🎙️Transcript: The Salesman Podcast

The Salesman Podcast
"How to Become UNSACKABLE in Your B2B Sales Job"
Will Barron, Ralph Barsi
November 8, 2020

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Summary

VP of Global Inside Sales at Tray.io, to explore what it takes to become truly "unsackable" or indispensable as a B2B sales professional.

The conversation couldn't be more timely, as it addresses job security concerns in an uncertain economic climate marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and fluctuating business conditions.

Rather than focusing solely on hitting quota, Ralph and Will dive deep into the multifaceted characteristics that separate A players from the rest of the pack—from consistent results and coachability to building external value and serving as a brand ambassador for both your company and the sales profession itself.

The discussion moves beyond simple quota attainment to explore how salespeople can build genuine career resilience through strategic value creation. Ralph emphasizes the importance of treating your territory like a business owner, documenting your contributions systematically, and becoming a trusted advisor not just to customers but to colleagues as well.

The conversation tackles practical concerns like how to document mentorship activities, the value of social selling done right, and why communication transparency can be just as important as deal execution.

Throughout the episode, both speakers share personal anecdotes about their own career journeys, making the advice both relatable and actionable.

The episode concludes with a brutally honest "rapid fire" discussion of what makes salespeople dispensable—from poor communication and lack of accountability to being a prima donna who doesn't serve others.

By inverting these negative traits, Ralph provides a clear formula for success. The overarching message is elegantly simple yet profoundly important: hit your target consistently, communicate effectively, maintain high integrity, and don't be difficult to work with.

When executed properly, these principles create a sales professional who becomes virtually irreplaceable in their organization.

BIG Takeaways

• Consistency Trumps Occasional Big Wins – While landing one massive deal per year might help you hit quota, Ralph emphasizes that consistent, predictable performance is what truly makes you indispensable. Organizations can plan around consistency and improve upon it incrementally, whereas sporadic success—even if it meets targets—creates anxiety for sales leaders and makes you harder to coach and develop. The ability to deliver results quarter after quarter, year after year, demonstrates reliability and allows your company to forecast accurately, making you a cornerstone of the business rather than a wild card they're never quite sure about.

• Master the Break-Even Point and Sales Learning Curve – Understanding when you transition from being a "consumer of value" to a "contributor of value" is critical for job security. Ralph references Mike Watkins' The First 90 Days and Mark Leslie's Harvard Business Review article on the sales learning curve to illustrate that companies make significant investments in salespeople during onboarding. The faster you hit your break-even point (closing your first deal, making your first referral, developing your first partnership) and the more consistently you contribute value thereafter, the more indispensable you become. This isn't just about your first 90 days—it's about continuously reminding yourself to evaluate whether you're contributing more value than you're consuming at any point in your tenure.

• Treat Your Territory Like an Entrepreneur Owns a Business – The most successful salespeople don't just manage accounts—they run their territory as if it were their own business, taking full ownership of profits, losses, and strategic decisions. This means becoming a trusted advisor whom customers, prospects, and partners actually tether themselves to for insights, observations, and guidance. When you serve your marketplace with this level of commitment and expertise, you become indispensable not just internally to your company but externally to your customers, creating a double layer of job security that's nearly impossible to break.

• Document Your "Unspeakable" Contributions – Many of the most valuable things you do as a sales professional—mentoring junior reps, helping struggling colleagues, doing ancillary work for marketing or customer success, providing guidance outside your base remit—often go unnoticed unless you systematically document them. Ralph suggests keeping a digital log or journal in Google Docs or Evernote that tracks not just your successes but also your failures and what you learned from them, the mentees you've helped, and the cross-functional value you've added. When it's time for your annual review or when redundancies loom, having this documented evidence to "slide across the table" can differentiate you from peers who may have similar quota attainment but lack the broader organizational value you provide.

