🎙️Transcript: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience

The B2B Revenue Executive Experience
"The Art of Building a High-Performing Sales Development Team"
Lisa Schnaare, Carlos Nouche, Ralph Barsi
September 24, 2024

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Narrator (00:07):
You are listening to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience, a podcast dedicated to helping executives train their sales and marketing teams to optimize growth.

Whether you're looking for techniques and strategies, or tools and resources, you've come to the right place.

Let's accelerate your growth in 3, 2, 1.

Carlos Nouche (00:27):
Welcome everyone to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience. I'm Carlos Nouche and I'm joined by my podcast partner, Lisa Schnare.

How are you, Lisa?

Lisa Schnare:
Doing great. It's Friday. We're recording this on a Friday, so happy that we made it through another week.

Carlos Nouche:
Me too. Alright folks. Today, we're talking about best practices for running a world-class sales development team.

Lisa Schnare:
And we have quite the expert in that helping us out today because he's done it multiple times.

It's Ralph Barsi, who's currently VP of Sales at Kahua, which is a leading construction project management platform.

And Ralph is, actually, in full transparency, a former ValueSelling client that worked with Carlos very closely. So we're really excited to have you here. Ralph, welcome to the show!

Ralph Barsi (01:11):
Thank you Lisa. Thanks Carlos. Really happy to be here.

Carlos Nouche (01:14):
Alright, Ralph, here's the question we use to start off every single episode:

What is something that you're passionate about that those that primarily only know you through business may be surprised to know about you?

Ralph Barsi (01:29):
Easy one. I am a drummer and I've been a drummer since 1974, so I've been around the block, so to speak, and I've had the privilege of playing in a number of bands.

One of the longest standing bands is a band called Segue, that I formed with some high school and college buddies back in 1994. We released three records.

You could hear them on all the major platforms We've played live all over California and I wish we played a little more often these days.

Everybody's getting older and is traveling everywhere, so it's tough, but very passionate about drumming and music, especially playing live music.

Lisa Schnare (02:07):
Wow, and so you're still doing shows and the audience could look you up and come see you play?

Ralph Barsi (02:13):
They could. We don't play as frequently as we used to. We used to do 50 plus shows a year. Those are the old days.

We're all married and with children now many of them are grown, which means we might get back on the circuit. You never know.

Now that the kids are all off to school and getting married and stuff, it could be easier. It'll open up the calendars.

Carlos Nouche (02:33):
I have a client who's lead singer in a band and he literally at one of his sales kickoffs, he basically had him in his band as one of the live acts for one of the nights and people were like, he was all serious. They just got to meet him and then he did this and he is like, wow!!

Ralph Barsi (02:48):
Yeah, that'll break the ice.

Lisa Schnare (02:50):
Well, Ralph, coming back around to your career, you've had an amazing run, been with some big companies, gone through some acquisitions, and you've worked with some fantastic organizations.

So do you want to walk the audience through a few of the highlights that have then brought you to where you are today with Kahua?

Ralph Barsi (03:05):
Sure, I'd be happy to, and I'll do my best to be concise here.

So I've been in sales for 30 plus years.

The first half of my career I was an individual contributor, whereas the latter half, I really centered my focus on leading, and I've gotten the opportunity to lead teams large and small, both on the sales side, leading individual contributors, as well as the sales development side.

I have experience as a second line and third line leader, as well as first of course.

And some of the companies I've been able to represent include InsideView. They were acquired by DemandBase several years ago.

I also worked for a great company called Achievers. They were based in Toronto. They too were acquired by a company called Blackhawk Network.

And most notably, ServiceNow where I was for four years between 2015 and 2019, and I led their global sales development effort.

Today I'm at Kahua, as you mentioned. I lead sales, sales development, as well as the sales engineering teams. That's a company based in Atlanta and I'm having a great time. I'm a constant student, constantly learning.

So with all those logos comes a lot of great leaders that I've been able to work alongside and learn from.

Carlos Nouche (04:19):
Awesome! I live north of Atlanta, so come visit me, I'll take you fly fishing.

Ralph Barsi (04:23):
Will do. Done.

Carlos Nouche (04:24):
We've had the privilege, Lisa and I, and a lot of folks on our team, to work with some world-class sales development teams, and the reality is, I think it's a constant battle - not only to get there, but to stay there.

