🎙️Transcript: SalesSummit.io

HireVue, Xvoyant Presents SalesSummit.io
Ralph Barsi
February 9, 2017

Summary

In this brief but impactful presentation for SalesSummit.io hosted by HireVue and Xvoyant, Ralph Barsi (Senior Director of Global Sales Development at ServiceNow) delivers a focused message on how to differentiate yourself and rise above the ordinary in sales.

Ralph, entering his 24th year in sales with half spent as an individual contributor (account executive managing territories) and half as a sales development/inside sales leader at companies like ServiceNow, InsideView, and Achievers, emphasizes that he's a practitioner recording this from work to pay it forward to the sales community.

The presentation centers on three core themes: developing an attitude of gratitude, building your personal brand, and differentiating yourself from the average. Ralph opens with a powerful perspective shift using World Wealth Calculator data showing that earning $40,000/year in the US places you in the wealthiest 3.5% globally, making you 52 times wealthier than a billion people.

He contrasts this with Bay Area professionals making far more yet complaining about their jobs, urging the audience to gain perspective by remembering people fighting for their lives in hospitals while we attend webinars about sales techniques.

The core framework follows Simon Sinek's Golden Circle: starting with WHY (your purpose, trigger, what gets you out of bed), moving to HOW (work on yourself harder than your job, attract vs pursue opportunities, decide to win first mentally, put a 10 on everyone's forehead, pay attention to detail), and concluding with WHAT (actionable tactics including asking open-ended questions, improving LinkedIn profile, getting to where you don't need a resume, showing your work, writing well, and reading voraciously).

Ralph demonstrates attention to detail throughout by intentionally changing slide background colors from blue to gold to green as he transitions between topics, and by providing specific resources including the exact color palette and font used in his presentation.

The session concludes with Ralph thanking fellow speakers Jill Konrath, Rob Jeppsen, and Trish Bertuzzi, reinforcing the caliber of the SalesSummit.io lineup.

BIG Takeaways

Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude Through Global Perspective
If you earn $40,000/year in the United States, you're in the wealthiest 3.5% of people globally and 52 times wealthier than a billion people on the planet (World Wealth Calculator).

This statistic is particularly striking for Bay Area sales professionals making significantly more yet complaining about their jobs and looking for "greener pastures." Ralph emphasizes the need for perspective: people in hospitals with IVs are fighting for their lives and would cherish any day of living, while we're on webinars learning sales techniques.

This isn't about dismissing legitimate career concerns but about maintaining gratitude as a foundation that prevents entitlement and fuels sustained performance. When you approach your work from gratitude rather than complaint, your energy, attitude, and effectiveness all improve dramatically.

Start With WHY Using Simon Sinek's Golden Circle Framework
The most influential leaders throughout history persuaded audiences by always starting with the WHY, not the what or how.

Ralph implores the audience to deeply examine: Why are you on this webinar? Why are you in sales, sales development, or sales leadership? What lights a fire underneath you to get out of bed each morning? What outcomes are you truly after? Too many people wander through careers and marketplaces without clarity on who they're serving or why they're doing what they're doing.

Elite US military teams use the term "trigger" - an image or vision of what matters most to them (often a person, not a thing or goal) that pulls them through the darkest, most life-threatening moments. Identify your trigger(s) and purpose. This clarity becomes the fuel that sustains you through inevitable setbacks and rejection inherent in sales work.

Work on Yourself Harder Than You Work on Your Job
This principle from Jim Rohn forms the foundation of the HOW. Ask yourself daily: Am I really giving my best work today? Am I putting my best foot forward in every interaction?

The commitment to self-improvement and personal development must exceed the effort you put into your actual job tasks. This means investing in reading, learning, skill development, and character building outside of work hours. When you work harder on yourself than on your job, you become more valuable, which makes you more marketable, which creates more opportunities.

This isn't selfish - it's the foundation of being able to serve others at the highest level because you're constantly upgrading your capacity to deliver value.

Attract Opportunities Instead of Pursuing Them
There's no shortage of opportunities and no shortage of success available in the world. The strategic shift is from pursuing opportunities (exhausting, low-yield, desperate energy) to attracting them (sustainable, high-yield, abundant energy).

You become a magnet for opportunities by: building your brand through LinkedIn and social media, showing your work publicly, developing proven track records, writing well to demonstrate communication skills, and reading voraciously (readers are leaders).

