Why are "talented" people afraid of sales?

There are a ton of really smart, personable, strong communicators who are unemployed.
There are a lot of potentially great companies who need but can't find good salespeople.
The problem is a lot of people who could do tremendously well are flat-out frightened to sell.
Talented people should be really attracted to sales but they rarely enter the profession on purpose. And it's a shame. The upside in sales is tremendous:

• you can make more money
• it is the only truly stable profession (our ever-expanding government notwithstanding)
• you're most likely to have the most freedom of time
• you are also very likely to end up in a fun, highly social work environment.

 So who's to blame for the fear of sales? Our lovely school system takes the lion's share. The same system that still thinks teaching calculus is more important than teaching the perils of credit card debt does a miserable job preparing soon-to-be grads of what they'll actually be doing in the "real world." More college graduates start their first professional career in some form of sales, yet most graduates take 0-1 classes about sales. It is rarely communicated to naive graduates which positions are expendable in a weak economy and which positions are not. For the record, people who drive revenue are always in need.
 There are other factors for the fear. In sales, there are no trophies for 7th place so the offspring of over coddling baby-boomers find themselves in unfamiliar water when they're told performance matters. And there's still the misconception that sales is about being pushy when that is rarely an adjective used to describe a great salesperson.
But as companies are learning to survive and thrive without fluff positions, the reality is soon enough, the smartest and most motivated of the unemployed are going to notice that their friends in sales are making more career progress, making more money and enjoying a more social work environment. And contrary to where our school system guided them, they'll wind up joining their employed friends and they’ll be selling.