So Ralph, thanks for accepting the topic of the day.

Could you share some of your best practices on how do you make a world-class team and maintain it at that level?

Ralph Barsi (04:47):
Absolutely. Please interrupt me, Carlos, this is something I could go for days on.

This is a second passion that I have - and that is building, leading, and sustaining strong teams that live by high standards, whether that's a sales team or sales development team.

But with respect to sales development, frankly, I think this is transferable to a lot of different business functions, but there are some core principles that I lean on when I'm thinking about the framing of a world-class sales development organization.

So, obviously you need a charter, and that charter has to be very clear to the organization and to the people within the organization.

So for sales development, the objectives should be twofold: you should focus on driving a revenue pipeline for your organization - of course, that comes by way of lead generation and lead qualification - that's following up on inbound leads generated by marketing, or outbound prospecting, preferably into high-value target accounts, and measuring twice-cutting once before you engage those accounts...

...and then the second of the twofold objectives, next to revenue pipeline, is driving a people pipeline.

Sales development is unique, in that most people who are in the sales development role - we'll call 'em SDRs or BDRs - typically they're relatively new to their careers, they're new to business, they're new to sales, and there's a lot of teaching and guiding and coaching that is expected and needed from the leaders in a sales development organization.

Now, that being said, there are some lifers as well; and I don't mean that disrespectfully. There are some outstanding sales development reps who have made a career of this role and have done very well for themselves and for the organization, but they too need coaching, guiding teaching because the market as we've all seen over the last 10 to 15 years continues to evolve and continues to change.

And if you don't have a leadership approach that is adaptive and flexible, and you're not conveying that to your organization and leading by example, it's an uphill climb for everybody.

So there's the charter of revenue pipeline and people pipeline, and then I think what falls underneath that umbrella includes all the components like the strategy and the way you develop the strategy, the different formulas, the standards of excellence that you choose to live by, the systems that you implement.

And I'm always a big fan of putting systems over goals. It's how you solve problems, how you do things at scale, et cetera.

So we can go in a lot of different directions, but those are some fundamental components and principles that I've used in my career.

Lisa Schnare (07:27):
Yeah, I love what you said about a people pipeline because that's...one of the startups I worked with, I had a hundred percent turnover to internal promotions on my SDR team in one year.

I was like, I had a hundred percent retention as well then...

Ralph Barsi (07:44):
It's a good problem.

Lisa Schnare (07:46):
I was like, stop taking people from my team, especially after they get really good.

So I mean, interesting also you mentioned about constantly learning, constantly updating your systems, updating your process because we all know that and you said the market gets saturated with different types of prospecting and then our prospects and customers get sick of certain types of prospecting and that's when you get this go round of calling's dead, now email's dead, now we're going back to direct mail. I'm going to start knocking on doors and sending carrier pigeons.

So I'm really curious, what are some of your go-tos to keep the team being creative and to keep trying and testing new prospecting cadences and mediums?

Do you have a process that you'd like to go through every quarter, every few months, or how do you do that?

Ralph Barsi (08:33):
This is a big topic, of course, and it's not one that'll go away. And for the recipients of these outreach efforts, these emails, these phone calls, these blasts, et cetera, if you're finding yourself getting frustrated, first of all it's warranted.

Secondly, remember that frustration is a function of our expectations. So, that obviously means you expect to be treated differently if you're a senior leader or you're responsible for some component of a function where a sales development rep is going to try to engage with you in terms of how to solve it.

On the sales development side, it starts by listening; and not listening to the pundits per se that are on LinkedIn, or on other social media channels, touting "this is the way to do it," but listening to the marketplace, listening to the customers, listening to the key personas that you are aiming to engage; and listening to the terminology that they're using to the verbiage that they're using in their writing and in their communications.

A lot of people often forget to look for the key personas on YouTube. Lots of times they're on podcasts like this, or they're sitting on panels or they're hosting webinars, and you're going to hear the inflections in their voice, in their tone of conversation.

And that's what I mean by, just kind of putting your antenna up and just getting a sense of what their problems might be that they're facing, what they're trying to overcome, what it is that does keep them up at night.

That way when you do engage, you can, from the outset, be seen as that trusted advisor and that listener and that counselor based on all the listening you've been doing to them and to other titles in the industry.

