🎙️Transcript: Surf 'n' Sales

Surf and Sales Podcast
"S1 E150 Best 'Everything' Advice with Ralph Barsi
Richard Harris, Scott Leese, Ralph Barsi
October 5, 2020

📺 View on YouTube
🎧 Hear on Spotify

Summary

In this milestone 150th episode, hosts Richard Harris and Scott Leese interview Ralph Barsi, Global Inside Sales leader at Tray.io.

The conversation explores Ralph's unique journey from drummer in a touring band to sales leadership, revealing how his early experiences shaped his approach to building and scaling sales development teams.

Ralph shares his formative years at UPS, where he learned the importance of structure, professionalism, and standards of excellence through rigorous training programs and policy reinforcement.

The discussion delves deep into leadership challenges during COVID-19, including how to maintain team motivation, have difficult performance conversations remotely, and navigate the shift toward more empathetic leadership.

Ralph emphasizes his passion for developing early-career sales professionals, viewing SDR roles as foundational training grounds that shape future leaders.

He candidly discusses his mistakes in cross-functional collaboration and shares tactical approaches like "Team Tuesdays" to break down silos between departments.

Throughout the conversation, Ralph's thoughtful, mindful leadership style shines through—balancing authenticity with accountability, short-term survival with long-term development, and empathy with the realities of hitting numbers.

BIG Takeaways

• Early career foundation matters – Ralph's rigorous training at UPS, including reading from policy books daily and maintaining high standards of professionalism (suits, briefcases, structured meetings), created a foundation of excellence that carried through his entire career. Formal training and reinforcement of fundamentals builds lasting habits.

• Break challenges into manageable chunks – During difficult times like COVID, use the "make it to lunch" philosophy from Navy SEAL Chad Wright. Anyone can endure tough situations for four hours or even smaller increments. Keep your world small and operate in 10-minute or 60-minute chunks to maintain momentum and perspective.

• Leadership requires constant self-awareness and adaptation – Ralph deliberately evolved from a "rah-rah" motivational style to a more mindful, inclusive approach, recognizing that not everyone resonates with the same energy. He views audiences like tuning forks—some are on your frequency, some aren't—and focuses on leaving at least one valuable nugget for everyone.

• Cross-functional collaboration is essential but often neglected – Ralph admits his weakness in proactively engaging with stakeholders beyond his immediate team. Sales leaders must invest in relationships with demand gen, CS, finance, product, and engineering—not just to ask for things, but to understand their goals and support their initiatives as a two-way street.

• "Team Tuesdays" break down organizational silos – By hosting weekly lunch sessions where different business units present to the SDR team, Ralph creates a repository of knowledge about what every department does. This builds organizational awareness, provides onboarding resources, and fosters cross-functional understanding that makes everyone "become one."

• COVID forced a necessary evolution in sales leadership – The pandemic heightened empathy and sensitivity in ways that should have existed all along. This paradigm shift toward more empathetic, authentic leadership isn't temporary—it's the new standard. Leaders must balance this human-centered approach with the reality that businesses still need to hit numbers and thrive.

• The greatest fulfillment comes from developing people – Ralph focuses on SDR leadership specifically because these early-career professionals are most open to coaching and development. Watching his "coaching tree" grow—with former reps becoming VPs, priests, yoga instructors, and more—brings more satisfaction than any commission check ever did. The impact multiplies when they pay it forward to others.

Transcript

Richard Harris (00:03):
Hey everybody, it is Richard Harris and Scott Leese here with our 150th episode of the Surf and Sales Podcast. And of course, we can't have a milestone like that without having a milestone guest.

Before I introduce them though, we want to give a big shout out to Lead411 and Gong.io for supporting us. We really appreciate their efforts. If you don't know anything about them, please go check them out. If you do, go out and tweet about them. Tell them how good and wonderful they are—I know they'd appreciate it.

And without further ado, please welcome my bald brethren, the handsome man, the good-looking guy, Mr. Ralph Barsi. Ralph, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on.

Ralph Barsi (00:42):
Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Scott. What an honor. Wow, 150. Congratulations.

Scott Leese (00:47):
Yeah, I wish I could say we were smart enough to schedule it purposely so you were number 150. This is a happy accident.

Ralph Barsi (00:57):
Well, I'm happy to be here nonetheless.

Richard Harris (00:59):
Stop, stop. Come on, man. Let them think. You're ruining our reputation.

Scott Leese (01:04):
Oh no, our reputation is one of transparency, Richard. I'm keeping it real.

Ralph Barsi (01:09):
That's right.

Scott Leese (01:10):
It's all good.

Ralph Barsi (01:10):
See, I've got my little coin here that says "keep it real."

Scott Leese (01:14):
All right, Ralph, tell everybody where you're at now and what you do, just for context for people who don't know you.

Ralph Barsi (01:23):
Sure. I'm Ralph Barsi. I'm located in the San Francisco Bay Area. I lead the Global Inside Sales organization at Tray.io, which integrates all the applications in one's tech stack and drives automated workflows across the enterprise.

What else do you want to know? I could tell you all kinds of stuff. I love to play the drums.

Richard Harris (01:49):
What's your—oh, cool. So who's your favorite drummer?

Ralph Barsi (01:54):
Favorite drummer is Buddy Rich, a big band drummer from the forties. He played for Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra before going off on his own and creating his own band.

