🎙️Transcript: Millennial Sales Podcast

Millennial Sales Podcast
"Work Harder on Yourself Than Your Job"
Tom Alaimo, Ralph Barsi
September 2, 2020

Summary

In this episode of the Millennial Sales Podcast, host Tom Alaimo sits down with Ralph Barsi, VP of Inside Sales at Tray.io, for a wide-ranging conversation about personal development, sales leadership, and life balance.

Ralph, a veteran sales leader with extensive experience at ServiceNow and other organizations, shares the philosophy that drives his success: work harder on yourself than on your job.

The conversation explores Ralph's commitment to continuous learning through reading and writing, including his practice of sending weekly Sunday emails to his entire organization.

He discusses the importance of purpose, gratitude, and reflection—sharing that he journals daily in Evernote and maintains old Moleskine notebooks to track his growth over time.

Ralph opens up about balancing his roles as a sales leader, husband, and father of three boys, using a "hub and spoke" visualization to ensure he invests appropriately in each area of life.

For SDRs and new salespeople, Ralph offers tactical advice about avoiding the rush to the next role, coming to managers with solutions rather than just problems, and understanding the four pillars: process, people, strategy, and technology.

He emphasizes the importance of "knowing your numbers" when job hunting and being meticulous about appearance and communication—from pressed shirts to concise emails optimized for mobile reading.

For new sales leaders, Ralph introduces the concept of "predicting the weather" rather than just "reporting on it," using the Pyramid Principle to think critically and solve problems proactively.

Throughout the conversation, Ralph's philosophy of leading with love, being authentic, and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for others to learn from shines through, embodied in his website's tagline "the boom, the bip, the boom bip"—a nod to his lifelong passion for drumming and finding rhythm in everything.

BIG Takeaways

• Work harder on yourself than on your job – Success is something you attract by becoming a more valuable person, not something you pursue. Add value to the marketplace by constantly learning, reading, writing, and developing yourself. When you focus on personal growth, both your life and your career benefit exponentially.

• Create rituals for reflection and introspection – Ralph journals daily in Evernote, prays with gratitude each morning, and dedicates Saturdays and Sundays to quiet reflection. He reviews old Moleskine journals to see where he and his team were at different points in time, making calibrations based on past learnings. The mind needs quiet to think clearly—carve out time away from the "swirl" of Slack, email, and notifications.

• SDRs should be patient and think long-term – Your career is an arc. Don't rush to the next role. Focus on understanding the four pillars: process, people, strategy, and technology. Learn how they interconnect. Always bring two solutions to every problem before escalating to your manager—this is how leaders are born and how you develop problem-solving skills that compound over time.

• Know your numbers and present yourself meticulously – Whether interviewing or performing in your role, know your conversion rates, pipeline contribution, activity levels, and results. Present a complete package: pressed shirt, high-def webcam at eye level, concise mobile-optimized emails. Attention to detail signals professionalism and shows you take your role seriously. Be "buttoned up" in all aspects of communication and appearance.

• Predict the weather, don't just report it – Leaders should stop focusing solely on lagging indicators (what happened last month) and start predicting what's coming. Use the Pyramid Principle: start with the answer first, then deconstruct the problem to find root causes. Create contingency plans and levers to pull when challenges arise. Managing up means telling leadership where you'll be by end of month and quarter based on your analysis.

• Lead with love and authenticity – Want the best for everyone, even critics and "haters." Everyone is battling their own battle. It's easier to take pot shots at people, but it's tougher—and more rewarding—to be a coach and guide who leads with love. You can control your actions, reactions, and mindset. Seek first to understand before being understood and just be cooler to people.

• Listen, connect, then engage – When starting a new role, don't rush in. Assess the battlefield first: Where are we trying to go? What's in our way? Focus onboarding not just on company history and products, but on customers—what problems did they have before working with you and what does life look like for them now? It takes a month or two to figure out the lay of the land before you can truly make a difference.

Transcript

Tom Alaimo (00:15):
All right. Welcome to the Millennial Sales podcast. This is your host, Tommy Tahoe Alaimo, and we're back with a new show, back with a new episode. Really excited to share this conversation that I have with Ralph Barsi today.

Ralph Barsi is the VP of Inside Sales at Tray.io. He spent a lot of time at ServiceNow. He's been in the business for decades and is really one of the premier thought leaders and practitioners on sales development and sales leadership in the business.

So I'm really excited to share my conversation with Ralph. I actually talked with him about two and a half years ago. If you go check out episode 45 of this podcast, you'll hear the intro conversation that I had with Ralph—more of a background on his mindset, where he comes from, and getting to know him a little bit better.

But in this conversation, we really go through a wide range of topics.

Tom Alaimo (01:15):
We start with the big picture in mind. He talks about why you should work harder on yourself than on your job. We talk about books, we talk about gratitude, where really that whole mindset comes from that I think is really what helps to make him so successful—having the right mindset and attitude.

So we start there and then we get more specific as we go along. Tapping into some tips and tactical advice for new SDRs, sales development reps, first-year salespeople. What can they do today to make their job a little bit better?

Same with the new sales manager. Ralph had given me some advice earlier this year, and we talk a little bit about really looking at how do you predict the weather versus just reporting on the weather and what he means by that. We talk a little bit of music at the end and we talk about Ralph's family life, how he balances it all, his time management.