And you could share notes with them and provide a couple paths forward for them to consider.

And I'll tell you right now, taking that type of approach, it's going to bode well for you versus just blasting them with a bunch of sequences and cadences and hoping for the best.

Lisa Schnare (10:36):
Yeah, it's so true. I love that - listening.

And then I'd also just say one thing that comes up a lot is how much research is actually available to us and our teams for free. Oftentimes I encourage everyone on my teams to follow other sales influencers on LinkedIn because they're constantly sharing results.

So it could be the Jeremey Donovans, the Kevin Dorseys, the Lori Richardsons, the John Barrows, James Buckley, these guys are talking about it all the time.

"We ran these cadences and saw these results."
"We tried this video."
"We tried this cold call technique."

And it's like, 'Hey, that's free information!' Those people are out there on the front lines testing this for you in the same environment.

Now, I like what you said about ICP knowing your persona because that can definitely change, but taking advantage of some of that information.

And then you've got the big platforms like Gong and Salesloft and Outreach that are putting out these studies all the time being like, this is what worked. This is what's working for market leading teams, and here's the 5 million calls we analyze to back up this recommendation.

So there's a little bit of it too, like listening, but also then use the research that's free out there for you to then build those cadences off of

Ralph Barsi (11:49):
It's all out there. And again, that's part of having the antenna up and really gathering those types of insights.

Every single person you mentioned are experts in the game. I know all of them well, and I'm a big fan of all of them. I actually love all of 'em to be honest with you, but they've got a ton of great insights that are constantly being put into the stream.

And I'm a huge AI fan and leveraging AI for what it can do specifically if you're trying to engage publicly held companies. Of course, if you do deep research with the private companies, AI could really be your friend.

And I've got some suggested recommended prompts for the audience in case you're interested in getting into that.

Carlos Nouche (12:29):
I didn't ask you, the audience should hang up on me right now.

Ralph Barsi (12:32):
Yeah, let's do one real quick, and I can send a document that includes these prompts, but in short, there are a number of tools out there.

Lisa, you mentioned Gong and a few others. I mean it goes for days. There's a number of different tools that are already part of the tech stack that can help do this, but if you were to leverage ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or one of the major AI engines, know that number one, it's probably not the best, at least in the short term, do help you do this at scale.

You might have 50 different high value target accounts that you're trying to get intel and insights on, and it's tough to do one-by-one, but therein lies another secret and that is not everything needs to be done at scale.

So, for the leaders listening, going back to running a world-class sales development organization, sometimes you need to invest the time speaking to each individual SDR or cohorts of SDRs five 10 at a time, as well as every leader in your organization.

Get an understanding of them personally as much as you can, find out what drives them internally, what's pulling them towards their goals every day.

And that doesn't scale when you're doing that type of exercise. So we'll digress.

Now, let's say we're back to the high value target accounts. Go to an engine like Claude or ChatGPT for example, and you're going to type in, "I am an experienced enterprise sales development representative and I am looking for insights and intel to engage these specific personas at this publicly traded company."

Now you take the transcript from an earnings call, which is usually published on websites like SeekingAlpha or Yahoo Finance or The Motley Fool.

Some of them are free, some of them have a paywall. I would recommend paying for the subscription if this is part of your business.

Nonetheless, you copy and paste the opening remarks from the CEO. You can then copy-paste the remarks from the CFO and you plug it underneath your prompt in ChatGPT and you say, "I want you to tee up three complementary emails," meaning three emails that all complement one another in a string of emails, "considering the insights that I'm going to paste."

"And I also want a summary in a bulleted list format of all the key insights that the CEO is mentioning in the earnings call."

"I also want 20 conversation starters." Should I get one of these high level executives to pick up a phone so that I have relevant, engaging, compelling information right from the outset?

"And I want to know if you can also reconcile all the insights from this earnings call with the current challenges and trends in said industry."

And I think you'd be pretty surprised at what an AI engine can put out as a result of that prompt. And now you're armed with relevant information that's going to get them thinking it's going to get their wheels turning.

You're going to get better at your conversation starters and your overall flow of conversation, which I think is a major barrier for SDRs as well as leaders.

Then you've got to put in the time to practice, you've got to study, you've got to write questions, you've got to think through it critically, and then you can shape your talk track and you're going to be lethal if you start doing exercises like that.

