🎙️Transcript: Hunters and Closers

Hunters and Closers Podcast
Dainon Haggard, Ralph Barsi
December 4, 2018

📺 View on YouTube

Summary

In this engaging episode of the "Hunters and Closers Podcast," Ralph Barsi provides an inside look at how ServiceNow's global sales development team generates over $500 million in annual pipeline through roughly 4,000 qualified meetings per quarter.

Ralph begins by reframing the traditional language of sales—hunters aren't violent aggressors but rather calculated, deliberate investigators who "measure twice and cut once," while closers are actually "openers" who begin new business relationships rather than simply transacting.

This philosophical foundation sets the tone for a conversation that balances tactical execution with deeper principles about what makes sales development teams effective at scale.

With nearly 200 Account Development Reps (ADRs) spread across 14-15 offices globally, Ralph's organization embodies a dual mission: building revenue pipeline while simultaneously serving as a talent pipeline that develops future account executives.

The conversation explores the mechanics of ServiceNow's sales development operation, including the critical 60/40 split between inbound lead follow-up and outbound prospecting, the one-to-three or one-to-six ADR-to-AE ratio that ensures tight alignment, and the multi-channel approach to prospecting that combines email, phone, and social outreach.

Ralph shares his personal iTunes library of voicemails—both terrible (rambling two-minute monologues) and excellent (concise 15-second messages with service mindsets)—to illustrate what actually resonates with busy executives.

He emphasizes that personalization isn't about superficial connection attempts but rather demonstrating understanding of the prospect's likely problems and pairing them with relevant results from similar companies.

The discussion reveals Ralph's focus on latent pain—problems prospects don't even know they have until you surface them—as the key to generating meaningful dialogue.

Beyond tactics, Ralph introduces profound concepts about professional development that transcend sales development specifically.

He discusses Michael Watkins' "breakeven point" from The First 90 Days—the moment when employees shift from being consumers of value (absorbing training and resources) to contributors of value (producing results and helping others).

He challenges SDRs to focus on attracting opportunities by working harder on themselves than on their jobs, rather than constantly asking when they'll be promoted.

Ralph's advice to his younger self centers on chronicling and sharing the journey—the ups, downs, rough patches, and bright days—citing Morgan J. Ingram's SDR Chronicles as a perfect example of how adding value to the marketplace makes you valuable in the process.

The episode concludes with Ralph's desert island tool recommendation: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, not for its technology per se, but for what it enables—leveraging the reality that we're all connected through one to six degrees and learning to broker introductions rather than cold calling.

BIG Takeaways

• Hunters Measure Twice, Cut Once—Closers Are Actually Openers – Ralph reframes fundamental sales terminology in ways that reveal deeper truths about the profession.

Hunters aren't violent, aggressive people hunting down game to kill; they're calculated, deliberate investigators who hunt for viable opportunities to build long-lasting business relationships.

They measure twice and cut once, emphasizing research and preparation over spray-and-pray approaches. Even more counterintuitively, closers are actually openers—they're opening brand new relationships between businesses, not just transacting.

While they "close a deal" in sales terminology, they're really beginning relationships and coming to agreements that work for both parties. This linguistic reframing matters because it shifts mindset from transactional to relational, from aggressive to investigative, and from ending something to beginning something.

The best salespeople understand they're not extracting value but rather initiating partnerships, which fundamentally changes how they approach prospects, conduct conversations, and measure success beyond just revenue metrics.

• The Breakeven Point—From Consumer of Value to Contributor of Value – Ralph introduces Michael Watkins' concept from The First 90 Days that applies universally across sales roles: when new hires start, they're consumers of value, gobbling up case studies, understanding processes, learning how to navigate legal red lines and craft scopes of work.

But the moment they hit the "breakeven point," they become contributors of value—closing their first deal, presenting to executives, producing results, and helping others succeed.

The key is expediting your time to the breakeven point so you hit it faster and start contributing rather than consuming. This concept extends beyond onboarding; Mark Leslie's "Sales Learning Curve" research emphasizes that salespeople must demonstrate return on the investment the business has made in them through consistent performance.