Then it depends on genre. If you're talking about pop punk, it's probably Travis Barker. If you're talking about classic rock, it'll be John Bonham or Neil Peart. And who else?

Then there's jazz drummers like Tony Williams who played for Miles Davis. Yeah, it goes on and on. But I've played since I was three years old and I've been in a band, and it's what I love to do.

Scott Leese (02:34):
You're a real student. Have you been watching these Dave Grohl versus 10-year-old Nandi drum competition thing? They're so cool.

Ralph Barsi (02:43):
Yeah, I have watched them and they're really cool. I mean, it's so fun. He's really leaning into it, creating these videos and writing songs for her.

Just to watch her light up when she watches his videos is pure joy. It's inspirational to see her get all fired up and want to go get something back to him as quickly as possible. It's just super fun to watch. And she's a great drummer.

Scott Leese (03:11):
She's amazing too. Her energy and her spirit is just so infectious. It's really fun to watch. Hey, Ralph.

Richard Harris (03:20):
Yeah. So if you start playing at three, right, bands and all that—I just can't imagine a 3-year-old becomes virtuoso in my mind. Did you go through the whole high school band, college band, that kind of stuff?

Ralph Barsi (03:38):
Yeah, I played in high school in the pep band, so we would be the ones at the basketball games having drum battles with the drummers on the other side of the gymnasium. But yeah, I started at age three.

My father grew up playing keyboards, and he's the one who wanted me to take formal lessons when I was banging on pots and pans as a little kid. So I learned the rudiments from age like three to six, and it was right, left, right, left, left, right. We would label it "Mama, daddy, daddy, mama" just to make it a little more adaptable for a kid to learn.

Then it was kind of a rollercoaster ride in terms of consistently going to lessons and whatnot. When I got into high school in the pep band, there were some side bands that were breaking off from other musicians in our high school. In college, again, played with other musicians in school.

Ralph Barsi (04:46):
Then just after college, I got back together with a bunch of buddies from high school and a friend from college, and we formed a band called Segue, S-E-G-U-E. This was in 1994 and we ended up releasing three records. Two of them are on Spotify and iTunes today.

We gigged around California, nothing spectacular, but at our peak we were probably doing 50, 55 shows a year. We were trucking there for a while.

Scott Leese (05:05):
That's fantastic.

Ralph Barsi (05:06):
Yeah, it was awesome.

Scott Leese (05:08):
Now, did you have merch and things like that? Were you selling tapes or CDs out of the truck, stuff like that?

Ralph Barsi (05:15):
Yeah, so we didn't have a huge merch pile. We did have t-shirts at one point, but we used to fold all the inserts that would go into your tape cassette at the time. We had to deal with all the people that would produce that art and produce the tape cassettes.

Then that obviously evolved into CDs and then ultimately digital. But yeah, we had to go through all the motions. We would be handing out CDs at shows and sending around a clipboard to get everybody on our mailing list. It was awesome.

Scott Leese (05:48):
So this is your first demand gen role being in this band, trying to sell tickets to shows and get people to get the CDs and t-shirts and stuff like that, right?

Ralph Barsi (06:00):
A hundred percent. And we were doing things that don't scale. What we would do is we would get on the phone a good week or two in advance of any gig.

I would call up you, Scott, and say, "Hey, man, just want you to know we're going to be playing at Mix Lounge in San Francisco. We'd love to see you there, bring three friends. We will get you a drink when you show up."

People would call us about getting on the guest list, et cetera. But it was a huge demand gen effort and I learned a lot from those days actually. Just the whole promotional engine that you had to spin up to get ready for even one gig or to promote a CD was a big deal.

Scott Leese (06:39):
Yeah, it's interesting, actually. I'm surprised we've never got into this, Richard, with other guests who've been musicians like Dale Dupree and people like that. There's actually a lot of comparisons to selling.

I mean, think about how many times you've bombed or failed a show or people didn't show up and you're like, "Oh my God, how fun is it to play in front of three people in there?"

Ralph Barsi (07:03):
Yeah, yeah, right. It's an overblown rehearsal at that point. That happened to us at New George's in San Rafael.

Scott Leese (07:12):
Yeah, I know that place.

Ralph Barsi (07:14):
I swear to God, I think three people were there. It was ridiculous. We had a sax player join us on stage blowing the sax, and dude, no one was there. Something very humbling.

But yeah, it's funny you bring that up, just the correlation to what we do all the time in SaaS, for example. There's a great book that was recently released from Derek Sivers, and it's called "Your Music and People." It's available digitally on his blog, I think it's sive.rs—S-I-V-E-R-S.

Ralph Barsi (07:53):
But anyway, that book talks all about, "Hey, you've got to be reaching out to people all the time. You've got to maybe tier people if you need to in your network as A's, B's, C's." The A's are going to hear from you maybe once a month, where the C's, you're going to hear from them once a year, maybe around the holidays.

But you're making sure that you're top of mind and that they're top of mind. Just the whole power of networking as it scales exponentially, the larger it gets, et cetera. He writes about it eloquently and simply. He puts it in simple terms and very actionable terms as well.

So I loved that book. I would actually recommend it to a lot of sales development reps, a lot of demand gen folks, because I think it goes both ways in terms of crossing verticals and industries.

Scott Leese (08:48):
That's awesome.

Richard Harris (08:49):
That's really cool. So coming out of the music thing, where did you decide to go into sales? How did that—was it like, "Oh shit, I just spent all these years on the road and I've got to find a job that pays me something?" What was that transition?