We really get into so many different conversations. So I really hope that you enjoy this.

Tom Alaimo (02:15):
If you do enjoy the conversation, you can find more from me at millennialmomentum.net. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn, Tom Alaimo. I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Tommy Tahoe.

I'd love to connect with you. I'd love to better learn from you, and hopefully you find value in this conversation. So without further ado, I'm going to pass you to my conversation with Ralph Barsi.

Mr. Ralph Barsi, good morning. How you doing this morning, man?

Ralph Barsi (02:54):
Tommy Tahoe Alaimo. I'm great. How are you?

Tom Alaimo (02:58):
I couldn't be better. I'm excited to have you on the show and have you back as a recurring guest. We were just laughing that episode 45, about two and a half years ago, was the first time that we went at it in the podcast. So excited to have you back.

Ralph Barsi (03:14):
It's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Tom Alaimo (03:16):
Yeah. So I want to get straight into it. I was listening—I've heard you on a ton of different podcasts and webinars, and a quote that you bring up all the time from Jim Rohn is to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

I want you to just explain what you mean by that, because I think that is a great baseline for getting to know Ralph Barsi as a person, as a salesperson, as a leader.

Ralph Barsi (03:45):
Right on, man. Well, I've listened to Jim for many, many years. God rest him. Another favorite quote of his that's in my book is "Success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person. Success is not something you pursue."

For so many years in my career, I had it all wrong. I was pursuing, pursuing, pursuing rather than really focusing on, "Well, what can I be doing to attract more opportunity in my life, in my career, et cetera? Oh, I've got to work on me. I've got to work on becoming a more attractive person."

What my interpretation of that definition is, is that to become attractive, you have to add value to the marketplace. The more value you add, the more valuable you become in the process.

Ralph Barsi (04:32):
The whole point of becoming valuable in the process is so that you can help more and more people and you can make more and more of a positive impact on the lives and careers of so many people that you know and don't know. That's something that I've always aspired to do.

Now, granted along the way, I've probably turned a ton of people off, and that's fine. But I would put money down that 80% of the people that listen to some of the stuff I'm talking about or read some of the stuff that I'm writing about, take it the way it's meant to be taken and pay it forward and go on to help other people on their own.

So that's just something that I've started to really live by, especially over the last decade or so, and I've seen the benefit from it. It's been great.

Tom Alaimo (05:35):
Yeah. Can we get into some of the specifics around what you mean by working on yourself? I know you're a big—something that we both do a lot is read, and leaders are readers. So I'd be curious to hear from you on how you picked up the habit of reading and how you incorporate that into all the other things that you do.

And then maybe we can get into some actual specific books that we both have on our nightstand and that we're both plowing through right now.

Ralph Barsi (06:04):
Sure. Yeah. I do my best to wear a student's cap on my head all the time, and I adopt that beginner's mindset as much as I can. I am very—at least I'm working on it—very self-aware of what I don't know, and that there's so much to always learn from and apply better than I am now.

So the reading habit has really come from my love and passion for writing. I prefer to write, I love writing. I was a big fan of English class in high school, took writing and poetry classes in college.

I still write a weekly email update to my entire organization every Sunday morning. I've realized through my writing actions that there's a lot you don't know if you have to write about it.

Ralph Barsi (06:50):
So in order to figure out what it is you're trying to convey to your readers and to your audience, you've got to dig deep and you have to look at the numbers. You have to slice and dice different reports, different charts, and have a very holistic, comprehensive understanding of where you are or where the business is against the business's plan, for example.

So that when you write about it, you are thinking clearly. Clear writers in my book are clear thinkers. So in order to write well and to write well consistently, you've got to read a lot.

You've got to get exposed to all the different styles of writing that are out there. You pick up on great vocabulary words that say things that you've been trying to say much better than you've said them. You see how phrasing comes into play, how sentence structure comes into play by reading a variety of writers and writing styles.

Ralph Barsi (07:45):
To kind of dip into some of the things I've been reading of late, it's funny you ask—I've got these two books on my desk right now. The first—they're both older ones—it's Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" First published in the Harvard Business Review and became a little book in itself.

Then a classic from Andy Grove, the late Andy Grove, is "High Output Management." I've been really getting into these in particular because the former talks about the macro. It talks about what is the purpose you're working to fulfill? What is it that's compelling you to get up every day? What is it all about when you say you want to positively impact so many people in your life?

That kind of stuff really resonates with me. Clayton's book just does a wonderful job of reminding me of the macro.

Ralph Barsi (08:32):
"High Output Management," the latter, helps me get into both the macro and the micro in terms of my career, the operation I'm overseeing, the business within the business that I am responsible for. It helps me get a better understanding of how things flow, where there might be kinks in the chain or in the process, and how I can mitigate risk and move the whole needle forward for our company and for my organization.

So those are just a couple examples of the recent readings, but we can go for days on that stuff, as you know.

Tom Alaimo (09:33):
Yeah. So I'm interested in the dichotomy of those two books and the first book that's by Clayton Christensen. You're talking about really high-level what your purpose in life is and your values and things like that.

But when I think about new age leadership, servant leadership, being mindful, things like that, you're someone that comes to mind by the way that you communicate. So I'm curious, how important has purpose been—clearly identifying a why or a reason why you should get up in the morning or why you're on a mission currently at Tray and some of your former endeavors—but how important has that been to your success in your career? How much emphasis have you placed on that?