For SDRs specifically, this means not just hitting quota but actively sharing what's working with teammates, hosting lunch-and-learns, creating value for the broader organization. The distinction between consumers and contributors is visceral—you can tell the difference between those sucking resources and time versus those adding value, and the contributors are the ones everyone wants to be around and who create enthusiastic, successful environments.

• Attract Rather Than Pursue—Work Harder on Yourself Than Your Job – When SDRs constantly knock on their manager's door asking "when can you promote me?" they're pursuing opportunity rather than attracting it. Ralph's guidance is profound: focus on attracting opportunity by working harder on yourself than you work on your job.

This means mastering your current role completely rather than being so focused on becoming an AE that you're not focused on getting great at being an SDR. The skills and competencies developed in sales development—networking, prospecting, leaving great emails and voicemails, managing relationships—will be used 10-20 years down the line when running teams or businesses.

The pathway to promotion isn't asking for it; it's becoming so obviously ready that managers actively want to promote you. This includes the basics: dressing professionally even as an SDR, looking people in the eye, having a firm handshake, following through on commitments.

You're always setting an example whether you like it or not. And critically, understand that what makes you successful today isn't the same formula that will work in your next role—there's so much you won't know until you're actually in that role, so own your career because nobody else will own it for you.

• Personalization Isn't Superficial Connection—It's Surfacing Latent Pain – Ralph explodes the myth that personalization means saying "Hey, I saw you went to St. Mary's College, my friend went there too!"

That's not moving the needle. What's really enticing is when you can talk about a problem the prospect is likely encountering with their organization and the world they work in, paired with results that similar teams or companies have seen by working with you and leveraging your offering.

The most powerful opportunities arise from latent pain—prospects don't even know they have a problem until you start to surface it, and that's when serious dialogue begins and people actually get on the phone.

This requires investigation and research to understand the prospect's role, industry pressures, organizational challenges, and likely pain points. It's not about you or your product—it's about demonstrating you understand their world better than they might understand it themselves.

The 60/40 split between inbound follow-up and outbound prospecting at ServiceNow reflects this reality: even inbound leads require qualification and pain discovery, not just order-taking. Effective prospecting isn't about getting your message out; it's about proving you've done your homework and can help them solve problems they may not have fully articulated yet.

• The 15-Second Voicemail with a Service Mindset Wins – Ralph maintains an iTunes library filled with voicemails he's received over 2-3 years, which he uses in internal training sessions.

Some are comically bad—rambling for one minute 43 seconds or two minutes 12 seconds, getting more irrelevant as they continue.

The best voicemails? Maybe 15 seconds long. "Hey Ralph, so-and-so from here, here's my number. Look, no need to call me back. I'm going to send you a brief, concise, yet detailed email as to why I'm calling you in the first place and when it makes sense for you, let's make sure we cross paths."

Even better: "If this isn't something that's on your radar this week or this month or even this quarter, I want to at least make sure you know how to get to me.

And even if I'm not in this role in this company in three to six months by the time you respond, I'm still going to be here and I'll connect you with the right people." This demonstrates a service mindset—you're not demanding their time, you're offering value and making it easy for them to engage on their timeline.

The voicemail isn't dead; it puts a voice behind the email, and prospects can tell within 3-4 seconds whether they want to have a conversation. The key is using all channels—email, phone, social—because different prospects respond to different media, and multi-channel touches build presence.

• Chronicle Your Journey and Share Vulnerably—Value Compounds – When asked what he'd tell his younger self, Ralph immediately says he'd chronicle his journey through the sales landscape—the ups, downs, rough patches, bright days and peaks—and share it with the ecosystem.

He cites Morgan J. Ingram as the perfect example: Morgan created "The SDR Chronicles" on YouTube to share what he was going through as an SDR with the marketplace and peers.

The principle is powerful: the more value you add to the marketplace, the more valuable you become in the process. Morgan produced 120 SDR Chronicles and wasn't an SDR very long after starting to publish consistently.

People learned from his rough patches and successes, applied those lessons, and soon Morgan was leading the SDR team, then working with John Barrows training teams worldwide.

The message is clear: don't be ashamed, don't hide your struggles, be vulnerable and let people know what you're going through—good, bad, or otherwise.