• Become a Brand Ambassador Through Strategic Content Sharing – Social selling done right isn't about constantly promoting your company or product—it's about genuinely helping others in your role or those aspiring to your position by sharing valuable insights. When sharing content like articles or podcast episodes, don't just post the link; add your perspective on what resonated with you and provide tactical takeaways that people can immediately apply. Will shares his practice of taking screenshots of positive feedback and building a folder of evidence showing the value he adds to his community. This creates tangible proof that you're a resource to the marketplace and positions you as someone the company cannot afford to lose because you've built genuine influence and relationships that extend beyond your individual deal flow.

• Proactivity and Coachability Are Non-Negotiable A Player Traits – The best salespeople don't wait to be told what to do or how to improve—they proactively seek feedback, hold themselves accountable, and take initiative in their business within the business. During challenging times like the COVID pandemic, top performers talked directly to their customers to understand how they were navigating difficulties, cataloged common problems and critical business issues, and developed solutions and talk tracks to address them with new prospects. Equally important is coachability: A players are open to constructive criticism and actively want to improve, even if they don't always apply every piece of advice. This combination of self-directed learning and receptiveness to feedback creates a powerful flywheel of continuous improvement.

• The Simple Formula: Hit Target, Communicate, Don't Be Difficult – When asked about what makes someone dispensable, Ralph's inversion technique reveals the elegant simplicity of what makes someone unsackable. Don't be a poor communicator—communicate often, consistently, clearly, and cogently. Don't be unaccountable—show up, take ownership, put skin in the game, and approach your craft with passion. Don't be a diva—even if you're a high performer, serve others internally and externally rather than acting like the world orbits around you. Will adds the critical importance of never telling white lies (which compound into bigger problems) and of over-communicating if you're naturally inclined to be a "lone wolf" so leadership can see the work you're actually doing. The formula is deceptively simple but requires consistent execution: deliver results, maintain transparency, uphold high integrity, and be someone people genuinely want to work with.

Transcript

Will Barron (00:00):
Coming up on today's episode of the Salesman Podcast,

Ralph Barsi (00:03):
Number one, or very high on top of the list, would be your outcomes and results and the consistency of how you deliver those outcomes and results. It's easy for me to look back along my career path and easily call out, even from the early days of my career, who I have thought of as A players.

Will Barron (00:29):
Hello, Sales Nation. My name is Will Barron, and I'm the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world's most downloaded B2B sales show. On today's episode, we have the legend that is Ralph Barsi. He is the VP of Global Inside Sales over at Tray.io.

And on today's episode, we'll get into a topic which is incredibly important right now in this up-and-down, topsy-turvy, uncertain world that we're living in—this uncertain economy that we're living through. We're diving into how you can become an unsackable salesperson.

Everything that we talk about in this episode is available in the show notes over at thesalesman.org. And with that said, let's jump right into it.

On today's show, we're going to get into a topic. I don't know the answer to this question, but I'm going to pose it to you anyway, and this is what we're going to discuss on today's show. I'm going to ask you how to become unsackable as a salesperson. So the place to start with this, Ralph, is: Is that physically, feasibly possible?

Ralph Barsi (01:28):
Anything is possible. So it is possible and feasibly possible. I don't know if I have the answer to the question either, Will, but what I can do is just share from my experience—characteristics, attributes, traits that I have noticed over the years of people who I think are indispensable or, as you say, unsackable. That's a great word.

Will Barron (01:52):
Yeah, I think when we prepped the show, you used the word "indispensable," and I feel like that is what a manager would describe a salesperson as. But a salesperson, being slightly selfish about themselves, would probably be thinking, "Right, how can I crush my quota and how can I become unsackable?"

A business consultant would probably say "anti-fragile" or all these fancy ways of describing the same thing. But with that said, Ralph, if it's feasibly possible—we're both positive thinkers here, clearly—if it's feasibly possible, what starts you off with a bang? What's the most important element of becoming unsackable as a sales professional?

Ralph Barsi (02:29):
Number one, or very high on top of the list, would be your outcomes and results and the consistency of how you deliver those outcomes and results.