Ralph Barsi (10:21):
It's everything, Tom, because it impacts my role as a husband and father, as a son, brother, et cetera, as well as a peer, a colleague, a mentor, a mentee. I have to remind myself of the purpose every morning, otherwise really what is the point? What am I doing? What value am I adding to the lives of others and my own life?

So I'm constantly reconciling against the purpose, constantly seeing how I can be even better, even sometimes on an hour-by-hour basis. If it gets quiet in my day, for example, a trigger will set off that maybe I need to message my team right now just to let them know that, "Hey, I'm optimistic. I'm focusing on where we are against plan. I'm thinking of some tactical things we could be doing in the moment or sometime this week in order to get everybody to get some momentum going."

Ralph Barsi (11:20):
So every month right now at Tray, we host an all-company—it's really centered on the field organization and on marketing—but it's an all-company prospecting day. Everybody carves out the entire day and does nothing but prospecting efforts.

So that could be following up on dormant leads, that could be asking mutual connections to broker introductions into prospective logos. It could be getting after maybe a top 25 or top 50 target account list, whether it's researching that list or whether it's reaching out to key stakeholders from those key accounts, et cetera.

But the point is, when you have this collective effort and this collective focus on the art and craft of prospecting, you'd be amazed at what a company can achieve in one given day. I learned that in my days at ServiceNow, where we would do that sometimes on a monthly basis, sometimes on a quarterly basis.

Ralph Barsi (12:13):
But when you have a field organization of that scope and scale collectively focused on prospecting efforts for one given day, it's just amazing the life that you can infuse into the company's pipeline. You can ensure that you've got the pipeline coverage needed to really succeed throughout the subsequent quarters.

So those are some things that we're focused on right now and how I'm tying everything back to purpose.

Tom Alaimo (13:01):
And so when you think of that purpose—you say you kind of think about that in the morning—is it something that you have a moment of reflection, you write it down, do you share it with people? How do you go about that and maybe how do you get yourself centered in that mindset?

Ralph Barsi (13:18):
Yeah, great question. So yes, it is a daily regular occurrence. For me, it's probably more private than public. So for example, I take copious notes in Evernote. It's usually my source for journaling.

I'm Catholic, so I'm pretty faith-filled, and there'll be quiet prayer in the morning, for example. It's mostly centered on gratitude, just that I get another day, that I have my family and important people to me in my life still, et cetera. And now how can I go make a difference? How can I make an impact?

Oftentimes, I'll fire up a brand new session in Evernote and I'll write things like that down just to answer those questions. But then what it'll do is it'll kick the wheels into gear to just think about the workday at hand and some of the things that we want to accomplish.

Ralph Barsi (14:10):
Because I do it regularly and because it's a daily occurrence, typically on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, I geek out a little bit and I just carve out real quiet, reflective time to be introspective. To compare and contrast the week prior to previous months, quarters, years.

I keep a catalog of used Moleskine journals that I filled up over the years just to see where I was and where our team was at any given point in time. To see what tweaks and calibrations I can make as a leader to move this current team forward based on past learnings.

You're not really thinking about that unless the mind is quiet. As we both know during the week, we're dealing with the swirl of Slack messages and the deluge of messages coming across by way of notifications on LinkedIn or Twitter or just emails, et cetera. We get caught up in that swirl.

Ralph Barsi (14:58):
You've got to carve out that time just for silence and reflection. That typically doesn't happen during the week.

Tom Alaimo (15:20):
Yeah, I remember reading—I forget exactly who it was—but it was someone that was high up in a military chain. He gave a commencement speech saying that the best leaders are those that actually take more time for pause and reflection and get more time alone where they can really just kind of ruminate through their thoughts.

It doesn't happen in the first 10 minutes that you're sitting down and you're quiet. It might happen in the second hour of doing that, or a few days if you're taking a vacation or taking a break or something like that where a good idea comes to you.

So it's just a great piece of advice, I think for all of us that are always constantly—and I'm not immune to this—checking our phones, updating Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and email. It's just a constant flood of notifications and red circles on our phone. So to take that time on a Saturday or a Sunday or early morning or late in the evening whenever you can to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Ralph Barsi (16:21):
Yeah, no question. It's certainly going to help. It kind of goes back to what you asked at the beginning of our talk about working on yourself harder than you work on your job.

Well, that habit that I just described was not one that I had a decade ago. I wasn't making a focused effort to carve out time for reflection and introspection. Now I do.

So that is an example of working on yourself harder than you work on the job, because both will benefit from the former. If you're really focusing on "How could I be a better person? How could I actually stop thinking about myself so much and how can I be better at serving others and being more of a servant leader?"

That has really, really helped me kind of align with the purpose that we talked about as well. So those are little examples of working on myself harder than the career.

Tom Alaimo (17:20):
Yeah, I think that's great. And on that same token, I know you mentioned that you're a husband and you're a father. I think you have three boys. I heard on a recent show that you did about a story that you were telling from back in the day, a few jobs ago, where you were traveling all over the world.

You'd come back from this trip to China and your wife was like, "What are you doing? You're never here." You moved to San Diego, and then maybe that caused you to make a pivot to be around more.