Carlos Nouche (16:02):
Excellent. I love that. I love this level of detail.

I had just mentioned last week to someone about feed it the client's website and their earnings and ask it some questions off of that.

And someone pops and goes, "Carlos, I'm a big fan of AI. I never thought of that!" And she goes, "I did it this morning. Holy crap!" Yours was accurately much more detailed. But I mean the fact that I think there's tools like that and the level of assistance it could provide you, I think is amazing and it's only getting better every day.

Hey Ralph, I want to pivot over to leadership a second, and this is, we can call it a best practice for building a world-class sales development, but let's face it, it's the same thing if you want to build a great pre-sales, sales client success, or whatever organization, but here is the challenge:

I think a lot of people talk about driving ownership and accountability and being better coaches and developing talent in business development.

I think there's an added dilemma to it because for a lot of folks, they see it as a position in time and they're moving on.

Lisa, to your point, you once had a great team for a year and a hundred percent of it moved on internally.

So how do you drive that ownership and accountability and coach these people to be their best within sales development? Because I think that is a challenge that a lot of young leaders are really facing these days.

Ralph Barsi (17:23):
Oh, wow. That's a big one, Carlos, thanks for bringing that topic up.

I don't think my answer's too deep. I think it's pretty simple.

I think what's tough about it though is you actually have to apply it. So it's simple to say, Hey, leaders out there, we need you to show up. We need you to be present when in command command, it's really simple to say words like that and phrases and really embrace them.

But until you actually illustrate that by example through your actions, they are just words. So I would underscore the importance of rolling up your sleeves, getting on the phone with your teams, sitting with your leaders, getting feedback from them on a regular basis so you can create that closed loop environment doing what you say you're going to do.

I think it also shows up in all levels of communication, meaning if I'm writing an email to the organization, they're going to look at the aesthetics of my email.

They're going to look at are my sentences short or are my sentences long? Am I too verbose or am I succinct and concise and direct?

Same applies to, as we talked about earlier, communicating at scale when you do have to communicate at scale, what I have found works best for me is making videos all tee up a quick 30-second video to say, "Hey, Lisa, Scott, Carlos, David, Jody, we've got key initiatives that we are falling short on, so we're going to have a meeting on Wednesday, and there's three bullet points that I want you thinking about and coming to the meeting list so that we can have really good discourse and a healthy discussion and a path forward, and they are A, B, C..." and ending the video at that.

And then lastly, it's just the regular communications with the organization, understanding and having the wherewithal to know if you're going up the chain of command or down the chain of command or across the organization and making sure that you're communicating regularly, following up, following through on what you said you're going to do.

And Carlos, we talked with you quite a bit with ValueSelling about your pre-mortem calls, your post-mortem calls, and you've got a list of questions that you need to be asking of yourself, of the prospect of the business prior, during and after calls.

And the same applies to leadership.

Carlos Nouche (19:42):
Yeah, I love your comment about just showing up.

In our clients...we worked with a client about doing pre-defined prospecting hours and then really trying to manage the mindset going into it, and rallying the troops, and then really closing it out like, Hey, how did we do? What could we do better next time? Congratulations.

And sadly, I talked to a manager a year later and I go, are you still doing your call blocks? Oh, yeah, yeah, Carlos, we schedule those every week.

Well, how's it going?

Goes...Well, we schedule and the team does 'em.

I go, so I'm not saying you got to be at every one every day of the week, but are you telling me you're not participating at all?

No, no. I mean, sometimes they get rescheduled, sometimes they know what they're doing.

And Ralph, this goes back to that thing...I go, I mean we got to take ownership - not only of our team's success, but also helping them in becoming successful.

Their actions are our actions, their behaviors are our behaviors. And sadly, I think sometimes people miss that out.

I love your idea of the video, by the way, in helping driving it. In fact, just thinking about you for a second and doing my little research, I heard you about a year ago, talk about the importance of mindset.

Any advice there on how do you help drive that mindset of the team? Because I think all the growth starts there.

Ralph Barsi (20:59):
Wow. Yeah. Thanks Carlos. Well, again, you're leading by example.

There's a great quote, let's see if I've got it in front of me. I do. It's from the late coach Tom Landry, who used to coach the Dallas Cowboys back in the seventies.

And he had an awesome quote on leadership, which I think kind of informs this whole mindset question.