The goal is to reach the point where you don't need a resume because you've hustled so much that you no longer have to introduce yourself - people already know who you are and what value you bring.

When opportunities seek you out rather than you chasing them, you negotiate from strength and choose aligned opportunities rather than accepting whatever you can get.

Decide to Win First in Your Mind Before Winning in Reality
Victory begins mentally before it manifests physically. You must win in your mind first, then win in reality. This isn't positive thinking platitudes but rather the discipline of mental rehearsal, visualization, and conviction that precedes action.

When you've already decided you're going to win, your behavior, tone, energy, and decision-making all align with that outcome. This mental pre-commitment eliminates the hesitation and self-doubt that plague ordinary performers.

Elite athletes and military operators use this principle religiously - they've already won the game or completed the mission mentally before executing physically. Apply this same discipline to sales: decide the outcome first, then execute with that certainty.

Put a 10 on Everyone's Forehead to Unlock Their Unique Gifts
Everyone has unique strengths and gifts they bring to the table, but not everyone uses them. Wayne Dyer's concept of "putting a 10 on everyone's forehead" means approaching every person believing they have something valuable to offer and treating them accordingly.

This mindset shift helps you tease out what people's unique strengths and gifts are so they can share them with the world. When you see people as 10s (rather than judging or dismissing them), you unlock potential in others and in your interactions.

In sales, this means genuinely believing prospects have valuable insights and perspectives, which makes you a better listener and more effective consultant. Thinking of others before yourself isn't just morally right - it's strategically effective because it positions you as a servant leader rather than a self-interested vendor.

Pay Attention to Detail as a Differentiator
Ralph demonstrates this principle through his presentation itself: he intentionally changed slide background colors from blue (introduction) to gold (gratitude and WHY) to green (HOW and WHAT) as he transitioned topics.

Most people wouldn't notice, but that's exactly the point - attention to detail happens in places most people don't look. He provides the specific color palette and font (links included) used to keep the presentation clean, neat, and tidy. This level of care extends to every aspect of professional work: How you format emails, structure presentations, follow up after meetings, remember personal details about prospects, and execute on commitments.

The cumulative effect of attention to detail is that people perceive you as more professional, trustworthy, and competent. Small details matter because they signal how much you care, and people do business with people who care. Little things make big things matter.

Transcript

Ralph Barsi (00:00):
Hello, everybody, this is Ralph Barsi. I am the senior director of Global Sales Development at ServiceNow. I am thrilled to be here today and I'm thrilled that you've decided to carve some time out of your life to listen to what I have to say. So I'm going to make the very best of our time together and my intent is to leave you with, at the very least, one nugget of value that you can take today and apply to differentiate yourself. We'll spend the next few minutes talking about how to be the wheat that separates itself from the chaff and we're going to help you lift yourself above the ordinary and the average in your community and in your industry, most importantly in your career.

So a bit of background on me just for context. I am, man, I'm showing my age, I'm embarking on my 24th year in sales. I've spent half of my career as an individual contributor, closing business, as an account executive, managing territories, et cetera. And I've spent the other half of my career as a sales development or inside sales leader. I have built and led teams at companies like ServiceNow, InsideView, Achievers, and many more. So I think the real takeaway that I want you to take note of is that I am a practitioner. In fact, I am at work as we speak, yet I am carving out time to make sure that I can get back to you, so you can pay it forward and do better for all of us in our craft of sales.

Okay? We're going to keep it short and sweet today, and we're going to talk about a couple different things, starting with the shaping of your attitude of gratitude. I think a lot more of us need to get better at this, and I think the world in general needs to get better at this. Number two, we're going to talk about building your brand. The more valuable you become in your marketplace when you start to add more value to it. So we'll talk about how to do that, and then lastly, we're going to make sure that all of this rolls into, as I mentioned, differentiating yourself from the ordinary.

Okay, so let's get started by just gaining a little bit of perspective. So this is an incredible statistic from the World Wealth Calculator, and it states that if you earn $40,000 a year in the United States, you're in the wealthiest 3.5% of people in the world. So think about that for a moment. You are 52 times wealthier than a billion people on the planet, and that is if you're making $40,000 a year in the United States. So, as I mentioned, I'm getting close to my 25th year in sales, and I am based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'll tell you right now, there are a lot of people in the San Francisco Bay Area alone making more than $40,000 a year. And unfortunately, a lot of those people are complaining. They're complaining about the jobs that they're in. They've decided to peek over the fence to see if there are greener pastures elsewhere, and it's very disheartening to realize that they're already among the 3.5% wealthiest people in the world.

