Slick write-up, and I especially appreciate your personal story and context to mull over. I studied Curriculum Design as my advanced degree program, have worked 5+ retail&#x2F;sales&#x2F;customer service jobs, and also done formal classroom instruction. I like that distinction you put forward, because it captures what I, well, disliked about sales as a profession.<p>I love imparting knowledge, telling stories, and holding a person&#x27;s interest - that is a transaction in and of itself. It&#x27;s the end goal. What I had to do in sales was get to the very end of the discussion and then &quot;ask for the sale&quot; which always felt like a disservice to the relationship &#x2F; exchange. As in, if I did well educating somebody that they needed to buy the movie <i>Heat</i> to test out their audio system, I shouldn&#x27;t have to say, &quot;So, are you going to purchase this today?&quot; because they&#x27;ll have already made the decision themselves. Sales is hard like that, and I can appreciate good sales techniques in both the soft and hard approaches.<p>...as to your story, it really reminded me of a write-up over at the AV Club on the second installment of the <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> independent movies. The film beats the audience over the head with dialog that only serves to advance the philosophy (or what have you) of the story, meaning it&#x27;s really preachy and not very entertaining. I think there&#x27;s a difference in audience expectations depending on subject matter, e.g. it&#x27;s more acceptable to learn STEM material from a heavy handed teacher, but with personal belief systems&#x2F;notions, lecturing creates push-back in many cases.