It's easy for me to look back along my career path and easily call out, even from the early days of my career, who I have thought of as A players. And one thing rings true among all the A players on my list, and that is that they were always consistent with results and outcomes, driving revenue for the organization.

If they're an individual contributor, if they're a sales development rep, for example, they were always booking high-quality meetings with consistency. And those high-quality meetings would become viable sales opportunities for the pipeline.

If they were leaders, they were recruiting, hiring, and even retaining the top talent in the marketplace. So those have been some of the patterns I've seen. It's just those consistent results and outcomes. And there's so much more beneath that or along with it that we could talk about.

Will Barron (03:42):
And let's split these two up, right? And I can give an anecdote as to why in a second. But which is: If you had to choose one of them, which is more important—consistency, or what I used to do, which is essentially do an okay year and then every now and again I'd score a massive sale which would dwarf all the rest of them?

And so I'd always hit target, but my sales manager would always be pulling their hair out over the fact that I might be missing it. Things might be going back and forth, and I'd always pull it out of the bag, maybe just by fluke and luck, at the end of the year. So which is more important from that perspective? Is it just hit and beat your target, or is consistency more important than that?

Ralph Barsi (04:19):
Wow, such a tough one to answer. It's such a subjective answer required for that question. Personally, I think consistency is key.

However, it really depends on the organization and where that organization is in the maturity cycle of a business's growth. So oftentimes they're at a point in the maturity cycle where it's okay to land the elephant, so to speak, once a year and bring home that walloping ACV amount against our ARR target, and that suffices, and it's onto the next fiscal year. You know what I mean?

But I'm a big fan of consistency just to mitigate and avoid as much as possible that scenario you just brought up where you can't sleep, you're losing sleep waiting for the contract to come in. So I like the consistency. It just gives me a sense of calmness.

Will Barron (05:16):
And it seems—so I've never really done sales management, so from the outside looking in—it seems like if I had someone who is consistent, we could improve them one, two, five percent, and eventually they would then consistently hit target. Versus I know with me, sales managers would get frustrated because, again, I'd hit that one, two big deals a year and the rest of it, I don't think they thought I was lazy, but they thought that I could be coached, I could be trained, I could be improved.

In reality, I was working on those large deals. What excited me, that's what made me interested in business-to-government sales. But we were selling medical devices here in the NHS in the UK. So I just wanted to get an actual expert's opinion or thoughts on that, because it seems like consistency you can do something with.

When someone is just seemingly lucky once a year but they hit target, that seems like potentially a bit of a burden as a sales manager.

Ralph Barsi (06:12):
Sure, it certainly is. And candidly, I haven't led a team of individual contributors in a good ten years. However, I've led sales development organizations and sales development reps who've become power hitters as individual contributors. So I have seen both sides of the fence and, of course, served as an individual contributor myself.

But I think what you said, Will, is a really nice segue into other attributes that we could talk about, and that is coachability. They've got to be pliable enough to accept constructive criticism and feedback and then turn it into better productivity on a daily basis, which obviously leads into quarterly performance and annual performance.

You've just got to be an active listener and open to feedback. And also, A players I've seen in my career—they want to improve. Very rarely have I met an A player sales rep who's kind of pushed back on any constructive feedback. They've always been open to it. They don't always apply what they're hearing, mind you, but they're always open to hearing it.

Will Barron (07:23):
Sure. And in turbulent times, like we're living through right now with the COVID pandemic and the economy going up and down and what that actually means for anyone who's in a small-to-medium business versus the enterprise and all these different variables—Ralph, what should salespeople be doing proactively on that training, learning, and being coachable front?

Should they be proactively going to their sales manager and asking for advice and trying to align themselves differently than perhaps some of the other colleagues who were just head down and plodding along? Is there value in proactively going about this as opposed to just receiving coaching when it's given?

Ralph Barsi (08:02):
Absolutely. And that's another strong trait of these types of salespeople—they are proactive. They do take initiative. They hold themselves accountable for their success or lack thereof, and they take ownership of their business within the business.