Be authentic in the process, don't fake it. When Dainon produces podcast content, he's spreading these messages to more people who take notes and apply lessons to their workplaces.

This meta-lesson about content creation and thought leadership applies broadly: documenting and sharing your journey isn't self-promotion, it's serving the collective learning of your profession and profession while building your own expertise and reputation in the process.

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator—Leverage One to Six Degrees, Broker Introductions – When forced to choose one prospecting tool on a deserted island, Ralph picks LinkedIn Sales Navigator—not just for the technology itself, but for what it enables.

As you peel back the onion of insights and intelligence about individuals and companies you want to do business with, you realize the profound truth: we are all connected through one to six degrees. You and your prospects know a lot of the same people.

The implication is transformative: you don't have to cold call. If you're resourceful enough to leverage mutual connections and learn how to ask someone to broker an introduction, make a referral, or connect you with someone, you can meet a lot of great people in the marketplace, sell a lot of goods, help a lot of businesses, and move everyone forward.

This requires a different skill set than traditional cold calling—you must become excellent at networking, identifying connections, crafting introduction requests that make it easy for connectors to help you, and maintaining relationships so people want to facilitate your success.

Sales Navigator provides the infrastructure to identify these connection paths, but the real tool is your willingness to leverage relationships strategically and respectfully. Ralph resists going "ethereal and macro" by saying the real tool is your mind, but acknowledges that Sales Navigator, used well and wisely, unlocks tremendous prospecting leverage that many salespeople leave untapped due to lack of education or effort.

Transcript

Dainon Haggard (00:00):
Well, welcome to the Hunters and Closers Podcast. I'm Dainon Haggard. I'm really excited to be joined today by Ralph Barsi.

Ralph is the senior director of Global Sales Development at ServiceNow. Forbes Magazine recently published that ServiceNow is the most innovative company in the world with over $1.93 billion in revenue. Ralph's team is the team that builds the pipeline that supports that incredible effort.

So I'm really excited to have him join us today and talk about how his team is so successful and share with us some nuggets that might help you in your sales career. So welcome, Ralph.

Ralph Barsi (00:37):
Thank you so much, Dainon. How are you today?

Dainon Haggard (00:40):
Well, thank you for asking.

Ralph Barsi (00:42):
Cool.

Dainon Haggard (00:43):
So I want to ask you what comes to mind, Ralph, when you hear the words hunters and closers?

Ralph Barsi (00:48):
Sure. So hunters to me are really prospectors, at least in our world of B2B technology sales. They're folks who are calculated, they're deliberate, and they're great investigators. They hunt for viable opportunities to build long-lasting business relationships.

So I see them really as prospectors, but they're not violent, aggressive people hunting down game to kill. You know what I mean? I think they're much more calculated than that, and they measure twice and cut once.

Dainon Haggard (01:31):
That's great.

Ralph Barsi (01:33):
And sorry to interrupt, and I did not answer the second part of your question, which was the closers. Closers—it's ironic—but closers to me are really openers. They're the openers of brand new relationships.

And although they close a deal per se in sales terminology, they're really beginning relationships between two businesses coming to an agreement that works for both parties, et cetera. That's how I see closers.

Dainon Haggard (02:00):
That's wonderful. I appreciate you sharing that. So in your world at ServiceNow, it doesn't sound like hunters and closers are the same person. Is that correct?

Ralph Barsi (02:09):
That's right, sure. So we have what we call Account Development Reps that our global sales development team is largely comprised of. I would say 80% of our team of close to 200 today are ADRs.

And our ADRs are responsible primarily for driving revenue pipeline versus closing new revenue. They'll build the pipeline by way of booking qualified meetings for our field team, for our sales reps, who then will close the deals.

Dainon Haggard (02:40):
Okay. So your team is the ADRs that are really building this pipeline. How many leads do you think you generate on an annual basis?

Ralph Barsi (02:54):
That's a tough one to answer. It's tens of thousands of leads. What it yields though, from our team, is roughly 4,000 qualified meetings per quarter. And over the course of a year, we will convert that to over $500 million in revenue pipeline.

Dainon Haggard (03:16):
That's amazing. That is so awesome.

