The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all.
They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on the customer/industry/client. These folks would also often deliver very difficult messages to their clients, which often resulted in more business not less.
The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.
They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on the customer/industry/client. These folks would also often deliver very difficult messages to their clients, which often resulted in more business not less.
The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.