And while it is a great idea and practice to be leaning into your sales leaders for constructive feedback and guidance on how to improve their game, what I've seen happen even in COVID times from 2020 is sales reps are talking to their customers. They're learning from their customers how their customers are navigating these waters so that they can keep a catalog, mentally, of the most common problems or critical business issues that are surfacing during these really rough times.

And they're doing their best to frame up solutions to those problems. And it's also helping them with their talk track for prospective customers who are trying to make their way through these challenging times as well.

The best salespeople are spotting the patterns, and they're able to address critical business issues that new prospects are raising in conversations. I mean, it runs the gamut in terms of taking ownership, taking initiative, being proactive, working with internal resources like a sales leader, but also externally in terms of your customers and prospects.

Will Barron (09:41):
There's a couple of things here that tie together, and I honestly don't know your thoughts or where we'll go with this. You mentioned the business within the business, you mentioned internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and we've all had this cliché—every sales manager has told their salespeople that you should treat your territory as an entrepreneur. You're trying to grow it, you're trying to develop it. Or if you've got a list of customers, you're trying to treat it as your own business that you own.

Now, with all that said, again, in the age that we're living in where you can generate leads on LinkedIn, you can create content—I think a lot of forward-thinking organizations want salespeople to become, to a certain extent, thought leaders or experts in their space, and they can leverage that as well as the individual to generate leads and generate conversations.

With all that, Ralph, is it more true than ever before that salespeople should actively be treating their territories or their customers like an entrepreneur? And could you get to the point where you have so much content, you're generating inbound leads, your potential buyers want to speak to you because you have the expertise?

Do you think it's possible to get to a point where you become unsackable because you are, as an individual, just such a resource to the marketplace that your organization that you work for serves?

Ralph Barsi (11:00):
Absolutely, Will. You become indispensable—as you know, unsackable—through your great work. And while it's really important to be consistent with delivering those outcomes and results you and I talked about earlier, the real outcomes and results that you need to be delivering are in your marketplace—to your customers, to your prospects, to your partners.

And when you oversee a territory, for example, or a market segment or even a product line, and you take that business owner approach to your territory and really run your business within the business, being responsible for the profits and the losses going on in your patch, so to speak, you become that trusted advisor and that person that your prospects, customers, and partners actually tether themselves to.

They need your insights. They need your observations. They need your guidance in order for them to move the needle from X to Y in a given timeframe. And when you are doing that externally, you're indispensable internally so much earlier that your company just can't live without you when you're serving the marketplace as well as you are, keeping all those things in mind and actually practicing against them.

Will Barron (12:23):
Sure. Okay, so there's going to be some salespeople who have no problems with this next question, Ralph, and they're going to blow their own horn and they're going to be able to communicate this effectively, and they won't let anyone else get any sleep until they know how much value they're delivering to their customers. That's going to be a subsegment of the audience listening to this, right?

But there's also going to be another chunk, perhaps, who are more analytical, perhaps slightly more introverted—however we want to frame up the personality or even the role that they're in. For example, me selling some medical devices—it's quite difficult to get a testimonial from a surgeon because they're just so wrapped up in litigation and they're nervous about litigation that they don't want to recommend you as an individual for numerous cases. So it's difficult to get that.

Versus if you're selling accounting software, you can probably get someone, an accountant or a buyer, to give you a quick testimonial. So with that said, if we are—well, we'll make this real. Say that we're going into an annual review. Our company is doing okay, but we have kind of a sneaking suspicion, Ralph, that there's going to be a couple of redundancies. There's going to be a couple of people moving, shaking, whatever it is. Whether it's good or positive, there's going to be some change.

What do we need to take to our sales managers, our sales leaders? What objectively can we show them that's documented as us being unsackable?

Ralph Barsi (13:44):
That's a big question, so I'm going to try to break it up into pieces as well. First of all, if you're an individual contributor listening to today's episode and conversation and you're having trouble—let's say you are in the medical device industry and you're having trouble getting those testimonials or use cases from surgeons or the physicians that you're working with—the next best step I suggest is really leaning on accurate and current industry trends as well as executive priorities.