Ralph Barsi (09:08):
Yeah, so I was doing it in parallel during those peak years I was telling you about. My quote "sales career" really started—I was a newspaper boy in Pacifica where I grew up, Pacifica, California. I was going around delivering papers. It was the San Francisco Chronicle in the morning and the San Francisco Examiner in the afternoon and on the weekends.

I was part of my accounts receivable team as well, so I had to go get money from all the neighbors that I had been throwing papers on the porches for the last month. That's really where the whole sales thing started. People told me when I was growing up, "Hey, you either need to get into politics or sales, one or the other."

Ralph Barsi (09:48):
So I was kind of brought up being told, "You need to get in front of crowds and you need to sell and you need to help people." Started my career right out of college at UPS, and I was an account executive for them for close to six years. That's really where I started to learn about the more formal aspects of selling and business in general.

And all that time, Richard, I was in the band. Like I said, the band started in '94. I started working for UPS in February of '94, so I was rehearsing and gigging at night and working during the day. The career evolved from there in different companies, as you know. But yeah, I've been selling for a long time.

Richard Harris (10:40):
So talk about UPS, right? I have a really good friend named George who was in their HR department. You can tell all kinds of crazy stories about UPS. But from what I understand, they're really good at training. They're a strong organization in lots of ways.

I'm curious, did they have a formal training program? Is that where you sort of were exposed to best practices? Or was it the old school, "Go figure it out, here's your territory route"?

Ralph Barsi (11:07):
No, great question. It was definitely the former. That's a very structured, buttoned-up organization. When I started in '94, they weren't yet public—they were privately held. We felt that they were going to be like that forever.

Ultimately, they did go public and they made sure that the UPS drivers became shareholders and owners in the company, which I thought was a great move. But back to your question about the training, I started as a paid intern and earned the account executive job soon after.

There was pretty rigorous formal training, specifically around managerial skills. So I was exposed to that very early in my career. In fact, they had four really thick books that were published internally from founders and senior leaders from over the years and over the decades.

Ralph Barsi (11:55):
Those books would include maybe speeches that they gave at leadership breakfasts or banquets or owner meetings, et cetera. But they were transparent enough to share what the leaders were telling the other leaders and ultimately the company. What was on their mind and what was on their radar.

Then they also had a policy book, which I'm sure they use today. That policy book we would read at the start of every manager meeting and every meeting that we would have with the drivers. We used to have pre-work communication meetings—they called them PCMs—every morning. We would stand in a circle with all the people that handled our patch or district, et cetera.

We would pick a clause from that policy book and we would read through it just to remind everybody of the fundamentals and the cornerstones that the company was working from. Every time you read from that policy book, you would initial it, you would date it so that it wouldn't be repeated until a good year later. You would ensure that you're going to get through all the major policies just as a reminder and reinforcement to everybody as to what was up.

Ralph Barsi (12:51):
Managers were in suits and ties. I had the leather briefcase, like the whole nine yards—a very formal. But I learned a tremendous amount very early just on the importance of standards of excellence, high integrity, polished, presentable, professional, proficient. That has really helped carry me through my career.

Scott Leese (13:42):
I love this image of Ralph with the briefcase, by the way.

Ralph Barsi (13:46):
Oh, dude, totally. And I had a full head of hair too. How about that?

Richard Harris (13:51):
I was going to ask. It's interesting because I've known you over the years, I know Scott's known you over the years, and I've watched you speak. Your dynamic is different than mine or Scott's. You're passionate, but more thoughtful.

You're sincerely thoughtful in the way you speak, but you're not one of those "All right, let's go out and crush it today!" And I'm not talking about the beating people up, yelling—I'm talking about the football coach, baseball coach kind of motivational stuff. Is that by nature of who Ralph is, or is that a little bit by design too from your early exposure?

Ralph Barsi (14:41):
It's a little of both, but I've really leaned into the craft, so to speak, probably over the last 10 years. I've always been mindful that when you're addressing any audience in any venue, not everyone's down with you. They're just not down with whatever style you bring.

So if I were Mr. Rah-Rah at one point in my career, I don't know, 10, 20, even 30% of people in the room are like, "Whatever, dude." As I've matured and grown up a little bit, I've realized that it's like a room filled with tuning forks. A few people are tuned to my frequency, hopefully the majority are.

For those that aren't, even if I could leave behind some nugget of value that they can take and apply today, and if there is one thing that they've learned from whatever it is I'm talking about, then right on, I've served that mission.

Ralph Barsi (15:31):
I'm just a little more, like I said, mindful, aware, a little more sensitive now to the fact that not everybody's me or like me or has the same habits and disciplines that I do. That's taken a long time to really work on and figure out. A lot of self-awareness practice and keeping the ego healthy and in check.

So that answers the latter part of the question, Richard, where it has been by design of late, probably over the last decade.

Scott Leese (16:19):
As usual, Richard is talking while muting himself. This is a running joke, Ralph. It happens—

Richard Harris (16:24):
Twice an episode.

Ralph Barsi (16:26):
Apropos for what we're talking about. Sometimes you've got to just mute yourself.

Richard Harris (16:31):
It's kind of like when I look at my golf score and I'm like, "How many putts did it take me per green today?" I average almost three mutes per episode on the podcast, which is not good. But so now Ralph, giving people some tactics in management, particularly I think we are in the COVID world, we're in that work-from-home space.

