At the highest echelons of sales, relationships are more important that soft-skills. Obviously, soft-skills are highly related to a salespersons relationships, but in the same way capital is related to income. Soft-skills determine how fast your relationship asset increases. While soft-skills are transferable between industries, relationships, in general, are not. Relationships are also path-dependent in a way soft-skills are not.

The best salespeople in the world are, depending on how much of a role you think luck plays into the equation, either heads of sales or CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, or simply highly-talented salespeople spread throughout high-level sales careers.