Just out of curiousity, who was this "magical salesman" CEO? Some well-known face?
I only met him a few times but he was one of those guys who seemed to be able to figure you out from the start and knew how to connect with you just instinctively. It probably helped that his early history was engineering, then sales, then up the executive chain. He understood the 'types' of folks who did those jobs and how to work with them.
Sounds like an interesting character either way. You already need to possess a lot of mental flexibility and social intelligence to thrive inside both engineering culture AND marketing culture.