What are some things you've had to adjust or learn from that you could give to other leaders or even to the reps to help them understand or manage their own day or schedule?

Ralph Barsi (17:10):
It's been tough. It's been really tough navigating the COVID waters. Things that have seen me through and help me help the team see this through is just a reminder that life is a series of temporary events. This too shall pass. We're not going to be in the midst of this forever.

So what are we going to do while we are in the midst of it? Also, when we do come out of it, we're going to be unique individuals having gone through and lived through and worked through these times. There's going to be generations behind us that will want to learn from us. "What was it like during 2020? What a crazy year in so many respects. How did you make it through?"

Ralph Barsi (17:47):
The last thing I want to do, or I want my team to do, is to talk to those generations and say, "Oh man, I complained a lot. My head was down low all the time. I tried not to inspire and fire up those around me who were going through the same thing. I was just not cool to people, not cool to myself."

I'd much rather have the opposite as our narrative. So I've really reinforced the fact that this is temporary. Also, I've encouraged people to journal, journal and talk to themselves if they need to get them through the next hour or the next day or the next week.

Versus really leaning on and relying on others—and there's nothing wrong with this, of course—to motivate and inspire them. It's really to get in touch with what's burning that fire within you and what's compelling you and pulling you towards your goals and your mission versus pushing you towards it. I think a lot of people sometimes just need to hear that in order to go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's something I should probably meditate on or pray about or really just reflect on to make it through."

Ralph Barsi (18:48):
Lastly is just we're playing the long game here, but we have to keep our world small. By doing that, we have to sometimes operate in 10-minute increments or 60-minute chunks. There's a former Navy SEAL named Chad Wright who talks about this philosophy of "Let's just make it to lunch," and just kind of break up the day.

"Let's just make it to lunch." Anybody can endure really tough stuff for four hours. When you kind of bring that kind of stuff into perspective, just all of a sudden you look back and you're pretty amazed at how far you've gone.

So it's things like that, Richard, to remind ourselves of to get us all through this. Also that we're a team. There's a big difference between being on a team and being a team. So help your peers out.

Ralph Barsi (19:34):
If you are doing great this month or quarter and you're on your way to quota or beyond, perhaps you should feel obligated to kind of turn to your left or right and help out your peers who might be struggling with leaving that great voicemail or fine-tuning their email copy, et cetera. If you can see things that they might not, lead by example and help them out so that you can all win together.

Scott Leese (20:18):
Well, one of the things you just said really resonates with me. I think you said his name is Chad, "Make it till lunch" kind of thing. We can endure anything for four hours. With all the health stuff that I've been through, I've done that in blocks of five minutes, not four hours or lunch before.

I just got to make it the next five minutes. I got to make it the next 20 minutes until the doctor comes in. I got to make it the next hour before I get the next pain medicine injection or whatever. So that part makes a ton of sense to me.

Scott Leese (20:51):
Here's the part that I want to challenge you on a little bit or learn more about. I'm not sure that we totally disagree, but I heard you say "reminding people that this is temporary." One of the things that has worked for me, I think at least, is very quickly when this all started back in late February, I flipped really swiftly to "This is the new norm and this is the way it's going to be for the indefinite future."

It was helpful to me because I didn't want to play this game of "Now we're good, now we're not, now we're good, now we're not," and get wrong expectations for myself and whatnot. I looked at it as like, "I need to survive this for however long it goes." And it sounds like you and I approached it a little bit different. Is that true? Did I hear it right?

And if so, can you elaborate a little more on why you viewed it differently and then maybe how I'm viewing it?

Ralph Barsi (22:03):
Sure. And I'll want you to elaborate too, Scott. I think you bring up a really good point. Just my philosophy has—it's not so much that I do think we will see our way through COVID, for example. I see it subsiding, and I don't know when, but I do see it happening.

I'm not dismissing that we'll be different individuals on the other side of this. But I do think that while we're in the midst of it, there are certain ways we can choose to handle it. It always comes back to there are certain things you can control in life, and one is your interpretation of events and your reaction to those events.

When I think about that and I think about a situation like the one we're in with COVID, I just remind myself and others around me that this is going to pass. So how are you going to handle it and how are you going to want to see yourself on the other side? So I don't know if that addresses the question. If it doesn't, ask it again.

Ralph Barsi (22:56):
Maybe it's different from how you're doing it or others are doing it.

Scott Leese (23:21):
I think it does address the question. I actually don't feel like we're thinking about it as dissimilarly as maybe I heard it the first time. I definitely think we will go back to some semblance of normal at some point in time.

I think for me, it was almost just protective or a defense mechanism for myself. I'm not going to get my hopes up that this is going to end in a week or a month or whatever. So I'm going to take action right now as if this is the new normal for the foreseeable future.

You said something there about—I can't exactly remember how you phrased it—it was like, "What are you going to do with this particular amount of time while all this is going on?"

Scott Leese (23:58):
Are we going to dwell on all the negative with it, or are we going to fight through? Are we going to be supportive and helpful and whatnot? My brain, for whatever reason, was able to flip very quickly into actionable steps. "This is the new norm. I'm going to help as many people as possible. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm not going to focus on when this is going to end. It will end when it ends."

And so I think we're sort of closer to being on the same page than I initially heard.

