If you’ve spent any time around agencies, SaaS, or marketing automation, you’ve almost certainly heard the name Robin Alex. Robin is the co-founder of HighLevel, one of the fastest-growing CRM and marketing automation platforms serving agencies and small businesses worldwide. Since launching in 2018, HighLevel has grown to more than 2 million users and a global team of 2,000+ employees, fueled by Robin’s deep background in agency operations and technology implementation. His core philosophy has always been simple: make growth easier by removing friction, simplifying tools, and focusing relentlessly on outcomes.
In a recent conversation on the Beyond a Million Podcast, Robin shared how those principles played out in the real world — from building agencies without sales teams to rolling out new products at massive scale. What follows are three of the most actionable lessons he shared, in his own words, and how you can apply them if you’re trying to grow an agency or software business without overcomplicating everything.
How to Scale an Agency Without a Sales Team by Obsessing Over the “Win”
One of the most counterintuitive things about HighLevel’s early growth is that it didn’t rely on a traditional sales machine. There were no aggressive outbound reps or complex funnels. Instead, Robin focused on something far more basic: making sure customers actually succeeded.
As he put it, “We just made sure that people got to the win. And then from there, we just asked, ‘Do you know anyone else that would have this problem?’”
That single idea shaped everything. Rather than selling harder, the team focused on delivering a fast, obvious result — what Robin calls “the win.” Once a customer experienced that moment where the product clearly made their life easier or their business better, the next step wasn’t a pitch. It was a question.
Robin explained it simply: “We never built a sales team. We just kept asking, ‘Do you know anyone else?’ after we solved it.”
The takeaway here is powerful. If your onboarding, service delivery, or implementation process is designed to get people results quickly, growth becomes a natural byproduct. Referrals don’t feel forced when they come immediately after a clear success. For agencies especially, this reframes growth away from constant lead generation and toward engineering better outcomes for the clients you already have.
How to Scale an Agency Without a Sales Team by Selling Simple Outcomes First
Robin’s thinking didn’t start with software. It started with agencies, and specifically with how easy it is to overcomplicate what clients actually need. Early on, his approach to landing clients wasn’t about big retainers or long proposals. It was about walking in the door and solving one real problem.
He described it like this: “Just walking out of your house, walking into a business, and just asking, ‘What can I do to make your life easier? Like, what’s your biggest pain point?’”
Instead of pitching “marketing,” the focus was on extremely tangible fixes. Robin listed examples that almost any business can immediately understand: “The missed call text back or the missed call AI voice receptionist… implementing two-way texting… putting a chat widget on a website… creating a website… or landing pages for an offer.”
What makes this approach especially effective is what comes next. Robin didn’t start by charging. He started by proving value. “‘How can I make your life easier? I’m going to do it for free,’” he said. Only after the solution was live and working did the pricing conversation happen. At that point, he’d ask, “Hey, I was thinking about charging X amount of dollars. What do you think I should charge?”
This flips the usual agency script. Instead of justifying your price before results exist, you let the client experience the value first. Then you let them help anchor what that value is worth. For agencies trying to break through the noise, this approach lowers resistance, builds trust fast, and often leads to cleaner, longer-term relationships.
How to Scale an Agency Without a Sales Team Using the STL Rollout Framework
Growth doesn’t just break when sales are messy. It also breaks when teams roll out new ideas too fast without guardrails. At HighLevel’s scale, shipping something broken can have massive downstream consequences, which is why Robin relies on a simple internal framework he calls STL.
He explained it this way: “It’s the STL, right? What is the size of the test that you need to win on? What is the timeframe that you need to win on? And what is the level that you need to win on.”
In practice, this means nothing gets rolled out blindly. Every new feature, automation, or initiative has clear boundaries before it ever scales. Robin gave a concrete example: “We just want to let it run for an hour and we need to get a 95% success rate or we’re not ready to increase.”
For agencies and SaaS companies alike, this is a powerful discipline. Instead of launching something to your entire client base and hoping it works, you define success upfront. You decide how many users see it, how long it runs, and what metric determines whether it’s ready. If it doesn’t hit that bar, you fix it before expanding.
This approach protects your reputation, your team, and your customers, and it allows you to scale faster because you’re not constantly cleaning up preventable mistakes.
What Robin Alex’s Approach Teaches About Sustainable Growth
What ties all of these ideas together is a refusal to rely on hype or complexity. Whether it’s referrals, client acquisition, or product rollouts, Robin’s philosophy is rooted in clarity and execution. Get people to a real win. Solve obvious problems first. Test before you scale.
That mindset is a big part of why HighLevel has been able to grow as quickly as it has, while still serving agencies and small businesses at massive scale. And it’s also why these lessons translate so well outside of software. If you’re trying to figure out how to scale an agency without a sales team, Robin’s playbook offers a refreshingly practical place to start.
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