Remember Bill Clinton's campaign saying, "The economy stupid!". This post is not about politics. It's about sales and sales rock stars.

Recently, a client that had hired me as a sales coach told me that I was not everybody's cup of tea, but that he was trying to acquire the taste.

(Client's name deleted) sent this recently.

For a long time, if you Googled "Rick Roberge", this was the only entry that you found that was me. Allison Chisolm interviewed me and wrote that article for the newsletter and I was just tickled that I was famous. Several years later, Dave Kurlan thanked me in the Acknowledgements when he published Baseline Selling and I thought that I was 'something else'! Then, in 2011, Paul Roetzer asked me if I would contribute to his upcoming book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint and I thought, "I have arrived." But, the truth is, not really. The world keeps moving.

I hope that I don't ramble and lose you in this post, but it's the result of a series of recent events. I just finished reading Dharmesh's article, "Failure Is Not The Worst Outcome, Mediocrity Is". He had several half-liners that really resonated for me as a coach. Read them slow. Let them sink in.

Back in the day when $20K/year was 'livable', I worked with a company that was making a fuss about reps that sold $1,000 in a single day. As I think back on those times, I realize a few things.

As you know, I recently moved my blog from GoDaddy's Quick Blogcast platform to Hubspot's platform. I had looked into it before and it seemed to complicated for me. So, I didn't, but recently, a GoDaddy rep mentioned that they were eliminating the Quick Blogcast platform and suggesting that users switch to WordPress. I don't have anything against WordPress, but I do have reasons to prefer Hubspot. So, I asked Melissa at Inbound Design Studio if she would help me with the migration. This is where the story begins.

I signed up, paid for and attended Sandler Sales training almost 30 years ago. Back then, Sandler training was sold to individual salespeople rather than companies. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the first class, the trainers often asked, "How many people paid to be here and how many were 'sent'?" Eventually, the Sandler guys switched from selling to individuals to selling to companies. Easy decision...bigger money.

I'm very pleased that my first guest post of 2013 and the very first post on my new portal at Hubspot comes from Arjun Moorthy. In his own words...

Last year, I wrote a couple of articles trying to explain the difference between a Coach, a teacher, a Trainer and a Consultant. If you don't remember them, you can read them here.