Type of salesperson that succeeds

This research presented on Jill Konrath's blog is interesting to me. Clients today expect that anybody in sales needs to add value to the conversation. Relationship building is not dead as described but needs to be part of something bigger. Connecting with people is more about building trust that then allows the salesperson to present often controversial ideas that solve problems. It's clear to me that like consultants salespeople need to be experts and able to present best practices to companies that are at first resistant to new ideas. It's not good enough to bring in the sales engineer as the resident expert and think the only duty is to own the relationship.