Build the little sales engine first, then scale

Build the little sales engine first, then scale. That’s the idea that stuck with me most from an episode of Rodobo, the podcast hosted by my friend Juan Rodríguez Talavera, with Javi Consuegra from Sales Hackers as the guest. Juan sent it to me because he thought I’d like it, and he was right.

This article opens a new section of the blog called What I listen to and read: episodes and articles I find useful for people who sell, with what they left me with.

I listen to podcasts while walking. If something makes me think and I don’t capture it right away, it fades, so I record voice notes on the street and work through them later. This article came out of one of those walks. Here are the ideas from the episode that kept going around in my head and what they made me think about from my day-to-day in sales. If you work in sales and speak Spanish, listen to the whole thing; the link is at the end.

If buying is emotional, what should you watch in a meeting?

The first idea is that every sale is emotional, far less logical than we like to believe. We tell ourselves we decide on arguments, and we end up buying based on how we feel about the person in front of us. It’s along the same lines as what I wrote in you’ll always buy from the person you like.

The episode also suggests a concrete exercise: notice who talked most in each meeting. A client who is comfortable and trusts you talks. One who is uncomfortable makes you do the talking.

Gong’s data points the same way. In 2025 they analyzed 326,000 sales calls of at least ten minutes: on average the seller talks 60% of the time, and in won deals they talked 57%, against 62% in lost ones (Gong Labs). The gap is small, and the same study points out that back-and-forth matters more: lost deals tend to have longer seller monologues.

So I wouldn’t treat it as a diagnosis, because someone talking less doesn’t always mean they’re uncomfortable. I use it as a question after each meeting: did I talk so much because the client wanted to hear me, or because I didn’t leave them room?

What’s the point of an ideal customer that leaves nobody out?

Another idea from the episode sounds contradictory: defining your ideal customer well should cost you money. An honest definition means giving up clients and accepting that you don’t work with everyone. If your definition leaves nobody out, you haven’t defined anything yet.

At the same time, the episode argues for something that seems to go the other way: getting as many people as possible to know what you do, with a fixed prospecting cadence week after week.

My take is that both things fit together. You start with a hypothesis about your ideal customer and keep correcting it with each conversation. The cadence is how you test that hypothesis every week and find out what pain you solve, who pays attention to you and who doesn’t. Which clients to give up ends up being decided by what you learn while reaching out, more than on a whiteboard.

Why build the little sales engine first?

This part hit me for a personal reason. Juan said that going out to find clients wore him out, and Javi’s answer was remarkably simple: set a fixed cadence. Reach out to 10, 15, 20 or 100 a week, whatever you set yourself. Build that little engine even if you have no idea yet, because it helps you sharpen the message, understand what pain you solve and discover who listens to you. Scaling comes later.

That’s where I found a parallel that’s very much my own. When someone tells me they’re looking for a job, I always say the same thing: send out 100 CVs every day, even if they’re not for the job you want. You’ll get some yeses, and you’ll practice your story so much that when the job you fall in love with shows up, your pitch is already polished.

It works the same way with clients. Every round of outreach gets you a meeting or, at the very least, a slightly better version of how you explain what you bring, and that’s how you arrive ready when it’s time to scale.

Can you automate without losing relevance?

The episode argues that automated and personalized can go together, as long as you find a creative way to automate a message that’s relevant to a specific target.

It’s close to home, because on this blog I’ve been writing about how I automated my sales process with Claude. I keep a question close at hand: is what I automate still useful to the person who receives it? For me, personalization depends on the message. An email written by hand can be just as generic as an automated one, and an automated one that speaks to what the other person needs can be personal too.

Does making common mistakes make you a bad salesperson?

I’ll end with a doubt that comes up often when I listen to sales experts. The common mistakes of a salesperson get defined very quickly, like saying yes to everything or sending a proposal too soon. And I wonder whether making them turns us into bad salespeople.

Sometimes, listening to the gurus, it sounds like all of us in sales are bad and the only good ones are the ones talking. I don’t believe that. Some clichés are clichés because they’re true: the episode stresses the importance of picking up the phone, and I agree with that. What bothers me are the labels. A common mistake gets fixed with context and practice, and calling someone a bad salesperson teaches them nothing. I’m more interested in understanding why we make those mistakes and how to fix them than in handing out good and bad salesperson badges.

What I’m taking from the episode

What stuck with me most is building the engine before scaling. I’m also taking the question of who talked most in each meeting and, on the side of doubts, my discomfort with a way of teaching sales that turns mistakes into verdicts.

Thanks, Juan, for sending me the episode. If you’ve listened to it, write to me and we’ll compare notes. The full episode is on Spotify.