The quote is, "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control."

And I think that's a poignant message because you can't be in control, let alone exemplify what it is to be in control, if you're not at peace at your center and at your core.

If you are truly tethered to the mission of your organization; both the micro, the sales development organization that you own, as well as macro, the company and the ecosystem that that company is part of, people have finely-tuned BS meters and they will figure you out so quickly.

So it's critical that you are in touch with your purpose, your why. It's really important to get to the root cause of why you're even here and what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

And it's also an easy tell when a leader is kind of out for herself or out for himself versus out for the team.

And it reminds me of a great African proverb, which is, "If you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far, go together."

So it's imperative that we work as a team and have a collective mindset and a collective understanding of which direction north is so that we can head there together.

Lisa Schnare (22:40):
I love all that, and I think you touched on it in there as with the BS meter. I think one of the things that I faced a lot in my career, I worked for tech startups that were early enough stage that we were working on runway money.

So revenue was not an option. It was like we've got a finite amount of time to be here together. We really have to hit our goals. There's no real messing around with that.

And so I think the transparency behind why certain decisions are made the way they're made at a leadership level, of course I do also truly believe in protecting your team a little bit from the insanity that can be going on at the top of some of these organizations.

So you want to create that confidence, that comfort, that trust the process. We're going to get there together.

We're here for all the right reasons and we're in the trenches together. I think that's all really important.

But that transparency piece that I know was crucial for me to keep teams calm and comfortable and performing and not getting caught up in the craziness that can go on at the top level.

So I love all that advice, Ralph, and can only give you a hundred percent backup on that one thing that is often a challenge.

And I'm curious about your thoughts on this because I'm seeing and have seen sales development teams sit under sales under marketing, and in only one case that I can remember specifically was its own division that reported directly to the CRO being that quarterback for all these teams were between demand generation, and sales, and qualification, and still a very important team.

And it's very important to keep the communication open between marketing and sales. How do you keep focused and not end up getting stuck in the pull-and-push from all the other departments in the organization, because that can be such a distraction when you're really trying to be effective?

Ralph Barsi (24:37):
So, I have had an opportunity to lead sales development organizations that were both rolling up to sales and marketing.

So I have experience in both, and there's pros and cons to both.

Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet. I can't say, you know what? Here's the answer. This is where they need to report. Because both work, but both don't work too.

So in the case of rolling into marketing, marketing is responsible for contributing to generating revenue. Pipeline sales on the other hand, is responsible for producing revenue. A big difference, big difference.

Revenue pipeline. I liken it to a stack of oxygen tanks against the wall, or a stack of firewood, and when the oxygen level gets low, we need to grab another tank and we need to refuel quickly. We need to get that pipeline back up and running. Sales is, look, if we have no oxygen, we die.

So we need oxygen constantly. And they both have massively different responsibilities and charters in a lot of respects.

And so knowing that you have to get in touch with the mindset of the respective leaders. Marketing is investing a lot of money to produce one lead, and if that lead falls by the wayside or is not followed up on quickly, let alone properly, they're losing money.

And specifically, Lisa, when you talk about the startup environment, that adds to the burn rate of a startup company and that also adds to the overall stress of a company.

So as a sales development leader rolling up to marketing, it's critical that you understand how to connect the dots within marketing, understand their world so that you can articulate it to your SDRs and teach the purpose behind why this is a stress factor of senior leaders.

And it will help the SDRs understand that function of the business.

And the same applies to sales. What I like about the sales oversight part is most sales development reps are aspiring to become salespeople.

They want to be AEs and individual contributors and they want to quota 'em. They want to carry a bag and they want to learn all the nuances and competencies to be successful salespeople.

Most of them, I'd say probably 70%, the others end up going to different functions or leave altogether because it's not an easy role. So that's when the teacher do mean that.

That's when the sales development leader needs to teach about sales competencies and skills and what's important on the sales side of things.

But the missing component that I think a lot of leaders need to focus on is marrying the two.

So it should not matter if you roll into marketing or sales, as long as you're very clear with the team as to what each function is responsible for and why it's going to help inform their responsibilities on a day-to-day basis.

And we can go deeper into it. We could talk about service level agreements, and the interlock between teams, and the friction that we often run into. We can talk about attribution marketing.