But I'd love to hear from you now years later, and especially now given the quarantine, being at home more than not being able to go to the office every day—how do you balance being a great sales leader, taking the time to reflect and do the things that you just spoke about while also being a husband, being a father, and having all that balance? How do you get all that done?

Ralph Barsi (18:17):
Yeah, so for me, Tom, well first of all, thank you for that. For me, I am a visual guy, so what I need to do sometimes is draw on a blank piece of paper, maybe a bunch of circles, like a hub and spoke image, for example.

In the middle hub is the word "harmony," and all the spokes that attach to the hub are all the different facets of my life. Obviously it applies to everybody. I just wanted to make sure that I'm taking stock and inventory on the time, energy, and effort I'm investing in each spoke.

Some are more important than others. Family is the most important to me. So I want to make sure that I meet my boys where they are in their lives as well as my wife.

Ralph Barsi (18:53):
I've got one in college, I've got two in high school. The three of them are dealing with their own individual challenges, their own individual successes, and I want to meet each where they are.

So I want to make sure that when I'm corresponding with them, whether it's a text or whether I'm calling them and I'm talking to them individually, that I am just kind of focused on their little pocket in life right now versus thinking about me. It's the last thing or person I want to be thinking about.

I just want to make sure that I'm able to give them my full presence and full attention so that I can either just be there to listen to them or share advice and guidance if it's needed. It's not always appropriate to be the dad that just gives advice and "Oh, I remember when I was going through something similar." It's just not always relevant.

Just being aware of that kind of stuff is really important. So that's what I try to think about.

Tom Alaimo (20:06):
And again, it goes back to putting others before yourself and being where your feet are. As I've heard people say, when you're at work, you're at work. When you're with the family, you're with the family. When you're thinking or reading or doing whatever you're doing, you're there in that moment. You're present and giving it your all.

Ralph Barsi (20:24):
Yeah, very stoic. I think it's Marcus Aurelius who wrote in his Meditations writings to "confine yourself to the present." That's important.

Tom Alaimo (20:34):
For sure. I want to make a little bit of a pivot to some more tactical info. There's a lot of SDRs, sales development reps, first-time salespeople that are tuning in and listening to you and that follow a lot of your work.

So I'd love to hear—you've been leading teams for a really long time. What is one of the biggest mistakes that you see a sales development rep or a new sales rep make in their career that you wish that they would avoid or that you think you could help them avoid?

Ralph Barsi (21:06):
Yeah, great question. Wow, there are a couple that come to mind. One is a lot of them, not all of them—a lot of them are very hasty in terms of getting to the next role.

They start to earn their stripes. They put in an amount of time because we're talking about the sales development role, and they feel in their whole heart and soul that they're ready to become account executives. Rather than playing more of a long game and keeping their world small.

What I mean by that is just your career is an arc. So you have to understand kind of where you are in terms of your career arc and what it is you're learning in the process of being a sales development rep and who it is that you're becoming in the process as well.

Ralph Barsi (21:50):
When you can do that properly, you're a little more patient and you too wear that student cap. You're constantly learning about the processes. You're constantly learning, whether that's a buying process or a selling process, whether that's an external process or an internal process.

You're learning about the people that are involved, the stakeholders that are involved internally and externally. When I talk about externally, I mean influencers in your career, prospects that you don't yet know, executives that might be leading an association or a community that you're ultimately going to be part of. It kind of runs the gamut.

But what I'm getting to, Tom, is it's the process, people, strategy, and technology. Understanding those four pillars and how they are interconnected and how they connect the dots is really, really important. In that comes patience and learning.

Ralph Barsi (22:35):
Another key thing I see people running into all the time is they don't come up with two solutions to a problem that they're encountering before escalating it to a superior. That's probably a lame word to use, but your manager, your supervisor, your leader, someone that you want to bring a problem to solve.

It's really important that you try to solve it first on your own. Come up with a couple multiple-choice options or solutions to that problem and then approach a leader saying, "Hey, Tom, look, I've been really struggling with getting responses to my emails. Here's what I've done. I created an A/B sequence just to kind of test the waters with this new copy to see if I get a higher clip of response, and this is what it has looked like over the last couple of weeks."

Ralph Barsi (23:21):
"Another thing I did is I revamped my LinkedIn profile, stopped really talking about me. Instead I started rewording it to focus on how we solve potential problems that our prospects might be encountering. I'm still not seeing any lift, so I thought I would bring this to you to see, what am I missing?"

A leader is way more open to helping you when you've kind of done some of the work beforehand versus, "Hey, Tom, I'm not getting any responses. What should I do?" That's just not the way to approach the situation.

Nine times out of 10, when you kind of go with the two solutions to one problem approach, you're going to solve it on your own. What you become is a leader in the process. That's how leaders are born that solve problems fast, and they solve bigger and bigger problems as their career progresses.

So the haste thing and the problem-solving thing, I think are two prominent things that stick out with today's SDRs.

Tom Alaimo (24:55):
For sure. And I think on the latter, when I spent time as a manager, that was one of my pet peeves, and it kind of got drilled into me when I was an individual contributor to not come to your manager or your vice president or whoever's overseeing you and say, "Here's the situation. What do we do?"

It's like, "Here's what I've tried, or here are three possible solutions to this problem. I think we should go with the first one, but I'm curious just from your experience if you agree or disagree with that."