Ralph Barsi (24:45):
Yeah, I think you're right. I think we are closer to being on the same page. It kind of comes back to staying present, being in the present, just being in this little square right now, at this moment today, and then step into the next square when that presents itself, no pun intended.

Scott Leese (25:04):
Yeah. Do you feel like it's easier or harder to have some uncomfortable conversations with your team members and colleagues right now because of everything that's going on? Whether it's COVID or fires that are going on, or racial injustice happening all across the country?

I'm wondering if it's making some difficult conversations around performance easier for folks to have or tougher for folks to have. What do you think about that?

Ralph Barsi (25:39):
That's a good question. I have found it to be tougher. It's more difficult to have conversations like this with peers, colleagues because of the aforementioned as well as just how people are interpreting what's going on around the world and in their own respective lives.

I think I have a heightened sensitivity these days where maybe I didn't eight months ago because we were all together in the same office. Specifically with sales development reps, we're kind of in that bullpen environment, or we were. I could see people's dispositions and attitudes and work ethic on a regular basis. I had a pretty good understanding of how they worked or didn't.

So it was a little easier for me to have those types of conversations. Whereas now we're remote and you've got a lot of that macro stuff going on that you talked about. So there's some implicit fears, concerns, troubles that people are handling in addition to what they're being asked to do in the daily operation.

Ralph Barsi (26:35):
So I feel like I have to delicately hack my way through a lot of that macro stuff before we can get to the micro of, "Okay, we have to achieve our quota this month or quarter. This is what the investor thesis is of the company and our part in the puzzle, et cetera." But I have to go through some things first to get to that stuff, which makes it a lot harder.

Scott Leese (27:07):
We really got to be very precise in our navigation with all these things. The margin for error, if you will, it feels like it's shrinking a little bit. I totally agree with you that I think these conversations are harder to have.

I think that what has happened with some of us is our degree of empathy has never been higher. So we're aware and thinking about all these things on a deeper level than maybe we ever were before when we were in the boiler room kind of situation. What's interesting to me is it is possibly forcing us to evolve as leaders and particularly sales leaders in a positive way. Because you could make the case that we always should have been this way.

Ralph Barsi (27:59):
And I would make that case.

Scott Leese (28:01):
But we weren't. I wasn't 15 years ago, not even close. It was about 10 years ago too, sooner than 15 years. Thanks, Richard, for that one, for that big—but yeah, no, the point is we probably should have been thinking about these things a little more holistically and empathetically all along, and now we are.

So my question there is, will this continue? Will we continue, or will this fade away once things get closer to the old norm? Or is this a paradigm shift for us where sales leaders in particular now are going to want to lead this way and on some level have to lead this way or nobody's going to work for them anymore?

Ralph Barsi (28:57):
Yeah, I think it's the latter. I do think it's a paradigm shift. What it's going to come down to is the individual leaders leading by example, really illustrating that empathy that you're talking about and that sensitivity and that mindfulness. But also being able to tactfully throttle up and go full steam ahead. Because at the end of the day, we are still running businesses and we are still looking to drive those businesses to thrive.

Scott Leese (29:27):
We do still have numbers to hit.

Ralph Barsi (29:28):
We've got to hit numbers, and we still got to run the show here. Or maybe you're in the wrong line of work. But that is what we do. But yeah, there's a different, I think better approach that will be taken by most leaders that I'm already seeing adopted right now.

A lot of the leaders that I'm talking to, it's a great call to lead by example and to be selfless. Start thinking about your team. Start thinking about your prospects and your customers that you're talking to when you're reaching out to them. Be super authentic and it will resonate.

People have finely tuned BS meters and they know if you're being inauthentic in an email, on the phone, in a message, at a team meeting, et cetera. So keep it real.

Richard Harris (30:16):
So Ralph, I'm going to—particularly now I'm curious, but even throughout your career—answer first now, what mistakes have you made through the last six months at the managerial level? I don't mean to sort of—whether it's setting goals, not setting goals, coaching the wrong way.

What are some of the things? Because I hope that maybe people can learn from you and go, "Oh, you know what? I kind of did that and here's an answer to it," or, "Oh wow, my instincts were right that I didn't do that." I know you're perfect, but I'm curious if there's any mistakes you've made, particularly on the management side.

Ralph Barsi (31:02):
One mistake that I am constantly working on is investing in the number of stakeholders around the organization that are involved or cross-pollinate with a lot of the work that your team's doing. I think it's so critical and imperative actually that you drive a very strong interlock between key stakeholders in your business.

So if you lead a sales development team, you've got to be super tight, as best you can, with your demand gen leader. You've got to be super tight with your professional services and customer success, team sales, et cetera, because they all rely on one another. It's a two-way street.

If we go back to the band analogy, as a drummer, I have to be locked in with my bass player. We are the rhythm section that the band has to rely on in order to play a great song, perform well. The same applies to the work I'm doing every day.

Ralph Barsi (32:00):
I've been okay at it. I haven't been great at it, and I think it is a mistake that I have to repair quickly. Just make sure that I'm reaching out to Scott if he's my demand gen person, even once a week. Not necessarily to say, "Hey, Scott, look questionable MQLs this last couple weeks. I think the main indicators to why our conversion rate to sales qualified opportunity is dipping."

