This is true if you are unfortunate enough to be operating in a large market with little or no name recognition. The shop I work for quietly sits back and waits for potential clients to contact us. Our client referrals are strong enough to keep our project pipeline running at full capacity year-round.

Sure. I just want to be forced to build products so good that my users do that job.

I think the issue with this lies primarily in young B2B companies/products, especially ones with a large frictional cost in switching over.

Totally... but remember that I didn't say that no company ought to have a sales team, I just said I don't want to work anywhere that does. Filtering out B2B companies with products that have frictional switching costs is exactly the purpose of having that kind of a litmus test.