What are the priorities of surgeons or medical professionals today that you can leverage in conversations with prospects and customers in lieu of a said testimonial? As you mentioned, there's so many different resources online that you can go to to kind of gather insights and data to then share with your marketplace. So that's one suggestion I would make.

The second piece is about, Will, we come into a world where we do think some peers of ours are going to be made redundant and we have to differentiate ourselves on our team?

Ralph Barsi (14:57):
You have to keep in mind that businesses are making an investment in account executives and in sales professionals. And there are two concepts that I usually lean on when it comes to this topic.

The first is you must become a contributor of value sooner than later. You can only stay a consumer of value for so long. And once you hit that tipping point and become that contributor of value, you've hit what we've called the break-even point.

And author Mike Watkins talks about this in depth in a book that he wrote about a decade ago now. It's called The First 90 Days, where he talks about how a company makes an investment in you, and you're onboarding and you're learning the ropes, you're understanding the company's history, the marketplace that you're going to tend to, et cetera, and you're consuming, consuming, consuming value. But the second you close that first deal or make that first referral or do business with that first partner in developing a channel, you've hit that break-even point and you're now a contributor of value.

Ralph Barsi (16:09):
And it also reminds me of a concept called the sales learning curve. This was published in the Harvard Business Review—oh geez, 2004, maybe 2005—from a gentleman named Mark Leslie. And Mark, I had an opportunity to hear speak about the sales learning curve at a luncheon several years ago, hosted by Sequoia Capital. At the time, they were one of the investors in a company that I represented. So I had the privilege of going to this luncheon and listening to Mark talk about the sales learning curve.

Essentially saying the same thing—that a company needs to see return on the headcount that they're investing in the go-to-market organization sooner than later and need to see that return consistently over time.

So if you parachute into a new organization, or even if you want to call today day one in an organization that you've been part of for some time, remind yourself of these concepts. How soon did I hit the break-even point, and how consistent am I in being a contributor of value? And number two, have I really illustrated the sales learning curve to the best of my ability?

And when you're mindful of that and actually practicing towards it, you'll become indispensable and unsackable without question.

Will Barron (17:31):
Going a step further with this, Ralph—if we think of the inputs and outputs of a salesperson, we're going to just massively objectify myself and the audience here for a second. On year one, if we're expecting X return, is year two linear from year one? As in, is it X return plus a little bit, and then year three is X return plus a little bit more? Or should this be more logarithmic? As in, should it shoot up? As in, the salesperson in year five or ten should be delivering way, way, way more value than they were in year two or year three.

So what I'm getting at is: Do we just need to increase our value gradually over time, or does our value need to compound over the time that we're in the organization?

Ralph Barsi (18:18):
It depends, Will, and I've seen both in practice. I lean towards the former, where three to five years out, there's just gobs of value coming from this individual contributor.

Now, there's an assumption made, though, if we're going to go that path, and it is that more and more responsibility might be granted to that individual over time. There's obviously going to be a lift in compensation as well for that individual. There may be a promotion in there for that individual. There's a lot of different variables that we can consider.

But ideally, and in my experience, I think that three-to-five-year plan is the way to go. And when you take a look at that three-to-five-year plan, it kind of begins to answer path two, which is your value and the return that you provide the company could be compounding over that three-to-five-year term or more.

Ralph Barsi (19:12):
A lot of sales reps—I'd be curious to know, you may know this, Will—what the average tenure is, for example, in the SaaS industry or even in the medical hardware industry, what the average tenure is of an individual contributor. I think in SaaS it's about two and a half years. So oftentimes you don't even get to that three-to-five-year mark. They're in and then they're out and off to another greener pasture.

But again, as I said at the start of our conversation, in my experience, some of the best sales leaders that I've worked for have been able to retain those account executives for far past five years.