Versus instead of saying that, I should go to Scott saying, "Hey, what's on the docket for your team this month? What initiatives or mini-initiatives are you focused on so that we can help serve and support them? Oh, by the way, we could talk about MQL conversion rates too, but tell me what you're trying to accomplish so that we can help you try to accomplish it. Because we're going to be relying on you to help us get to where we're trying to go too."

I have to do a better job at that.

Scott Leese (33:02):
Yeah, that's a really good call-out, and I think it's hopefully very apparent to other sales leaders out there that we need to be aligned with marketing, we need to be aligned with CS. What is maybe less apparent that I'd love to hear your take on is, "Oh, by the way, we also have to be aligned with the VP of Finance and VP of Engineering."

What are some ways that you can pressure-test whether sales is in alignment with product and finance? What is a way or two that you can build that kind of rapport and synchronicity with the finance and product and engineering folks that you can do with CS and marketing? I think those ones get talked about a lot less than the CS and marketing.

Ralph Barsi (33:51):
I would think, if I understand what you're asking, Scott, in terms of the pressure-testing, number one, it comes from awareness. I think if sales is aware of the various program spends and budgets across the enterprise, they're going to be a little more mindful of what their next campaign might be or what their next spiff might be. Because they're hyper-aware of what program spend there is or isn't in the finance team, for example.

Then with respect to the second part of your question, one thing I've seen work in two different organizations now—we did this at ServiceNow, we also do this at Tray—is we host what we call Team Tuesdays. Every Tuesday from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM during the lunch hour, a representative from one of the business units across our company will sit with the sales development reps.

It could be a fireside chat, it could be Q&A from the team. It could be maybe they presented a couple slides on their background and then a little bit about their business unit.

Ralph Barsi (34:36):
But over time, when you look back, we've created this online repository of all the live presentation recordings as well as the decks that have been shared. You've got this trail of breadcrumbs now for not only the existing team but new hires, people in other business units across the organization to reference with respect to, "Hey, what does Scott's team do anyway?" Or, "I see Richard all the time, but I don't know what his organization does or really what their function is."

They can go back to these Team Tuesday recordings and they can hear Richard talking about his business within the business. Then they could see all the follow-up emails because every time a Team Tuesday speaker wraps up, we send them a very detailed thank-you that includes all the takeaways that all the people who attended that meeting got from that meeting. All the insights that they got and the information that they got they shared in their thank-you email.

Ralph Barsi (35:25):
Then we aggregate it. So we've got this line of bullet points of all the takeaways. Now you've got this catalog of information to share with anybody across the company as to what's going on in Scott's world, Richard's world, et cetera, so that everybody becomes one.

Richard Harris (36:24):
What do you see? It's interesting. You may think about something, and I hear this a lot, I think Scott hears it, is that, "Hey, sales needs to reach out to these other departments to build that relationship." How do we—should the other departments be reaching out to us too?

Ralph Barsi (36:52):
I think so, selfishly. But—

Richard Harris (36:55):
People push them away so hard that—

Ralph Barsi (36:59):
Yeah, I think a little of both. We have to—if you really know the business, that sales is responsible for bringing in revenue and that's where their focus needs to be. Sometimes you need to be a little more proactive, take a little more initiative in getting in front of them.

You also have to be aware of how people receive information and process it. Scott may prefer an email, you may prefer a quick video, a 62-second update. Others may want an audio recording. There are different ways people learn, as we all know.

So if you can hit them with all media to make sure that the message is getting across as to what's up in the sales development world or what's up in the sales world, I think it'll resonate with more people. Sometimes it's just informational.

Ralph Barsi (37:42):
When you send out that stuff, you cannot expect a response. But it doesn't necessarily mean people aren't processing it, absorbing it, learning from it. That leads us to just the whole topic of communication, which I think leaders could be better at.

Scott Leese (38:07):
Here's how I see that, Richard, if I can step in and try to answer the question as well, if you don't mind. I think yes, the heads of these other departments should be reaching out to sales as well. My experience is that while that may be the case, they're probably not going to. Therefore it's my responsibility as the sales leader to make it happen.

Ralph Barsi (38:30):
Love it.

Scott Leese (38:31):
I just assume that this burden of responsibility is mine and I have to make it happen. I am not going to rely on them to do it. Do I think that they should? Yes, I think that they should. But it's on me to make it happen. That's kind of how I think about it.

Which brings me to my next question, Ralph. I heard the other day somebody say, and I think it was Megan Bowen who's operations and CS-focused on the East Coast, but I think she said something to the effect of, "Since the eighties, sales has been king." Her prediction is that as the lines between sales and marketing and CS are kind of starting to blur now a little bit, and more focus is on value-based selling and the customer-first kind of mentality, that sales will no longer be king and will get kicked off the top of the mountain and be replaced by customer success within the next 10 to 20 years.

Curious if you've thought of this, have heard of this? Agree, disagree? I thought it was a really interesting take that she had.

Ralph Barsi (39:44):
I haven't heard that. I think it's an interesting take as well. I hate to break it to her, but she's part of sales too. Everybody is. So sorry, but sales is king, sales is queen.

At the end of the day, revenue solves a lot of problems. I do think that everybody is in sales in some respect. It does not matter what business unit you represent. If you're representing your own company as an entrepreneur or if you're representing the company that you work for, you're selling. That's my take on things. That's how I would interpret that.

So if she wants to feel that the spotlight's going to steer more towards customer-centric work, I couldn't agree with her more. I mean, I think even on the selling side, when we're dealing with prospects, we need to envision those prospects as customers of ours, even from the initial conversations that we have with them. Because we'll treat them better.