We'll typically come into a meeting and say, Hey, we're not getting any credit for this opportunity that's worth X millions of dollars. They were at a trade show 12 months ago. How come we aren't getting credit for this? And so on and so forth.

I've been there and I've seen it all and I've been in all those discussions. So if there's a specific pain point you think we need to hang on, let's talk about it,

Lisa Schnare (28:16):
The trauma that's being...arising in my throat from all of those conversations. Yeah...

Ralph Barsi (28:22)
It's a good point though.

It goes back to the mindset question that Carlos asked, again, if you're not exemplifying calm control, let's look at this objectively and let's understand how to have a difficult conversation.

Let's detach from the emotion and detach from me meeting with Lisa or Carlos about this, and let's look at the problem itself. It's just going to go over much easier.

Carlos Nouche (28:43):
It's hard to be, Hey, we're focused on creating qualified pipeline and these are our goals and this is what we're planning for next week.

And then what I hate to see in some organizations is, Hey, sorry, it's Monday. We have a tradeshow and we need some butts and seats, so everyone switch gears, let's go do that.

And sometimes I go, Hey, look, you got to roll with the punches and be a good corporate citizen. Other times you also got to be like, Hey, I'm more than happy to help you with that stuff. You got to schedule it. Our main goal is creating pipeline. That's how we get paid. And if I allow that just to stop willy nilly at a stop of a dime, I lose all my credibility with my team and we don't get our job done.

Ralph Barsi (29:23):
That's right. And those SDRs want to get paid. They're focused on paying rent.

A lot of 'em, as we mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, are young in their career and young in life and they're finding their legs and every opportunity counts.

So coming together with leadership and talking, whether it's on a QBR basis or at the beginning of a fiscal year, and really laying out what is the plan for tradeshows and the schedule of events that are happening this year, I would also encourage you to keep in mind, well, what are the contingency plans for the scenario that Carlos brought up? What if something does happen impromptu or ad hoc?

Instead of everybody freaking out, let's go, okay, well we've talked about this. These are the three things we can do in the case of an emergency. And so let's execute on that plan and we'll knock these leads out. No problem.

Carlos Nouche (30:14):
Alright, so in building a world-class team, I want to talk a little bit about some of the tools. And what I mean by it is two-sided.

One is, some listeners go, yeah, that's technology. So I have a CRM, I have an Outreach or a Salesloft, I have Gong, I have this, I have that.

And these are all the tools. I throw 'em all on the XDR and they're going to be successful.

Then they go, well, there's the other side of it. We got to prepare for something. Oh great, I'll just teach 'em the product. Okay. But they need to know this much.

And I'm trying to make, for those that are just listening a little pinch, in fact, I would argue what they really want to know is who the hell buys this stuff and what situations and what are the top three or four challenges that they're dealing with.

Because if I can find a person in that situation with one of these problems, I got the beginning of a lead.

So I'm trying to get to the point of how do we arm them with whether it's customer success stories or examples so that they got what they need to do their function without having, Hey, I got to become an expert on the product to be able to prospect for it. Any advice there?

Ralph Barsi (31:23):
Sure. I would again, try to keep things very simple and I like to work with mind maps or frameworks just to stay on track.

So when it comes to your question, Carlos, I think of the acronym of Par: PAR.

And it's simple. It's Problem-Action-Result.

So I immediately, if I'm engaged with a prospect, I could run into them in an elevator or meet them in a social gathering, or I might be doing a formal cold call having done some research and I get an ICP on the line.

I'm going to first get through the niceties of earning the next 20 seconds with a really solid conversation starter.

But when we get into the meat and potatoes of a conversation, my focus is always going to be on considering the role you're in.

And having done a lot of research on your company and your industry, I understand that these are top problems and challenges to you and to your business and likely to your team, and I hate to say it, but probably to your customers as well.

So here's an open-ended question: How would you stack rank those problems? How big are these problems to you? Are they urgent and important, or are they just important or are they not even on your radar?

Second is we have faced these problems before and we've been able to parachute into an organization and this is a part of PAR and we've been able to do A, B, C, and as a result, they have seen this outcome and they're now off to the races and all as well.

So if I can quickly articulate a PAR model, it helps me understand what matters most.

And I just want to emphasize that's actually a great acronym to use because you're beginning with problems and when you begin with problems, you're not talking about you, you're talking about them.