Will Barron (19:55):
I'm going to totally butcher the source of the data, so I won't include the source. We can Google after the fact and put it in the show notes. It was just over two years in SaaS selling technology products. But I think that's slightly skewed in that a lot of SaaS roles, you might start off as an SDR, and then there's a natural progression.

Versus in my medical device days, you were just a device rep, and then you were a senior device rep doing the same job just on more money. With a, rather than a three-series BMW, you get a five-series BMW. So maybe there was more incentive to stay in the same company in SaaS or tech sales, but you've got different job roles that might skew some of the data there.

And that's exactly what I was going to ask. Is it a competitive advantage then, Ralph, in a culture where people are seemingly changing jobs every one, two, three years? Is it an advantage in an environment like we're in right now where people may be getting made redundant to have been in an organization for that bit longer? Does that put you at an advantage if there are redundancies being made?

Ralph Barsi (20:53):
I think so. Are you speaking in terms of you're an individual contributor that's been made redundant but you've been in the organization for quite some time? Or you've not been made redundant and you've got that on your track record that you've been part of the organization for quite some time?

Will Barron (21:12):
From the context of, we're—it's the national or the national sales manager's on the territory and he's going around doing a yearly review of everyone, and we know someone's going to get sacked for whatever reason, good or bad. If we know and we're in the middle of the pack—say maybe we're doing middle-of-the-pack numbers-wise—and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I do feel like if you've been there that little bit longer, you've just got that little bit of extra experience.

Maybe there's cognitive bias here of the company's invested more into you at this point and so they don't want to let you go. Maybe there's biases involved in this as well. But I feel like someone who's been there four or five years is seemingly, on paper at least, going to be a better investment than someone who's only been there two or three.

Ralph Barsi (21:54):
I'd agree, Will. Again, with the assumption that this person's been consistently delivering throughout their tenure there, they're the ones who we would in this case see as indispensable—at least in the present moment—enough to not make them redundant.

And it might be a nice segue into another trait of some A players who are in that situation. It's not only are they delivering results consistently, taking ownership, and being proactive, running their business within the business, but they're also serving others—not just externally in the marketplace, but internally.

They're helping a lot of the up-and-comers who are currently sales development reps. They might be helping some lower-performing account executives. They might be doing some ancillary work for maybe the marketing team or even the customer success organization.

And again, they're seen as that trusted advisor. We talked about this internally—their peers and colleagues know that they can lean on Will if there's a mentorship opportunity, for example. Or you might be struggling in your territory and sowing the seeds in establishing new relationships. And Will has been seen as an expert at that in multiple territories, for example.

So, Ralph, why don't you talk to Will? And Will would find that amenable and get on the phone, no problem, to figuratively put his arm around you and help you out. That's another great trait I've seen over and over and over again—these high-performing account executives will actually pause to help out their buddies.

Will Barron (23:34):
For sure. That's perfect. Okay, so with that said then, Ralph, let's get real practical here. Let's say someone in the audience does have this annual review coming up, and they get a little bit sketched out over the fact that their job might not be secure even though they've been hitting target.

How do they document the fact that they've been mentoring other people? How do they document that they are—you've used this word a number of times—that they have accountability and that they have ownership? How do we build, even if it's a little bit of a document that we can slide across the table to our sales manager, versus just otherwise, it's kind of, "Well, he said this and she said that, and I helped this person." What would you like to see in some kind of documentation of this?

Ralph Barsi (24:18):
Sure. Well, first of all, go with God, but back it up with data. You know what I mean? And to your point, Will, you might want to start—if you're not yet—you might want to start keeping a log or a journal, whether it be in Google Docs or Evernote or even on a piece of paper that you hold digitally somehow, to literally do that.

Maybe pull out the piece of paper like this and slide it across the table when you're at a pivot point where you've got to prove yourself, or perhaps that happens in a QBR, and it's the final slide and you start to share what you've chronicled over your time with the company that's kind of outside of your base remit that you're responsible for.

And when you're keeping a log of not just the successes in terms of deals that you've helped close, but the failures as well and what you've learned from those failures and how you've illustrated resilience and kind of dusting yourself off and coming back, I think that goes a really long way.