I think there's a huge difference to that. Again, that's how you actually learn how to do it so that if you're confronted with that problem again, which you probably will, you'll know what the likely result should be or how to attack that problem moving forward. So I think it's more just about thinking for yourself and not being afraid that you're going to fail in that scenario than anything else.

Ralph Barsi (25:50):
You know what else, Tom? It goes back to working harder on yourself. That is a prime example.

Tom Alaimo (25:56):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, how about in the world of—it's a tough market, obviously right now if we're speaking just about current events with everything that's gone on in 2020.

So if someone was maybe an SDR and they had a major layoff or they got cut from the organization and they're looking for a new opportunity, what can help them to stand out right now? You mentioned the LinkedIn profile, and I think you've written some articles on this, but I'd love to just hear, especially in a world right now where it is so competitive, how am I, Tom, an SDR that's on the market right now going to stand out to an employer?

Ralph Barsi (26:38):
Yeah, sure. So first things first, you have to have an understanding of where you want to land and why. So maybe there are 10 or 20 logos that you would love to be part of and you would love to work for and grow within. So start there. Start by getting an understanding of where it is you want to go.

If you could go anywhere—and I mean logo-wise, not necessarily location-wise—that matters less these days. So I wouldn't worry so much about location as much as I would about types of businesses you want to work for, types of products that you want to sell, for example. I would write that list down.

Second thing I would do is ask myself, "Why would they want me to be part of their organization in the first place?"

Ralph Barsi (27:19):
So I would want to take stock of, "Well, in my previous role as an SDR, for example, how many closed-won opportunities were sourced by me and what are the nuances of each of those opportunities? What did I do to add value and actually create a viable opportunity for the pipeline that ended up becoming a new customer?"

"What was my conversion rate of the raw opportunities to closure? What are some examples of how I would work on a day-to-day basis? How would I set up my weeks? How would I set up my days?"

"What contributions did I make internally to my team? For example, did I host any brown bag sessions, lunch and learns? How many times did I appear on a company all-hands, or how often would I lead a team standup? What are some of the topics I would talk about?"

Ralph Barsi (28:04):
"What have I done on an ancillary basis outside of work?" So this is what we were talking about earlier, talking about the external factors. "Am I involved in a community or an association? Do I do charitable work in my local community? How can I present the whole person that I am to this company so they see that when—if I'm going to be considered for their company—I'm going to be a complement and an add to their culture or to their vision or to their team?"

That's where you've got to really do that introspective work. You also, from a tactical standpoint, you need to start taking a look at the amount of pipeline you drove, the number of leads that you managed per day, what your activity levels looked like, so you could present a real business case for why you're the only person recruiters and talent teams should look at, that hiring managers should look no further. You are here to add value.

Ralph Barsi (28:56):
Now that said, once that step takes place, you have to realize that it's a two-way street. That company may not be hiring as quickly as they were three quarters ago, pre-pandemic. So you've got to be patient and you kind of got to stay where they are.

That's where the communication piece comes into play. You have to set up almost like a marketing calendar for yourself on how often and with what message you're going to be pinging your hiring manager or key stakeholders, what that message is going to say.

Is it going to be in the form of an email? Are you going to hit them on LinkedIn? Will it be video? Will it be a short email with a link? What is it going to do to really string together a great narrative about you?

So you actually have a lot of work to do if you're on the market right now looking to get into some prospective logos. You've got a lot of work to do on creating your package.

Tom Alaimo (30:23):
So there's two things I want to point out that you just mentioned. One was knowing your numbers, which I think is probably an underrated step for the process that maybe folks may not pay a lot of attention to in their first or second job interview process.

But it likens it to—I like the show Shark Tank. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I do like that show. There's definitely a direct correlation to who gets deals compared to which founders actually know all the margins and all the numbers when one of the sharks asks them.

So similarly, if you're the CEO of your own business, of your own career, of your own life, you should know those numbers, whether you're an AE, an SDR, a sales leader, whatever you might be. So I wanted to just highlight that and make sure folks understood that.

Tom Alaimo (31:03):
And then in the second piece from the interview process, something that really keeps coming back to me is you're talking about writing, you're talking about communication. Can you speak a little bit to—I've never really heard you talk about this in depth—I'm curious, appearance, right?

Folks can see us if they're looking on YouTube, right? You've got nice glasses, you've got a nice microphone, you've got the pressed button-down shirt. You are thoughtful with how you speak, there's not wasted words.

I've seen you write a lot about writing short, catchy emails that aren't really tedious and long for the reader. So my thought is that you probably put a lot of thought into the appearance of how you communicate, how you look, how you speak. Can you riff on that for a little bit?

Ralph Barsi (32:06):
Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's near and dear to my heart. I use the term "buttoned up" to describe everything that you just shared. Just making sure that you are illustrating attention to detail, that you are focused on all the little nuances.

From having a high-def webcam that's at eye level to a high-def microphone, to chiming into a Zoom call a minute or two prior to the meeting starting. Because if you are on time, you are late. Making sure that you're prepared for the meeting at hand, that you've studied the numbers, that you have anticipated questions already addressed in your mind that may be asked or that may come up in the call that you might be able to lend a hand to.

