Great article, which reminded me of my brief flirting time with sales while I was in college and working retail jobs. Anyone who has worked retail probably knows there are the same level of sales involved, though its pretty low stakes. I'd sell extended warranties on laptops and other equipment at CompUSA. My manager on a few instances refused to let a laptop out the door without talking to the customer 3-4 different times, and sometimes they even relented. One time a large man began getting very angry with me for not selling him the laptop and looked like he was about to punch me in the face. Even though I was sometimes decent at it, I really hated how slimy it was for very measly commissions. I could see the appeal to some people, but I never wanted that to be my life. It was constantly stressful and demoralizing and at the end of the day you're just trying to extract more money from folks by whatever means necessary.

For folks praising their own SaaS salespeople or whatever, that's not really the type of person we're talking about here. And I daresay you probably just don't see that side of them because they know to hide it from non-sales folks.