In your chosen profession in sales, you made a lot of friends and gained knowledge from the people you met. That's called networking. Same as me. My profession in microwave led me to meet a lot of people from big aerospace companies that say "I met Bob and he knows what we're doing".
When CA becomes dysfunctional, I have an open job in Texas with an engineer buddy from the Air Force there. I can inform Texas people how not to become like CA, if they don't already know. Wandering Apostle Bob from CA.
That's how I landed my recent OR gig. Another guy wanted to hire me, and couldn't get the personnel geeks to open the spot he wanted to slot me in. He was nice enough to call me when one of his buddies had a slot though...