Ralph Barsi (32:48):
When it comes to writing, it's being mindful and sensitive towards the reader of your writing. Making sure that if you're going to email a busy executive, whether or not they're working from home is a moot point.

You have to have the awareness that they're likely going to read your email from their mobile device. So if they have to scroll just once, the likelihood of them responding goes down. It's reading and understanding all the stats and rates that go along with subject lines, size of emails, et cetera, just so that you can get your message through all the swirl and noise that we talked about earlier.

Yes, the shirt is pressed. In fact, I'm one of those guys out there that every night prior to work, even here in a remote world, I pull out the ironing board and I press my shirt. I always wear shorts and flip-flops now that I'm home. But the shirt's always pressed and on point.

Ralph Barsi (33:40):
Because that to me is—it's a ritual that kind of gets me focused on the workday at hand. That I've been hired to make an impact on this organization and on our marketplace. There are a lot of people making a big, big investment in the value that I could bring to the people of our company and to the people within our ecosystem.

I take that very seriously. I want people to know that, look, we're in a world where we must measure twice and cut once when we are recruiting executives. I want them to see a return on their investment very quickly. I want them to know immediately that they have the right person at the helm.

And that I'll lead with love and that I'll teach and coach along the way so that I can create more leaders in the process, which again goes back to success being something that you attract versus something you pursue. You do it by adding value to your marketplace in order to become more valuable.

So all of it is connected, Tom.

Tom Alaimo (35:03):
Yep. And something I love is that you speak in parables almost. It's like because you're so well-read, and probably because you spend that time reflecting, during just one of those riffs, you drop like three or four great quotes that hopefully folks have got their notebooks out or their Evernote or whatever they're using to take notes that they can reflect on later, which I always love—just a Ralph bomb like that.

Ralph Barsi (35:27):
Awesome. Thanks, man.

Tom Alaimo (35:30):
So if we pivot a little bit over to leadership for maybe the new leaders out there, a sales leader out there, something that you helped me out with earlier this year—we were in a different world then. It was probably January or February pre-pandemic, and we sat down and I was in my first leadership role.

You helped me to guide out of focusing on probably the forest from the trees of really focusing on this deal, this opportunity, this situation, this day, and focus more on, "Well, how am I helping my company think 6, 12, 18 months into the future?"

I imagine I'm not alone as someone that struggled to do that in their first role. So maybe you could speak a little bit to what you mean by that and maybe how that details out if it's part of your Sunday email that you referenced earlier.

Ralph Barsi (36:21):
Yeah, sure. So there are a lot of great leaders that I learned from recently during my tenure at ServiceNow. One of them is Craig Pratt. Craig Pratt is also the host of a podcast—it's called Next Level Leadership.

I think Craig used to challenge me and my organization to stop reporting on the weather and start predicting the weather. So all of us could look at the lagging indicators. We could all take a look and see how well we did or not last month or last week or last quarter.

Well, what can the business do with that information? That's your job as a leader to reconcile that data, read into that data, and predict what we can expect and anticipate—whether that's challenges, risks, or successes down the pike—so that we can prepare as a business properly.

Ralph Barsi (37:08):
Then there's Dan Rogers who was the CMO at ServiceNow when I was there, and he really, really taught me the importance of critical thinking. He introduced me to a concept very similar to the Pyramid Principle, which comes from McKinsey Consulting.

The Pyramid Principle is really starting with the answer first. "Where do we want to be? We understand there's a problem here, but what is the answer to the problem?" Then deconstructing that problem by asking a series of questions and breaking up the problem in as many pieces as you can so that you can solve for all the different steps along the way to root cause of the problem.

That way you can mitigate risk, prevent that problem from ever happening again. If that problem does happen again, you actually have levers you can pull and you have a contingency plan in place that's going to help you solve that problem much faster than you are right now.

Ralph Barsi (37:58):
So those are a couple of examples that I would reference for the listeners and viewers today to keep in mind when they are doing a QBR, for example, or if there's a team meeting and we're going around the horn to see, "Hey, Tom, so how many leads are in your queue right now and what's your take on them?"

You could say, "Well, just based on my activity over the last two quarters, and these have been my conversion rates, what I've done is I've grouped my leads by score, by status, by source. Because I know how I can do with each of those categories, I've sorted them accordingly, and I know the likelihood of me getting a qualified meeting is much higher if I go this route versus that route."

"So all that said, I think by end of month, I should be here. By end of quarter, I should be here. If everybody is kind of pulling their weight and doing the same thing, we as a team could probably get to this or we could exceed goal."

Ralph Barsi (38:47):
When you've got an SDR, for example, or an account executive talking in those terms to leadership and truly managing up the chain of command, you're seeing a leader being made right before your eyes.

Tom Alaimo (39:29):
So if there's not a culture right now, let's say you're at a smaller company, at a startup, and you're one of the only sales managers—let's just make up the scenario—and there's not a culture of maybe your VP of sales or your CRO doesn't send out a weekly email like Ralph sends, and there's just not that culture right now of that type of communication.

Would you suggest that that person just starts sending those on a Sunday and includes all the different stakeholders? Should they run that by their boss first? Should they communicate what they're thinking or just kind of go for it, I guess is where I'm going with that—take the bull by the horns or how they should approach it?

Ralph Barsi (40:10):
Yeah, what a great question. It really depends, Tom. Every organization, every culture is different. In some places that flies, in other places it doesn't.