Ralph Barsi (03:18):
It's fun. It's really fun. It's a lot of great conversations that we have with a lot of different businesses and business units within those businesses. And I lost my train of thought. Oh well.

Dainon Haggard (03:35):
It's fun.

Ralph Barsi (03:37):
Yeah, it's fun to say the least.

Dainon Haggard (03:39):
That's amazing. Those are some staggering numbers. Are you all centrally located in one office? Are you worldwide? How does that look?

Ralph Barsi (03:47):
Thank you. You just picked up where my train of thought dropped. Yeah, we are spread globally. We're in 14 to 15 offices worldwide representing all corners of the globe, and it's an incredible team.

The second part of our twofold objective, aside from revenue pipeline, is we're really a people or talent pipeline as well. Majority of the ADRs that are currently ADRs become our future sales reps.

Dainon Haggard (04:17):
So what does the relationship then look like between an ADR and a sales rep?

Ralph Barsi (04:22):
Sure. So today we maintain a ratio of one ADR to three upwards of six field reps. So depending on where you are in the world and what your remit and responsibility is with respect to maybe a territory that you own, you as an ADR may support three reps, or you may support up to six reps.

And we believe that interlock between those two is absolutely critical. And that interlock entails everything from—perhaps if you were supporting me or vice versa, Dainon—I'd be really strategizing with you on your territory and making sure that I'm going after what matters most to you and to your pipeline and to your ultimate target or targets.

(05:15):
And that discussion will continue probably in micro one-on-ones that we have several times a week. It could be a five-minute check-in, it could be a text or a message via WhatsApp, but we're constantly in communication and making sure that we're implementing systems to reach those targets.

Dainon Haggard (05:30):
That's great. So are the ADRs—are they mainly responding to inbound leads? Are they generating outbound leads? Tell me about that.

Ralph Barsi (05:39):
Yeah, it's definitely both. I would say today probably 60% is inbound lead follow-up and qualification where the remaining 40% is outbound prospecting.

We also have a number of different roles within our global sales development organization. And depending on the business unit or product line that an ADR might be assigned to, they may do more inbound versus outbound or vice versa, depending on what role they have.

So we have a product line sales ADR that might focus on a specific product line of ServiceNow's. Or we might have what we call a Lead Development Rep who's relatively new to the organization, and we want to ensure that no leads slip through the cracks and that we make sure that everything gets followed up on in short order.

Whereas a more senior ADR might focus on just a handful of accounts with a handful of account executives. And most of that work is outbound prospecting.

Dainon Haggard (06:43):
On the outbound prospecting, are you pretty involved in reviewing those numbers? I know I'm kind of digging deep here a little bit, but how much of that is done over the phone as opposed to email and a combination of both?

Ralph Barsi (06:56):
Oh, great. Wow. I would be throwing out a bunch of vapor if I were to just give you a percentage, like, "Well, 60% of it is phone, 40% email." I mean, I think the bottom line is it's absolutely a combination of email, of phone, of social outreach to get conversations happening.

For one, I don't really pick up my phone. You have to really get my attention with a personalized message. Your timing has to be great. And when I say personalized, I don't necessarily mean, "Hey, Ralph, I saw you went to St. Mary's College in Northern California. Hey, my friend went there too." That's not really moving the needle.

(08:04):
What is really enticing to me is when you can talk about a problem that I'm likely encountering with the organization that I run and the world that we work in, and pair it up with results that like teams or like companies have seen by working with you and leveraging your offering.

That kind of stuff is going to get someone like me on the phone. And that's what our team keeps in mind when they conduct their outreach efforts. They really want to make things personal, but they want to really hit home on potential pain that that prospect might be encountering.

And a lot of times that pain, as you know, is latent. They don't even know they have a problem yet until you start to surface it. And that's when we can get some serious dialogue going and that's when people actually get on the phone and start talking.

Dainon Haggard (08:35):
That's great. Yeah, I'm like you. I don't answer the phone if someone's going to call and prospect into me, but what it does do is it puts a voice behind the email. And so I'm going to listen to the voicemail that's left behind and I can within three, four seconds tell whether or not I want to have a conversation with this individual.

