There were times I sold a product that the users (Dev Team in the author's case) wanted desperately, but leadership (VPs of Product, CPOs, PMs in the author's case) didn't see the importance and/or urgency of. And yes, there were times when I sold a product that leadership wanted desperately, but users didn't see the importance and/or urgency of.
The second case can be wrangled over user objections, but in the long run, such products end up failing once past harvesting the Hawthorne Effect. The lasting successes were the ones where all the stakeholders (I know, I know, buzzword alert) bought in.
And that's why closing Enterprise Sales is a load-bearing role in an Enterprise Software business. It's hard to do, but through a combination of product design that creates discoverable value for every "buying influencer" (another term of art from sales) and needs discovery on the part of sales and product management, followed by tailoring pitches and demonstrations for each group, you can get them all in a room nodding together and close the deal.
It is NOT easy. And a lot of this is not the vendor's fault. Beneath the superficial appearance of a recalcitrant dev team, there may be scars from previous top-down dictated changes that did not, in fact, do anything for the users or the company, so closing a deal may involve a lot of listening and empathy and a very open mind.
People make fun of Enterprise Sales as a perfectly coiffed salesman golfing with the customer's CIO, but the hard truth is that Enterprise Sales is hard because Enterprises are full of people with complicated needs and relationships and perception and the entire thing is steeped in hidden historical legacy context.
I feel for the author, I really do. But I also reflexively feel for the customer's dev team. And for the customer's leadership. A change to communications tooling is a change to a load-bearing part of a company's processes and culture.
Selling this kind of thing is not easy.