About
Twenty-five years selling. Most of it on the phone.
I am Jarrod Roberts. I started in sales in 2002, and I am still selling today. That is the whole reason this site exists.
Most advice about sales careers comes from people who left. They did three or four good years, burned out, and now they sell courses about the good years. I never left. So what I can tell you is the part they cannot: what the long version costs, and what it takes to keep going.
What I have actually done
Five industries, one job. Nearly all of it was sold by phone.
Real estate, 2002
Cold calls, direct mail, and heavy call volume to win listings at Gilleran and Griffin in Westwood.
Mortgages, 2005
Senior loan officer at Twin Capital Mortgage in San Francisco, closing fifteen to twenty-five transactions a month.
Digital marketing, 2008
I sold websites and internet marketing to real estate agents and brokerages at Agent Image, and I trained and mentored the new sales hires.
Classic cars, 2013
Buying and selling collectible European cars for Beverly Hills Car Club, the largest classic European dealership in North America. I still do this today.
Realtor.com, 2016–2021
Five years on the High-Value Customer Team — a fast, high-volume inside sales floor, in Salesforce, every single day.
15–25
If you want one number from all of that, take the mortgage years: fifteen to twenty-five closings a month, for three years, on the phone. That pace is where I learned what this job does to a person.
Why I care about lasting, not just closing
For most of those years I treated my body as something to deal with later. The dialer came first. Later never arrived on its own.
What changed it was not a sales book. It was Atomic Habits. I started building small systems the same way I build a call block: on purpose, at the same time, whether I feel like it or not. Sleep, movement, water, and an actual stop time at the end of the day.
My numbers did not drop. They got steadier. Balance is not the opposite of high performance in a high-stress job. It is the thing that lets you keep performing in one, for decades instead of months.
The other half
The 3-3-3 Rule
That is one half of it. The other half is what happens on the call itself — three seconds to hook, three minutes for value, three touchpoints to follow up. Structure, so the call does not run you. It is what I write about in Longevity.
3
seconds to hook
3
minutes for value
3
touchpoints to follow up
What I do now
I still sell every day. Around that, I do three things here.
01
I write about staying in this job — burnout, tenure, and what a long career looks like from inside one.
02
I run a fixed-scope audit for owners and sales leaders with a small team selling by phone.
03
I am writing a playbook for the 3-3-3 Rule.
How to reach me
Email me at jarrod@insidesalesandwellness.com. I answer within two business days.