🎙️Transcript: GTM Snacks

GTM Snacks
"Why Relationships Will Outperform AI in Sales (The Future of B2B Success)"
Andrew McGuire, Ralph Barsi
March 19, 2025

📺 View on YouTube
🎧 Hear on Spotify

Andrew McGuire:
Muhammad Ali once said, "Don't count the days. Make the days count." And nobody embodies this philosophy in the world of sales leadership better than my good friend and guest today, Ralph Barsi. Our story goes back to the early days of InsideView, but it really took shape in what we fondly remember as Sales Fight Club.

Ralph has built and scaled sales development organizations at companies like ServiceNow and Tray, and today serves as VP of sales at Kahua. It's great to have you here, and I still remember that conversation in ATL during the first rainmaker with Jason Vargas discussing Tony Robbins and the power of mindset. Thank you for being here. I'm extremely excited. Where do you want to start?

Ralph Barsi:
Well, first of all, well said, Andrew. I couldn't agree with you more on all of those points. And it is a true pleasure to be talking with you right now after knowing you for all these years.

Andrew McGuire:
It's been a decade plus and still remember walking down the streets of San Francisco over what I won't say out loud, what we had to step over when we were walking between InsideView and wherever we were going to get a sandwich, right?

Ralph Barsi:
That is true. But yes, those early days, especially with what we had labeled the Fight Club, are forged in my memory and really forged in a lot of the approaches I take today in sales and towards sales.

We would put ourselves up against some of the best operators in the Valley and in Northern California, and they would challenge the way we were doing things operationally, how we were leading teams.

And vice versa. We got an opportunity to rifle them with great challenging questions and we would put it all out on the table and really try to improve our craft. And I remember those times fondly, and we're still friends with all those people.

Andrew McGuire:
And some of them have now moved into retirement, I won't say who, that living the life on a boat in the north side of the Valley or the city.

Ralph Barsi:
Yes. We know who you're talking about.

Andrew McGuire:
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you'll get tagged. We'll see.

Ralph Barsi:
There you go.

Andrew McGuire:
So tell, me why do long relationships like the one we have really matter in sales? And let's take this from the perspective of someone early in their career that's trying to figure out with all the noise that's happening, especially today, how to really think about this.

Ralph Barsi:
Well, I think sometimes salespeople mix up work with life and they try to do things in haste, especially when they're trying to build quick relationships with a network or with the ecosystem that they sell to, specifically to make money, sell a deal, and then move onward, completely forgetting that we are serving the customer base and serving our marketplace. And there's an awesome cross-pollination with how life works.

You'll find that throughout life as you navigate these rough waters and you meet these wonderful people along the way, if you invest a little bit of time and energy and effort into getting to know that person better and understanding maybe what their purpose and mission's all about and really shape a strong friendship or even just a friendship that's at a very high level, but you sustain it over time, it's surprising to both parties how it benefits one another.

I learn about opportunities all the time through my network that probably aren't opportunities for me, but could be for you, and because of the relationship that you and I have sustained, for example, like you said, over a decade, I have no problem connecting you with others if I think this is a potential opportunity for you and for your business. And that's pretty much how the world goes around. And I think a lot of salespeople, maybe not a lot, but some salespeople forget that.

Andrew McGuire:
And it's interesting you say it that way because I've been thinking a lot about AI and building my digital twin and all the social stuff that's started to pop up over the last 10 years... We're on iPhone 16, I don't know what the number is, but it just feels like it's gotten to be so noisy.

And going back to just going to get lunch with someone without bringing your phone, to have a real conversation and having a human to human connection is going to be so much more valuable moving forward because I am, this is for another episode, talking about building my digital twin and then what?

So I can go have lunch with Ralph, the human Andrew, not the digital twin Drew, but let's go have lunch. And I don't need anything because Drew's got it. But that's my point, there's so much noise. And instead of being stuck in your phone or your screen, actually figure out how to have real human connections and not make a clay table of outbound mess, right?

Ralph Barsi:
Go figure. Having an in-person lunch and having your phones turned off and just talking with one another and asking each other questions is pretty powerful. And speaking of powerful, you mentioned early talks with Jason Vargas about the great Tony Robbins. One of his famous quotes is "There's power in proximity."

So you'd be surprised when you're really close with people and you just ask them a few questions if you're first getting to know them, how frequently it is that they know somebody that you also know and therefore you've got the mutual connections. And you jump onto a platform, of course, like LinkedIn with its billion plus members, and it's amazing when you connect with somebody how many mutual connections the two of you have.

And that segues into an awesome law called Metcalfe's Law. You can look it up online, specifically Wikipedia gives a very good breakdown of what Metcalfe's Law is, but it essentially talks about if you have two nodes, you've got obviously one connection between the two nodes, but as those nodes or that network increases, it grows exponentially.