And if you also include on that list several mentees that are up-and-comers in the company, that too goes a long way. "Oh, I didn't know that you were doing that. I didn't know you'd been mentoring Will for the last two quarters. We've seen a lot of uptick from Will's performance over the last six months, and wow, that's great. Didn't know that you were mentoring him or her."

I think that's huge. It's the unspeakable stuff that really counts more often than not.

Will Barron (25:57):
And I think a layer of unspeakable—especially if you are, I hate the term, we will dive into it, it's another conversation for another time, but "social selling." If you are producing or sharing content on social, something I've started doing this year is if I get a nice comment of, "Oh, that was really helpful, Will," or "I need to look further into this," or anything like that—anything positive—I've been taking a screenshot of it.

And just on my desktop on the office computer, I just throw it in a folder. And it started off just two or three kind of mediocre—you've added a little bit of value here. And then it's five, six. Okay, well, there's still no one's calling me the next coming of Jesus or anything like that. No one's throwing parades for the content I'm posting. But now the folder literally has thousands—I think it's over a thousand screenshots in there.

Will Barron (26:44):
So then you go—and clearly I'm producing more content than probably any of the audience—but that might be 50, it might be a hundred. And just that, on a slide at the end of a quarterly business review or an annual sales review, whatever it is, just that shows that you are adding more than what the numbers show and that you're adding that value to a community of people that are buying from you. It's almost intangible.

And the only way I can figure out to track it and add an objective layer to it is to take a screenshot of a comment, an email, or anything like that. But I feel like that has tremendous value. And I know for me, when I now look at this folder, there are too many screenshots and images to actually run through. I probably need to get one of the team to go through at some point and throw away anything that's just me getting my ego scratched and actually the person appreciating the value.

But that's a resource in its own, right? So if you are doing social selling, if you are even just giving value over email, there's probably loads of opportunities to grab things like that, right?

Ralph Barsi (27:47):
Oh, absolutely. So you become a brand ambassador, Will, not just of yourself but of the company that you represent and even our profession at large. And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Jim Rohn, which is, "The more value you add to the marketplace, the more valuable you become in the process."

And just taking you, for example, you and I last met on your show, like I said, it was probably four years ago now. And if I just visit your YouTube page alone and start going through the catalog of videos that you've produced and the different discussions you've had with the different people in our profession, it's astounding in such a good way.

So you, my friend, have a very good problem in that you now need to index and categorize all that work that you've done and all those screenshots and all those names that you've been able to have great conversations with.

Ralph Barsi (28:46):
And therein lies the increase in your value. And I think a lot of salespeople who are dabbling in social selling or want to be a little more active in social media need to understand that it's not always about touting your company, touting the company's history, touting the latest iteration of your product line. While it's fine to mention that, instead, set an example of, like you said, really helping out people who are maybe in your role or people who are aspiring to become the role that you are today. And get strategic, but also get tactical in the content that you are sharing.

If an article, for example, or even a podcast episode appeals to you enough to want to share it with your network, give us some tidbits as to what appealed to you. At minute 22, when Will mentioned this, it reminded me of this, and you need to keep in mind boom, boom, boom. And now take action on it in your own world.

That just goes much further than just sharing the episode or sharing the article or sharing news and information about your company. Keep it about all of us out here, and you'll do just fine and start to notice that trajectory lift up.

Will Barron (30:12):
No one's ever said that. That is absolutely brilliant, Ralph, because inevitably, when I first started the show, I had to explain to a lot of people what a podcast was. But there's inevitably now a podcast for every industry, every niche. If there isn't, you should probably create it for your own niche. If you're in a space that doesn't have that voice, you can become the voice very easily.

But all you have to do, as you said, get the podcast, listen to it, break it down, and then you become an advocate for someone else's content, and then they're going to promote you. I've just had an interview with a young lad who's just commented on everything I've done for the past 12 months. He's come from nowhere, and now he was on the show.