You're not talking about your product, your product's iterations, and the different releases that you have and the company history and why the name of our company is Kahua and how it was founded, because no one really, really, really cares.

They really care about their problems being solved. So when you're leading with that PAR mind map, you have to talk about them. And that's what I really like about that acronym.

Lisa Schnare (33:38):
I often start with saying, this is going to sound harsh, but nobody cares who you are or what company you're with. They care what you solve.

When you're coaching, especially coaching sometimes on cold call starters, they're like, oh, "It's Lisa calling from ValueSelling. ValueSelling? Have you heard of ValueSelling?"

And it's like they don't care. Move on to the things you solve.

Okay. So kind of a question we don't always ask, but I think it would be really interesting for our audience to hear from you, Ralph, is throughout your career, have you taken what you would consider any missteps or made any big mistakes that actually led you to big life lessons, career lessons, career growth, but something that at the time you were like, oh, crap.

Ralph Barsi (34:23):
Where do I begin? So many failures and missteps and falling down, but I take copious notes throughout life and I have done my very best to fine-tune the craft and my approach to it.

But I think a big mistake I made early in my career was I made a lot of assumptions that, hey, if I'm in this role, for example, and I have oversight and responsibility of this organization, everyone's going to hang on to what I say.

They're going to listen to what I say, they're going to buy into it. It's going to align with how they feel about our approach and our business, and we're going to just work swimmingly together and accomplish great things.

But over time, and with a little bit of wisdom being sprinkled in along the way, I've learned that people are tuning forks and not everybody resonates with the key that you are in.

And again, there goes a music reference. Being a drummer, I can get up on stage or I can get on these little 30-second videos that I'm making for the team, or I can convey a directive via email and I have to know that, I don't know, it'll probably reach 60% of the audience that it'll, with them, they'll open it, they'll read it, they'll view it, they'll process it and be, let's go, let's charge that hill.

But if you don't realize that 40% of 'em have no interest in doing it, don't like you as a person, don't like your character the way you do things, then it's going to be really, really tough.

So I made a lot of those assumptions in the opposite direction early on, thinking that, well, of course they're in, and you learn the hard way through.

The larger the organization you run, your contingent of haters grows in proportion. And there are always some insiders that'll tell you, Hey, Carlos, can't stand you, Ralph. The guy's talking smack every time you leave the room.

And I just thought you might want to know, and you have to learn how to filter that information and either change your tune or not, depending on the feedback you're getting.

Carlos Nouche (36:28):
Yeah, one of our clients likes to call it "artificial harmony." Yeah, Ralph, that sounds great. I'm a hundred percent behind you.

And then they're really sabotaging you at the end of the day, and it's a hard one to flush out, but it's a great one to freely talk about, like, Hey, if this is how you feel, then let me help you find your next role.

Or my line in my career was, I want you to move me up or move me out. If you could do a better job, you should be here. I shouldn't be. And then it ended up working out great for me in my career and the team, but it wasn't until I got to that mindset that I actually started to turn the corner.

Ralph Barsi (37:05):
Yeah, I've had some tough gos with that and I've learned a lot from 'em.

Carlos Nouche (37:09):
Alright, here's our big close out question. It's kind of a version. We call it "acceleration insights."

And I love the answers, we get to this sometimes. So what's your one piece of advice, Ralph? Be it business or it could be personal that you would love to share with our listeners that would help them possibly have as successful career as you have?

Ralph Barsi (37:29):
Oh, wow. Chronicle your work would be my one piece of advice. Make sure you're always keeping a document of your highlights, your lowlights, the challenges and obstacles that you're facing, how you're overcoming them, the ones you're not overcoming, people in your network that you would like to engage more or people that aren't in your network that you'd like to add.

Keep a running sheet. It could be a Google Doc, it could be in Apple Notes, it could be on your phone. You could do pen and paper. It does not have to be published or shown to anyone, and it's not necessarily a diary, but it is this running punch list of things you're learning and things you want to learn.

And where it really helps you is when you get to a juncture in your career where you're going to transition to a new role.

It's very easy for you to talk about all the things you've been learning, all the projects you've been working on, the problems that you've faced, the actions that you've implemented and the results that you've seen in a very clear way because you've been writing about it this whole time, and you can reference it pretty quickly.