So you go from two nodes to five nodes. And when you have five nodes, now you have 10 connections. When you go to 12 nodes, you have 66 connections, et cetera, et cetera. So you could see how it starts to evolve. And now if you're sustaining relationships with, say, a third of those people, imagine 10, 15, 20, 25 years later, all the different experiences and memories that you've been able to craft and create with that network. It's pretty powerful.

Andrew McGuire:
The power of proximity is extremely powerful. And one thing that I always remember from my friend Tony Robbins, is the positive affirmations, and I still do this. I know this is a little ridiculous, but I'm going to do it anyway. My positive affirmations that I feel like in order for you to have these long deep relationships, you have to be in a positive mental state all the time.

Being drowning face and droopy, the prospects on the phone, everybody's going to hear it. So if you haven't done this, not you, Ralph, but the audience, if you haven't done this, you need to take a step back and think about every morning, why are you so great? So my positive affirmations are always, you are great, you are good, you are wonderful. And I do that three times staring at myself in the mirror.

That is where you start to be able to then bring it into these relationships that you can have with other humans that then impact your career, your pipeline. And that Metcalfe's Law is just the visual that you can take and think about how big it can get. But to me, it all starts with what's happening in here and how you can present yourself for people that want to have a relationship with you.

Ralph Barsi:
Sounds goofy, sounds corny, 1000% true. If you're not showing up with your best self because you've been practicing and are dialed in mentally and spiritually, it's going to be a really rough go for everybody. And Tony calls those incantations or in-CAN-tations where, yeah, I guess you are affirming yourself, but you're also just reminding yourself of what your strengths really are.

And yes, you could focus on your weaknesses and you can fix those, but you could also triple down on your strengths and do what you do very well, and it'll positively impact those around you. It's infectious, as you know. But if you're not showing up with your best self, it's going to be really tough.

Well, let's talk about the top of the funnel. Let's think about the mindset that you bring into an outbound prospecting or pipeline generation effort. If you are not self-affirming and thinking that you're going to be annoying by interrupting a prospect, yeah, that's exactly how you're going to come off. You're going to be very annoying and they're going to get you off the phone very quickly.

The opposite works in effect. Also, if you've got an opportunity that needs to be poked and prodded a little bit to move its way through the funnel and mature properly through the deal cycle, you're going to have to focus some attention on it. You're going to have to water that garden and you're going to have to prune that garden of weeds.

And that is, people who are not stakeholders that you may have mistook as people who really did have influence and authority in the opportunity. And you have to treat that pipeline as it truly is. And that is, it's a list of people. These are people who have initiatives that they're trying to accomplish and goals are trying to knock out and schedules that they're trying to make efficient and progress that they're trying to make.

And if you go in with that mindset and those lenses on, now you're going to start focusing on them more than you. We did all the you stuff earlier when we were doing the incantations. Now you flip the script and invert the process and focus on others.

What are their critical business issues? What are the trends that they're trying to navigate through in their own jobs, et cetera? And that way you can carry a real relevant conversation that's going to move the needle for everybody.

Andrew McGuire:
It's funny you say garden, because I was talking to Rachit, who's the co-founder of Centralize, and they've now taken the ability of mapping out all the relationships in an account, visualizing the org chart and being able to see everything that's happening. And their positioning is, it's like cultivating your garden and trimming the weeds, each one of those people.

And how to get above the power line is building strong relationships with your champion to then figure out how to multithread, because multithread will three or 3X your deal. But it all starts with understanding the relationship and being able to then take it to the next step.

So this is supposed to be a snack. I feel like we might be getting into a meal if I'm not careful. So let's wrap this up with your perspective on what you believe is the number one thing about pipeline generation in 2025, the market has wrong and how companies should really be thinking about it differently to unlock this next big opportunity of theirs. If it's not relationships

Ralph Barsi:
I would say there's potential for this to be wrong, and that is such a heavy focus on AI. You mentioned the digital twin.

Andrew McGuire:
Yeah, Drew.

Ralph Barsi:
Yeah, Drew. I'm sure Drew's a wonderful guy and probably does a lot of good self-talk also.

Andrew McGuire:
He's being incubated right now. I haven't fully informed him, so he's not-

Ralph Barsi:
I'm sorry. Well, when I hear a lot of hype about SDR agents that are AI generated, there's no question I see a lot of the goodness in having something automated and something artificial helping with the process, but do not stray from all the personal stuff that we just talked about. I don't know if AI can cover that yet. If it can, most of us are out of a gig. I'm going to go back to just being a drummer.

Andrew McGuire:
So thank you, Ralph, for being here. We'll wrap it up there. And we'll see you on the next one.