people need to be adept as selling a business story and should be able to talk to project managers and other budget holders about the business benefits of investing in the tool.

The conversation with the programmers is key and important to making the sale -- but's it a different conversation about the job benefits of using the product.

So you need to go in two handed -- a business focused sales professional and a technical pre-sale consultant.

Talking of rock stars, Brian May of Queen is also an astrophysicist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May