And that feels like the problem. You can't live alongside your customers unless you are truly invested in the community, and it feels rare that passion for the community would be weighed higher over the sales position salary when job applicants apply to a position.
It really comes down to the sales hiring manager recognizing this passion/emotional investment in applicants and weighting it properly. And also having a pool of people with this passion who want to work sales at this employer to begin with! How often would this actually happen in practice?
You aren’t living alongside your customers by popping in and answering questions about your product when you get an alert that someone mentioned it on HN.