So it's still key to be leaving those voicemails as we do the social and the emails and just the whole nine yards. And I think that's one of my biggest pet peeves when I go out and do some sales training or sales coaching is that too many salespeople are not utilizing all of the different channels available to them in their prospecting efforts and it hurts them in the long run.

Ralph Barsi (09:16):
Oh, absolutely. You've got to use all the tools in the tool chest, all the arrows in the quiver, whatever analogy you want to use. And don't underrate a lot of the media that we can use to penetrate a net new logo and get a conversation going.

You talk about voicemail and it's funny, but I actually have an iTunes library that's literally filled with voicemails that I've gotten over the last two to three years. And it's fun because you can sort them by length of time. And I've got some that are a minute 43 seconds, two minutes and 12 seconds of people just rambling on and on and on, and getting more and more irrelevant as the message continues.

And I've actually used it in internal training sessions that we've held. But on the other side of the spectrum, some of the best voicemails I've gotten are maybe 15 seconds long, and they're telling me that I don't have to call them back.

(10:11):
"Hey, Ralph, so-and-so from here, here's my number. Look, no need to call me back. I'm going to send you a brief, concise, yet detailed email as to why I'm calling you in the first place and when it makes sense for you, let's make sure we cross paths."

I've heard great voicemails saying, "Look, if this isn't something that's on your radar this week or this month or even this quarter, I want to at least make sure you know how to get to me. And even if I'm not in this role in this company in three to six months by the time you respond to me, I'm still going to be here and I'll connect you with the right people."

I mean, it's got that service mindset to the message, and it just resonates big time with me. So yeah, voicemail—voicemail is not dead.

Dainon Haggard (10:56):
That is great. I love it. So in your experience, what are the most important skills that an SDR—an ADR in your case—needs to develop to be effective?

Ralph Barsi (11:08):
Boy, that's a great question, Dainon. I mean, we could spend a whole episode on that. A couple punch points that I can think of:

Number one, they have great attitudes. They walk into a room and they shed light and they bring life into that room versus coming in and sucking the life out of that room. They have a great positive attitude. They understand that change is constant and they anticipate it that way. When the change happens, they don't freak out. They're not tethered to a specific expectation that's continuously not met. And so as a result, they can flow and flex with constant change.

The best that I've seen—they're organized. What's more important is they're just prepared for meetings that we have, calls that take place. They begin with the end in mind, so they know what their target might be for a specific quarter or even the year, and they reverse engineer where they need to be at any point in time in that quarter that points them towards hitting or exceeding their targets.

(12:19):
They've got their act together and they work hard at mastering their craft. They're present to the role that they're in currently. A lot of SDRs are so focused on being an AE that they're not focused on getting great at being an SDR.

And you and I both know that a lot of the skills and competencies that they're going to develop while they're SDRs, they're going to be using them 10, 20 years down the line in their careers when they're AEs and/or, I don't know, maybe they run teams or businesses at some point. They're still going to need to know how to network, prospect, leave a great email or voicemail, et cetera.

So the best that I've seen in my experience kind of possess a lot of those.

Dainon Haggard (13:02):
That's great. While you're saying that, to go along with that, you talked about being the best SDR right now, not focusing on being an AE.

When I was managing a sales team a few years ago, I can't tell you how many of the SDRs were coming constantly to my desk saying, "Hey, when can you promote me? When can you put me on the team?" And I can't tell you how many of them—80% of them—would show up just dressed like they came out of high school and they weren't taking their job seriously.

And it was not the type of person that I wanted to necessarily invite to be on my team as an account executive. So while you need to be awesome at being an SDR, an ADR or BDR, whatever you want to call it, it's important that you also look and play the role of an account executive because managers are always looking, right? Managers are always looking—who can I promote? Who's the next one?

And if you're ready for it, it's easier to promote and bring you aboard rather than having to make some big transitions.

Ralph Barsi (14:02):
Agreed. My message to that audience is number one, focus more on attracting the opportunity to you by working harder on yourself than you work on your job versus pursuing the opportunity, knocking on Dainon's door saying, "Hey, when is it my opportunity?"