But you have to remember as the leader that you're going to get what you tolerate. So if you want to approach the week with a hope strategy and you hope things work out this week, this month, this quarter, and you're not really articulating at least how you're thinking about the plan to the team, then go for it.

The opposite is if you do articulate that plan, at least the way you're thinking about it and what's on your radar, you're going to create a culture of expectation where people can expect versus hope when it comes to the results that you're all going for.

Ralph Barsi (40:49):
You also want to be very clear and transparent as much as possible and authentic as well with your team. For me, I like to write. I also am a fan of people who are consistent and people who are very open with constant and never-ending improvement.

So if there's something on my radar that's bugging me, I want the team to know about it. I'll even give guidance and coaching on tactics I think they can apply as early as tomorrow—because it's a Sunday—to employ to help move us all forward.

I've found that throughout the last several years of doing this to be extremely effective. But again, at the end of the day, it does depend on the environment and culture that you're working in or have chosen to work in.

Tom Alaimo (41:47):
And I would also make the point too that regarding maybe title and where you are in the food chain, that your title doesn't have to make you a leader either. You mentioned that SDRs, AEs, even manager-level—those folks can still take charge of their own career and of their own territory and things like that to be forward-looking and help predict the weather and help the company to get better.

I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but that would help to separate—if I was Ralph and I was the vice president and I was looking to grow my team, I would want someone that is looking beyond just what their own daily obligations are of closing a deal or setting up their meetings or hitting quota and exceeding quota.

For all the other ways that they can help the organization get better and help to identify, "Hey, here's what I'm hearing from customers on calls. Here's the objections I'm hearing. Oh, I joined this great webinar with Sales Hacker and here's what these folks were saying," and try to take that to the team. I think trying to help others get better and not be selfish with that information speaks to how you can be as a future leader too.

Ralph Barsi (42:57):
Yeah, show them what great looks like and they can take it or leave it. But if you, for example, create a centralized repository in your company that kind of houses all those nuggets and you have them indexed properly, like, "Hey, this is for reading at bedtime if you want," versus "This is something that's a P1. I really want you all to look at this and respond to me by X with your feedback, good, bad, or otherwise, but I want to make sure that you acknowledge that you read it or saw it."

There are different ways you can communicate some of the knowledge share and what great looks like to your organization.

Tom Alaimo (43:33):
Yeah, and you mentioned maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago that you lead with love, and I thought that was interesting. So could you expand on that? How do you build trust? How do you lead with love? What does that mean to you, and how does that affect how you go about your day-to-day and build relationships with the teams?

Ralph Barsi (43:51):
Yeah. Wow. So again, it's just part of being my authentic self. Sincerely, I want the best for everybody, and I want the best for everybody, especially those that I've worked with and worked for.

It also helps me handle a lot of the haters. So as you get exposed on podcasts like this or webinars or you're on stage, et cetera, or you're pumping out LinkedIn posts or articles, it's always open to criticism. Sometimes people really lean into that criticism, and it can definitely sting a bit.

But right or wrong, I pray for them, I wish for nothing but the best for them. I'm sorry what I said or did kind of threw them off or didn't align with what they thought leadership looked like, et cetera. But it doesn't mean I don't like them or wish ill things for them. That's never the case for me.

Ralph Barsi (44:41):
I don't have to like somebody, but it doesn't mean that I want bad things to happen to them. So I just hope that they can see the light at some point and just be a little kinder to people and understand that everybody—as this is an old adage—everybody's battling their own battle. I think more people need to be aware of that.

I still think that we meander through this planet and through life thinking that we're all separated when we really are all connected. Just kind of reminding yourself of that on a regular basis I think is really, really important. Kind of helps everybody seek first to understand before being understood and just be cooler to people.

I also think it's a tougher path to walk. It's very easy to not be cool to people and to take pot shots at people, whether it's on LinkedIn or public forums or otherwise. But it's much tougher to just kind of be cool and be more of a coach, a guide, someone who's a little more loving in their approach. I like that path better.

Tom Alaimo (45:59):
And the same goes for the salesperson too. If they run into that prospect or customer that's had a bad day, or maybe there's a trend of them kind of being hard on you or really picking battles quite generously, then I've found that it's easier to work with those folks just by trying to find common ground and just be—you attract more bees with honey than vinegar—and just try to be positive and kind and hope that some of that rubs off on that person.

Ralph Barsi (46:33):
And Tom, it's inevitable you're going to run into those people. It's part of life. But you can always control your actions, your reactions, and your mindset.

Tom Alaimo (46:44):
For sure. For sure. So let's pull us into the selfish section. So I've got a selfish question to ask, and maybe I'll make that a new segment of the show.

So I'm starting a new role as an AE in eight days from now. What's Ralph's one piece of advice for me heading into that role?

Ralph Barsi (47:07):
Listen, then connect, and then engage. So listen—you're parachuting into a new battlefield, so you need to parachute in and assess the situation.

You need to see, "Okay, where are we trying to go? What is in our way? How can I help remove obstacles? How can I help bring value to this situation?" That takes a minute. That takes a minute to assess.

So most companies, a brand new hire will come in and during the onboarding phase, they're teaching about the company history and all the product iterations over the years and what they do and who they are and who their founders are. I think more companies need to focus on the opposite.