Ralph Barsi (40:30):
We'll be kinder to them, we'll be a little more focused on what problems they're trying to solve and how soon and how they stack-rank those problems, et cetera. So it's a long way of saying, I still think sales is king and queen of the roost. Sorry.

Richard Harris (41:00):
I love how that was probably the most pleasant disagreement I've ever heard. I don't think I've ever heard anybody more politely call out someone in disagreement than I just heard in that moment. So if there's one thing I walk away from this, it's that one moment.

Cool. What made you focus on the top of the funnel so much in your career?

Ralph Barsi (41:28):
The development of people. What made you—

Richard Harris (41:29):
Sort of go to that side?

Ralph Barsi (41:32):
Yeah, the development of people. Richard, typically, as we all know—

Richard Harris (41:37):
What does that mean to you when you say "development of people"?

Ralph Barsi (41:40):
Typically, as we all know, for the most part, the demographic of a sales development function includes people who are starting out in their career. If they're not starting out in their career, if they've been professionals for a couple decades, they're still technically starting out in sales as a sales development rep.

I have always appreciated the privilege and the opportunity to really teach, coach, and develop people to become who it is they're trying to become when they go to work. To help them really connect the dots and see the importance of the work that they're doing right here in the present moment and how it's going to positively impact themselves and others as they evolve in their career.

Ralph Barsi (42:19):
They'll look back on the skills and the competencies that they learned and shaped as sales development reps, and they'll see how they can pepper it into their daily operation 10, 20, 30 years later. We can go down the whole list of all the different competencies that they're learning and developing as SDRs and how that pays forward.

Scott Leese (42:52):
This is still why you do what you do then, because you must feel like the largest way for you to make an impact in developing people is to be building and scaling and leading these teams and organizations, I assume, right?

Ralph Barsi (43:07):
A hundred percent right, Scott. With love and respect to my sales colleagues who are in individual contributor roles, most of them kind of know what they know and they're doing what they do. They're tougher nuts to crack in terms of really influencing them.

Whereas with sales development reps, I think I could teach them well to go on to not only represent themselves, but to represent the three of us and everybody in our profession really, really well and with the highest standards and highest integrity as they move forward. Then in turn, what's really incredible is when they go on to pay it forward and impact even more people with some of the philosophies that they learned while they worked with me and some of the philosophies that they've developed on their own.

That brings me the most fulfillment, much more than a commission check as an individual contributor ever has.

Scott Leese (44:08):
It's fun to see your coaching tree, if you will.

Ralph Barsi (44:13):
Yes, exactly.

Scott Leese (44:15):
Grow. We're all old enough now where people that we've managed have now managed to become VPs and CEOs and CROs, and they've had time to continue to further development. I'm sure you can think of people who were an SDR for you or an entry-level AE who are now in big leadership roles doing amazing. Or maybe have even done better than any of us have done, right?

Ralph Barsi (44:40):
Yeah, I'll take it a step further. I mean, some have gone on to create their own yoga practices. Some have become Catholic priests. I mean, it's run the gamut as to who people have become. But it does not matter to me where they are today. The fact that they're influencing and impacting people in a positive way—that's the whole point.

So yeah, I'm pretty stoked to see it. I'm nearing age 50 here, and I know I'm aging myself, but it's something else to look back and just kind of see that coaching tree that you mentioned. It's in a great book, "The Score Takes Care of Itself" from Bill Walsh and Steve Jameson. If people aren't familiar with the coaching tree, it's really incredible to be part of.

Scott Leese (45:25):
Yeah, I totally agree. It's been a lot of fun to have conversations with people who used to be reps of mine 5, 10, 15 years ago, and they're in the same role that I've been in.

Ralph Barsi (45:38):
Yeah, yeah, it's awesome.

Scott Leese (45:40):
It's just really neat.

Ralph Barsi (45:41):
Are you in touch with a lot of them still, Scott?

Scott Leese (45:44):
Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's cool. Every single day type of thing. One of the things that I have tried to do a good job of—I think I do a good job of it—is really just my accessibility. I am available, whether it's text messages, emails, what have you. When I get back to everybody, it's something I spend a lot of time on, just kind of keeping some of those relationships alive, if you will. So I'm in touch with a lot of them, and it's a lot of fun.

Ralph Barsi (46:24):
I love hearing that. Hopefully listeners and viewers take note of that. That's a precious practice right there.

Scott Leese (46:31):
Yeah. Well also every now and then gets me in trouble with my kids or my wife who are like, "Put your phone down. Stop."

Ralph Barsi (46:41):
That's right. We have families. That's right. I forgot. I have a question for the two of you.

Scott Leese (46:48):
Perfect.

Ralph Barsi (46:49):
We're celebrating episode 150, right? So what's next? Is there a newer mission that you have now in terms of the rest of the conversations that you plan to have? Just talk to us about that a little bit.

Scott Leese (47:02):
I love this, Ralph. Just totally flipped. Ralph is the interviewer now. Richard, tell Ralph your vision.

Richard Harris (47:14):
So there are a couple of them. First of all, for the last three months, Scott focused us really hard on making sure we had more women, making sure we had more people of color, making sure we had a different dynamic than just the white guy. I think we were doing that anyway, but he put a hard focus on that.