And also know that when you arrive at the AE role or whatever next play you're aspiring to achieve, there's so much that you're not going to know until you're actually in the role. What's making you successful today isn't necessarily the same formula in that next role.

So yeah, own your career. We all don't own your career for you. And also know, to your last point, you are always, whether you like it or not, setting an example by the way you dress, the way you carry yourself, whether or not you look people in the eye when you talk to them or have a firm handshake or follow up and follow through on things that you said you were going to do. I mean, all that counts.

Dainon Haggard (15:06):
I think this next question really goes into this, what you're talking about right now, but I've heard you talk about how SDRs, ADRs need to be contributors of value. Can you elaborate upon that a little bit more?

Ralph Barsi (15:20):
Sure. I got that concept out of a book called The First 90 Days, and it's written by a gentleman named Michael Watkins. And in it he unveils this concept of the breakeven point. And what the breakeven point is, it's really for new hires or people new into a specific role in their company.

When they start in that role and they're onboarding and they're learning, they're consumers of value. They're gobbling up case studies and they're understanding the process. A lot of new AEs have never gone through the red line process with legal, and they don't know what scopes of work might look like or how they're crafted, and they're just learning, learning, learning, consuming.

Well, the second they hit what Watkins calls the breakeven point, they are contributors of value. They've closed that first deal or they've presented in front of a team of executives externally or internally. They're starting to produce, they're starting to contribute.

(16:21):
And the same applies to the sales development role. You really need to focus on expediting your time towards the breakeven point so that you hit it much faster and become a contributor of value versus a consumer.

And another study was done probably mid-2000s by a gentleman named Mark Leslie, and he produced a great piece of content called The Sales Learning Curve in the Harvard Business Review, and has since gone on to talk on behalf of Sequoia Capital and some other firms about the sales learning curve, which essentially says the same thing to account executives—how they need to show the return on the investment that the business has made in them by way of their sales and their consistency of performance.

So that's what I mean by being a contributor of value, and it applies to everybody and every role if you think about it.

Dainon Haggard (17:17):
That's great. Yeah, it's so true. You can tell the difference between those that are sucking all the resources and time and brainwaves of everybody else and those that are contributing to the organization and adding value. And those are the ones that everybody wants to be around, you feed off of them, and it makes you more enthusiastic. That helps you to be successful.

So it would be awesome if a whole sales organization was built with people that are all contributors of value. So that's a great way to talk about it.

Ralph Barsi (17:46):
Well, hats off to you, Dainon, when you start producing content like you're producing with this podcast, you're spreading that message to more and more people. So your listeners and your viewers hopefully are taking good notes and they're picking up on that value and obviously applying it to their own workplace.

Dainon Haggard (18:05):
Well, thank you. That's very kind of you, Ralph. I think that's the whole key behind the podcast is to help sales executives, SDRs, ADRs, AEs, everybody to just understand that we're all human, right?

We're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to have bad days, but it's okay because we can learn from them and we can be better at our trade and help people solve problems and accomplish great things that they've never been able to accomplish before. So that's the whole goal behind it.

Ralph Barsi (18:33):
I love it. I'm right with you.

Dainon Haggard (18:35):
So tell me, if you could go back—this is a question I often like asking people—if you could go back to the beginning of your sales career, what would be the advice that you would give yourself or what would you do differently?

Ralph Barsi (18:49):
Wow. Fabulous question. You know what? I'd probably pick up where you just left off. I would do a better job of chronicling my journey through the sales landscape—the ups and downs, the rough patches, the bright days and peaks.

I'd want to make sure that I was chronicling it and then sharing it with our ecosystem and letting people know what the day-to-day grind might look like or what patterns I've observed that have led to more success than failure.

Similar to my friend Morgan J. Ingram. He created the SDR Chronicles on YouTube as a channel, literally to share what he's going through as an SDR with the marketplace and with his peers. And the more value you add to the marketplace, the more valuable you become in the process. And that's precisely what's become of Morgan.

(20:01):
I think he produced 120 SDR Chronicles and wasn't an SDR very long after he started publishing that consistently and sharing his journey across the sales landscape. More and more people, to your point, Dainon, kept learning from him and taking good notes and applying some of the rough patches he was running into and some of the goodness he was seeing.