So please do us all a favor and take a little bit of perspective that there are folks, for example, in the hospital right now with IVs trying to fight for their lives and they cherish any day of living, and you're here on a webinar listening to tips and techniques about how to be better in sales. So let's keep perspective, okay?

All right, those who might be familiar with Simon Sinek are familiar with this circle here, the why, how, and what, also known as the Golden Circle. So Simon presents this concept in a TED Talk where he talks about why some of the most influential leaders in our time were so influential. What was it that they did to persuade audiences and crowds to go one way or the other? The reason is really because they've always started with the why, and that's something I'm imploring you to do today. Really start by asking yourself, why you're on this webinar with me, why you are in sales or sales development or sales leadership. And what it is that's really lighting a fire underneath you to get you up and out of bed every morning, to pull you towards the goals you're trying to accomplish.

I think a lot of people wander through their careers and through the marketplace, not really sure why they're doing what they're doing, or who it is that they're serving. So I'd really ask you to reflect on that and be mindful as to, what is your purpose? What is your trigger, and what outcome or outcomes are you after? You know, the elite military teams in the United States, for example, use the term trigger as an image or a visual of what matters most to them, or who matters most to them in their lives, so that when they are in the darkest of times in the most life threatening of times, they've got that trigger or that picture or that vision that's actually going to pull them through and get them through the day or through that very moment. So I'm asking all of you to really take stock of what your trigger or what your triggers are, and what your purpose is, and why you're really doing what you're doing, okay? It'll go a long way.

So, here's how starting with the why leads to how. This is how you will succeed. It's really a breakdown of a couple key areas. For example, you need to work on yourself harder than you work on your job. Ask yourself, am I really giving my best work today? And am I really putting my best foot forward in every interaction that I have with people as I go through my days? Remember that you want to attract opportunities and not pursue them. The good news is there's no shortage of opportunities, and there's no shortage of success. So take note of that and do what you can to become a magnet to attract those opportunities to you.

You also want to decide first that you're going to win and win first in your mind before you win in reality. And putting a 10 on everyone's forehead helps you to think of others before you think of yourself. So everyone has a unique strength, and a unique gift that they bring to the table. Not everybody uses those unique strengths and gifts. So if you approach life and approach people by putting a 10 on their forehead, you will help tease out what their unique strengths and gifts are so that they could share them with the world. And then lastly, you really want to pay attention to detail.

So you may not have noticed, but when I gave my introduction today, I had a blue slide background, but when I switched to talking about gratitude and the why and the how, the color of the slide changed from blue to gold to now green. So that's just me paying attention to the detail and using those color schemes to kind of help me switch topics. That's an example of how you pay attention to detail.

So we started with the why, then we talked about the how, now we're going to talk about the what. Here's some things that you can actually take and apply today. Start by asking open-ended questions. If you ask yes or no, you're going to paint yourself into a corner, and you're going to be short of options for answers. You need to improve your personal branding, starting with your LinkedIn profile and your social media channels. You need to get to where you don't need a resume. So again, you're attracting so many opportunities that you don't need to deliver a resume because you've hustled so much, you no longer have to introduce yourself. It's critical that you always show the work that you're doing and show that proven track record that you talk about. And when you do good work, you'll become indispensable.

Remember to write well, because communication is absolutely critical in how we work in the world and how we get our trajectory to go up and to the right, and definitely read because readers are leaders. So check out those links that I've provided, and you'll get a nice bevy of books to read and learn from. As I mentioned, pay attention to the detail. This is the color palette I used for this very slide deck, and here's a link to it, and this is the font that I used to make sure that things were clean, neat, and tidy, just like this presentation.

All right, so, very short and sweet. It was a pleasure to be here today, and thanks for spending time with me. I really want to thank my friends at HireVue and Xvoyant for inviting me to join all the speakers today, Jill Konrath, Rob Jeppsen, and Trish Bertuzzi, just to name a few. Have a wonderful day, everybody, and thanks.