Sure, good sales people have good interpersonal skills. But great sales people are doing business strategy as well. They understand where their product is great and deficient, which provides a better interface to marketing, business development, and engineering. It helps to avoid some of those deals which require more cost for the service provider than the client.
They leverage their network to connect to the right people for a sale. For example, imagine you are B2B and want to sell your product to Box. Who are the decision makers, and who has money at Box to buy your product? How do you get in the door with those folks and have a conversation? What are the needs of the customer and how can you map existing solutions to these problems? These are hard questions to answer but with a good network you can get in the door, and has less to do with interpersonal skills and more on strategy and execution.
They leverage their network to connect to the right people for a sale. For example, imagine you are B2B and want to sell your product to Box. Who are the decision makers, and who has money at Box to buy your product? How do you get in the door with those folks and have a conversation? What are the needs of the customer and how can you map existing solutions to these problems? These are hard questions to answer but with a good network you can get in the door, and has less to do with interpersonal skills and more on strategy and execution.