He soon led the SDR team that he was part of, and then went on to work with John Barrows training teams all over the world in doing what you and I do.

And so that's what I would tell my younger self. "Hey, man, you got to share what you're going through and don't be ashamed of it. It's okay to be vulnerable and let people know what you're going through, good, bad, or otherwise."

Dainon Haggard (20:40):
I agree. Yeah, I think I agree with you. That's been one of the biggest keys that I've learned in my life is not to be ashamed of it, not to hide it, but to understand everyone goes through it and we'll go through it in different ways, but to learn from each other. And that's the whole part of life. That's what we're here for, is to learn and to grow and to accomplish.

Ralph Barsi (21:01):
Cool. And be authentic in the process. Don't fake it.

Dainon Haggard (21:05):
Absolutely. So last question here. What's a sales tool that your SDRs have found to be most beneficial in their prospecting?

Ralph Barsi (21:16):
A technology? Outside of like a playbook? You mean...

Dainon Haggard (21:22):
If you were left on a deserted island and you had one tool to begin prospecting, what would that tool be? Could be a platform, could be a service, could be anything.

Ralph Barsi (21:37):
Wow. So the first that comes to mind right now is if we're talking about technologies, for example, it'd be Sales Navigator from LinkedIn. I mean, as you peel back the onion in that tool of insights and intelligence about the individuals that you likely want to have a conversation with as well as the companies that you're trying to do business with—but if you're resourceful enough to use that resource, you can go a very long way with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

I think a lot of people forget that we are all connected, Dainon, through one to six degrees. You and I know a lot of the same people, and the same applies to your prospects.

(22:25):
You don't have to cold call. If you are resourceful and you leverage mutual connections and you learn how to ask someone to broker an introduction or make a referral or connect you with someone, if you can get really, really good at that, it's a wonderful world. And you'll be able to meet a lot of great people in our marketplace, sell a lot of goods, help a lot of businesses, and just move us all forward as a result.

And I think that's a great start is Sales Navigator. I won't go super ethereal and macro on you saying that the number one tool is right here—it's your mind. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for example, and use it. Use it well, and use it wisely, and you'll be great.

Dainon Haggard (23:15):
That's awesome. Yeah, there's so many great resources inside of Sales Navigator that just go unused, I think, for lack of education, I think for lack of effort. But I have found seven-figure deals in Sales Navigator that have changed my life and people's lives that I've worked with. So it's an amazing platform.

Ralph Barsi (23:37):
Yep, it is. Yeah. I hope that answered the question for you.

Dainon Haggard (23:41):
Yeah, no, that definitely did. Thank you very much.

Ralph Barsi (23:43):
Cool.

Dainon Haggard (23:44):
Well, I'd love to give you the time now to tell us about ServiceNow. Tell us about anything you'd like us to know. Then we'll wrap it up.

Ralph Barsi (23:52):
Yeah, take a look at us—servicenow.com. Essentially, we are an enterprise service management platform. We operate in the cloud, and we enable essentially every business unit across the enterprise to streamline the workflow of their day-to-day operation.

So what I mean by that is anything from changing a password on your laptop to ordering a chair for your office to IT teams assessing all the assets that they have and addressing incidents and problems. It's all done virtually in the cloud via ServiceNow's platform, hence the name ServiceNow.

We help serve the organization quickly so that people can get their work done, and it's an awesome time to be here. I appreciate you mentioning our mention in Forbes. We're constantly trying to innovate and bring more goodness to the ecosystem that we serve. So it's a true honor to be mentioned like that.

Dainon Haggard (24:51):
Absolutely. That's a great honor to receive that recognition. You should be proud of that, all that you add to it. So that's fabulous.

Well, I appreciate you joining us today, Ralph. It's been an awesome conversation. I know that those that will listen to this will gain some great value from it. So thank you for being open with us and sharing what you've learned and what you're doing at ServiceNow.

Again, if anyone likes the podcast, please review it, please like it, please subscribe, and let me know if anyone should be a guest on the podcast. So thanks again, Ralph.

Ralph Barsi (25:23):
Thank you, Dainon. Have a great one.