Spotlight on Robbie Allen - the founders role in early sales

In this spotlight, Robbie compares audio books and founder-led sales. "Audiobooks are always better when read by the author. Similarly, It's almost always better for the founder to lead the sales efforts for the first 10 customers or so and not punt to someone else early on. 

What is Early Wins?

This podcast gets straight to the good stuff, providing real stories and proven strategies from the trenches of enterprise sales for tech startups and scale-ups.

In just 10 minutes and 3 questions, Vince Beese chats with Founders, CEOs, VCs, and execs to share raw insights and lessons on landing deals, finding market fit, and building scalable success.

Vince Beese: 00:00

So piece of advice to founders out there that are trying to land their first customers, what could you advise these folks on?

Robbie Allen: 00:06

So the advice is actually similar to how I think about audiobooks, oddly enough. And so there's been a couple audios. I listen to lots of audiobooks. I've been an audible.com subscriber since, like, 2004. I think I've listened to, like, 800 audiobooks.

Robbie Allen: 00:21

And hands down, the best audiobooks are read by the author. It's almost never the case. I don't care how, you know, like, unpolished the person is. It's almost never better read by someone else. It's always better by the author.

Robbie Allen: 00:35

And that's how I think about sales in the early days for a founder. It's almost always better for the founder to be leading the sales process until you've had those first ten customers or whatever. Thinking that you're just gonna bring somebody in and you can kinda pun on the sales question and leave it to them, that's almost always the wrong move.