Ralph Barsi (47:48):
And that is, "Okay, who are our customers? What were the critical business issues they were facing before they met us and before we intervened? What does life look like for them now, now that we're a partner of theirs? Is this a long-lasting relationship that we're excited about or do we think it'll be short-lived?"

"Who are the key stakeholders here? What does great look like here? How can I reconcile that against some of my strengths, some of my competencies? Where are my areas of improvement that I know I'm going to have to work on? How am I going to approach those?"

"I'm not going to get too emotional about this situation. Yes, I want to build rapport and credibility here, and I want to show a return earlier than later, but what do I need to work on and when do I really need to step in and start adding value?"

Ralph Barsi (48:31):
So listen first, then connect with the people that are key. Connect with the numbers that you need to get acquainted with and then start engaging.

Some people are sharp enough to engage within a week of being at a company because they've kind of been there, done that, and they get the landscape very quickly. But more often than not, it takes a good month to two months to kind of figure out the lay of the land before you can really make a difference.

Tom Alaimo (49:11):
That's what I'm talking about. That's why we have the selfish section right there.

Ralph Barsi (49:14):
Cool.

Tom Alaimo (49:15):
So one or two last questions for you before I let you go. Folks try to find you—there's a lot of ways you can find them. You might head to ralphbarsi.com, and I noticed that at the very top, you've got "the boom, the bip, the boom bip."

Ralph Barsi (49:34):
It's actually, you have to say it this way: the boom, the bip, the boom bip.

Tom Alaimo (49:39):
A little Tribe Called Quest, no?

Ralph Barsi (49:42):
That's right. That's exactly right.

Tom Alaimo (49:45):
Why did you choose that as the tagline for the site?

Ralph Barsi (49:48):
Yeah, yeah. That's so funny that you brought that up. So I've been a drummer since I was three years old, and I've always seen life in terms of there's a beat and a pattern to pretty much everything and anything that we do.

The blog is really there to showcase the value that I'd like to be adding to the marketplace, whether it's through an article or whether I've appeared on this podcast. I'll put that on my "Show Your Work" page, just to show the trail of breadcrumbs that I'm trying to leave behind for people to learn from.

Whether it's things they don't like or hopefully there's some takeaway there and some nugget of value that they could apply to their own lives. As I'm adding things to the trail of breadcrumbs, it's like there's a rhythm to it. The boom, the bip, the boom bip—a little bit here, a little bit there.

Ralph Barsi (50:34):
You could learn about what's going on over here. You could check out what's going on over there. There's that rhythm that goes to it. That's why I've got it up there.

Tom Alaimo (50:46):
Love that, love that. I knew it had something to do with drumming, and then it makes sense now.

Ralph Barsi (50:54):
It's also a great beat. If you walk into every day with that beat going in your head, you're going to have a little pep in your step. You're going to have a smile on your face, you're going to shed light when you walk into a room versus suck the life out of it. That's just the way I roll.

Tom Alaimo (51:10):
I love it. Everyone could use a little Tribe Called Quest to start their day. I think the world would be a little bit better place.

Ralph Barsi (51:16):
Couldn't agree more. I would start with "The Low End Theory."

Tom Alaimo (51:19):
Yeah. Cool, man. So man, I appreciate having you on—one of my favorite people to have on the show and really one of the people I respect most in the sales world, in the leadership world that I've gotten to know and connect with. So I appreciate you. I want you to know that.

I want you to just let maybe everyone else learn about where they can find you if they do want to follow the breadcrumbs of Ralph Barsi.

Ralph Barsi (51:45):
Thank you, Tom, and thanks for all the value you've been adding over the years. When you said at the beginning of our conversation that we recorded an episode two and a half years ago, look at all the work you've been doing since then. I'm sure you've impacted a lot of lives that you may never ever know.

So thank you for doing what you're doing as well. I think you're representing everybody in our profession very well, and I for one appreciate it.

How you can find me is connect with me on LinkedIn, Ralph Barsi, or Twitter is @RBarsi, and of course ralphbarsi.com. If you subscribe, you will get a personal thank-you email from me, and if you reply to that email and wish to have a reply from me, you're going to get one. So I encourage you to check it out and hopefully we'll get to connect and meet someday soon.

Tom Alaimo (52:38):
And on that note, just maybe one last question you just sparked for me. Are you someone that if they're going to send you an email, it might be a minute later, it might be a week or a month later, depending on the email—you're going to respond? You're going to play tennis, and you're going to hit the ball back over the net?

Ralph Barsi (52:55):
I will hit the ball back over the net. Yeah, it will take me a minute. Sometimes I will get to it during that introspective, reflective time we talked about. But I will get back to you.

Especially if you come at me the right way and you come at me kind of looking for some help with something, I'm definitely going to help you. If I can't, I'm going to point you to someone who I know can probably help you.

Tom Alaimo (53:18):
Yep, that's great. Well, I appreciate it, Ralph. Everyone, check out his site, check him out on Twitter, LinkedIn. He's got some great recent content. I know on Sales Hacker, he's all over the place. So if you type his name into Google or into the podcast app, you'll find a lot of great nuggets there as well. So I appreciate you, Ralph.

Ralph Barsi (53:37):
I appreciate you, Tom. Thanks so much for having me.

Tom Alaimo (53:39):
Yeah, take care.