So I have a blog, it's ralphbarsi.com, and I think ralphbarsi.com/chronicle leads you to a post I did about chronicling your work, and I actually created a little form that's a template you could download to get you started if it's something that you don't yet do but are interested in starting.

Lisa Schnare (38:51):
I think that's also great advice because we're talking with sales development teams and not to go dark with it, but you're often challenged a lot, and we feel like we're screaming into a void and there's no one out there, and we get rejected all the time.

Chronicling your work also reminds you of all the wins. I think it's really easy for us to get mired down into the muck of like, okay, this didn't go well, that didn't go well. I'm feeling really stuck or burnt out even.

And it's just like go back through and realize these are all the things you overcame. These are all the things you could call a win.

And it definitely sets your mindset up again for, you know what? I'm not as terrible as I felt in that moment.

Ralph Barsi (39:31):
You're not, and you're completely capable of seeing this through. Also, I love that you brought that up, Lisa.

I would even add in those notes, a couple punch points on your purpose and your mission and why are you here?

Because you will hit the rough patch. And when you can go back and look at, you know what, I'm doing this for my family, or I'm doing this because I plan to buy a home in the next 18 months or whatever it is, or I want to run my own business someday.

When you see it on paper, it's a nice reminder and I would even emphasize reading it out loud, and it's going to get the right gears in your head turning and it goes a long way. So chronicle your work.

Lisa Schnare (40:08):
Definitely. I love that. That's a really good piece of advice. We should start doing that, Carlos.

Carlos Nouche (40:13):
Well, it reminds you, one of the pivot points in my career as a leader is, it's a long story, but I turned around to my team, I asked them what their goals were, what are they looking to do?

Because my misstep was, I assumed everybody was motivated the same way I was terrible idea, I know. And by just taking that extra step and like you said, Hey, I want to buy my new home, or I want to spend more time with my two new babies I have at the house, it changed my perspective.

And then as I managed them, I tried to find opportunities to help them achieve their goal, which I felt they appreciated more versus, Hey, everybody, go out there, hit your quota.

It was more about, Hey, as individuals, how do we help each other be successful? And it made a big difference. So I thought, I like that whole idea. You're right, Lisa. I was looking for my journal, which is another one that came up in the podcast that I started carrying a journal with me.

Ralph Barsi (41:04):
Check this out. Let's see if we can, I don't know. For those watching, this is mine. It's a Moleskine flip chart.

I got my name and the date because I fly through these things and I've got stacks of them at home, but I always date them so I can go back and go, boy, I remember that that was a rough patch.

That whole quarter was really tough for me, but let me take a look at the notes I was taking at the time, and it's super helpful.

Lisa Schnare (41:29):
That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Carlos, we've got an archive now of podcasts, so we can be like, wow, we were really bad at that one.

Well, Ralph, we could talk to you all day, and I know you're busy and have some things to do, so if a listener wanted to get in touch with you to talk about any of these topics, you mentioned your blog, but is there another preferred method of communication that you have?

Ralph Barsi (41:52):
Thanks, Lisa, ralphbarsi.com is my blog, R-A-L-P-H-B-A-R-S-I. It's also on LinkedIn, Ralph Barsi, it's in/ralphbarsi.

And you can find me if you can connect with me either by way of the blog or LinkedIn. By all means, send me a direct message. I reply to everyone and everything. Sometimes it takes me a minute, but I will get back to you and I'm happy to address anything that we talked about today, if not more.

Lisa Schnare (42:19):
Make sure you mention the podcast. Maybe that'll help it stand out. That's just a pro tip from someone else who did sales development. Well, Ralph, can't thank you enough for taking the time today, and it's been great having you on the show.

Ralph Barsi (42:32):
Thanks, Lisa. Thanks Carlos, and thanks everybody for watching and listening.

Lisa Schnare (42:36):
Alright, everyone that does it for this episode, please check us out at www.b2brevexec.com, share this episode with your friends, your family, or dogs, your kids, and you could subscribe through YouTube, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

And if you like what you hear, you can do us a huge favor and throw us a five star review on iTunes. I am Lisa Schnare. I'm joined by my beautiful podcast partner in crime, Carlos Nouche. And until next time, we wish you nothing but the greatest success.

Narrator (43:05):
You've been listening to The B2B Revenue Executive Experience. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.