We've also found people outside of sales a little bit more. We found someone who's in charge of mindfulness at Kaiser, which was a great episode. We've talked with different people, and when they're comfortable, explored challenges for women in sales, the sexism, the actual—

Scott Leese (48:03):
Audio is cut out a little bit. Richard's audio is going a little swirly with us. But he's talking about some of the intentionality that we had.

Ralph Barsi (48:19):
Yeah, I'm with you. I get it. I think it's really important, and it's also exciting to hear about. I really like the mindfulness leader. I wonder how many there are.

Scott Leese (48:35):
Yeah, I'm not sure how many there are, but Jason Gantt was his name. He was great.

Ralph Barsi (48:41):
Cool. What's Richard doing right now?

Scott Leese (48:45):
I have no idea. It just muted, and yet I can hear—

Ralph Barsi (48:49):
He's morphing.

Scott Leese (48:50):
Audio. Yeah. Richard, somebody has taken over your microphone. Richard, unplug it for a second.

Ralph Barsi (49:01):
Someone has infiltrated the episode.

Scott Leese (49:04):
Yeah, Ralph, to answer your question, we were supposed to be in Costa Rica the last two weeks running surfing and sales events.

Ralph Barsi (49:12):
Right, it was right now, Scott.

Scott Leese (49:14):
Right now, right after. My gosh, Richard.

Ralph Barsi (49:23):
Would it have been ending this coming weekend?

Scott Leese (49:26):
Yeah, yeah. We were going to do back-to-back weeks for the first time, and we were going to be in Costa Rica and we were going to be in Mexico. So we were going to go to a different country for the first time. So that's been a bit of a kick in the gut.

We just had a call last night. We were kind of talking about what are we going to do in 2021? Should we do a virtual surfing and sales thing or not? I think this podcast was kind of born out of—it was really Richard's push to make this podcast even happen—but it was born out of keeping the brand alive here.

Now, since we were not able to host some of these events, and we've been going at it really only since January, really. I think we did a couple episodes that were just Richard and I in December, but we cranked 150 out in eight and a half months, which is pretty high velocity, right?

Ralph Barsi (50:27):
Yeah, that's incredible.

Scott Leese (50:28):
I think certainly trying to get us to—we'll get over 200 for sure. I don't know how high into the two hundreds that will get, just increasing the audience. I think, kind of—no offense to you—but continuing to try to level up the quality of guests.

If you'll, we were talking last night about a dream list.

Ralph Barsi (50:53):
Right?

Scott Leese (50:53):
That's—

Ralph Barsi (50:54):
So funny.

Scott Leese (50:57):
Richard was like, "We should get Mark Cuban on the podcast."

Ralph Barsi (51:01):
Right. Well, we've got Barsi, that's great, but let's get so-and-so.

Scott Leese (51:05):
You're good for 150, Ralph, but 200, maybe we get Obama on here or something.

Ralph Barsi (51:11):
I love it.

Scott Leese (51:12):
Some things like that. But really this is a positive for us, at least. I'm spinning it that way. But the wait list, if you will, for surfing and sales events, whenever we can run them again, is outrageous.

Ralph Barsi (51:29):
Right on, man. That's awesome. That just tells me I need to get to one.

Scott Leese (51:33):
Yeah, hopefully. So we were like, "Hey, maybe we'll just go set up shop in Costa Rica for a month and just run four in a row." Kind of thing. Just turn it into WeWork, Costa Rica surfing and sales type.

Ralph Barsi (51:49):
That's awesome.

Scott Leese (51:50):
Yeah, we're just going to continue to try to have interesting conversations with interesting people and certainly have our eyes on when can we run events again, because we miss those events. They're a lot of fun, and it's a good business to run, by the way, for us as well.

Ralph Barsi (52:09):
Right on. Well, thanks for all you do for us, and I'm just looking forward to the subsequent episodes as you all level up.

Scott Leese (52:20):
We're on the hook now, Richard. I don't know if—

Ralph Barsi (52:22):
No pressure.

Scott Leese (52:23):
Your audio is working anymore, Richard, but we're on the hook here. So Ralph, real quick before we get out of here, and we want to thank Gong as a sponsor of ours again—they've been great to us—and Lead411. Check those two companies out if you're looking for any tools for your sales stack.

How can people find you, Ralph? Is there any project or cause that you're passionate about right now that you want to speak to for a second? And we'll wrap it up.

Ralph Barsi (52:54):
Yeah, thanks for asking. Two causes I would encourage people to check out. The first is Have a Ball. Have a Ball is an annual golf tournament and foundation for fighting cancer. That's definitely worth a look. It's haveaball.com.

The second effort that I've been invested in for some time now, it's called Charity: Water, and it puts fresh running water in villages that don't have it. It's just amazing to me to this day to see how many villages and how many people don't have access to fresh water. So it's an effort that I highly recommend people check out and participate in.

Very easy to find me. RalphBarsi.com is the best way. Then of course I'm on LinkedIn, it's just Ralph Barsi. Then Twitter is @RalphBarsi. But yeah, pretty simple to find me. If you write to me, like you said, Scott, I'll write back to you. I'll actually respond.

Scott Leese (53:52):
Great. Thanks so much, Ralph. It's been a pleasure, man, and look forward to getting together sometime soon when we're able to.

Ralph Barsi (54:01):
Same here, guys. Thanks so much for having me.

Scott Leese (54:03):
All right.