And I've had people who've written five, six books who I won't have on because I don't see the value that they can provide in real time for the audience right now as we are in 2020. So just doing that alone is a content strategy for salespeople—just to be the beacon of news and insights for people who are too busy to consume all the content and all that podcast content on their own.

Ralph Barsi (31:16):
Well, Will, you don't even need to tell me that. That must have been very flattering to speak with that individual and just learn how much they learned from you and your content. And it's a great reminder to all of us that whether you like it or not, you're always setting an example—always setting an example.

People most times won't ever tell you the example that you're setting. So hold yourself to high standards and deliver what you think is valuable to others so that they can take it and learn from it. Whether or not they actually respond to you or share their feedback or even thank you, it shouldn't matter.

Just rest easy knowing that you're putting a lot of goodness into the world by way of your content and the way that you're sharing it. And if more people do that, we're going to have a pretty good next couple of years. You know what I mean?

Will Barron (32:11):
For sure. Okay, we'll wrap up with this. We've covered all the positive stuff. Let's touch on—we'll do rapid fire, Ralph—the negative things. What makes you, other than missing your target, what makes you completely dispensable as a salesperson?

Ralph Barsi (32:25):
Oh boy. Well, yeah, I love this. That could be a really good answer for people who are wondering, "How do I become indispensable?" Simple. Just invert what you think a crummy salesperson would need to do to be dispensable, and you've got the formula.

So things that come to my mind include: Be a poor communicator. Don't communicate often. Don't communicate consistently. Don't communicate clearly or cogently, for that matter, and things will not bode well for you.

Second is don't show up. Don't be accountable. Don't take ownership. Don't put some skin in the game and really approach your craft with passion. Don't wave the flag or rally around the mission of the company or the mission of the team within the company. Instead, go your own way.

There are a lot of great sales reps out there that The Challenger Sale methodology would call "lone wolves." Solution Selling would call them "eagles."

Ralph Barsi (33:32):
They're the ones that even though they may be keeping a lot close to the vest in terms of their day-to-day practice, they are present. They are there for their teammates, et cetera. They're not atop the mountain kind of doing things their own way. If they were that, it doesn't matter how consistent you are with the results.

If you are a diva and the world orbits around you and you're not there for others and you're not serving internally and externally, that's a great way to be dispensable as well. I mean, we can go forever on this. There's so many obvious traits, I think.

Will Barron (34:15):
Sure. Okay. Well, a couple from me, and we'll wrap up with this. And I used to do, maybe not a lot, but I've caught myself doing it in the past, and it's something I had to train myself out of. Don't tell white lies. If you've done something wrong, suck it up.

Especially if it's internal, if it's a customer, I feel like it's easier to let go and say, "Oh, sorry, I screwed up." I used to, when I first got into sales, kind of like 10, 12 years ago, I'd make a mistake and I'd try and cover it up internally. I didn't want to look stupid in front of my sales manager. I cared what they thought of me.

Nowadays, I care less what people think of me, and my ego is such that I'm happy to say I've messed up. But I used to tell white lies that used to then cause more white lies and then more trouble, and then you eventually get found out. So no white lies.

Will Barron (35:01):
And then something you kind of touched on there, but I'll dumb it down for anyone who is like me who's listening, Ralph, and that is: Don't be a pain. Don't be awkward. If you are that lone wolf, over-communicate. Because again, this is something that I used to fail on.

I would be head down. I'd be getting the deals done. I'd be, again, pushing for these huge deals once or twice a year, but I would not communicate. I thought I was communicating, but I wasn't communicating that I was working. And I had sales managers who thought I was just off skiving, which then got my back up because I'm working really hard.

But it was because my perception of appropriate communication wasn't high enough. And so I had to force myself to communicate what I was doing. And then everyone was happy. They could see the transparency there, and they could see that the job was actually getting done.

Ralph Barsi (35:47):
That's right. Yeah. You have to leave behind that trail of breadcrumbs for people to see and know and believe in what you're doing. And I could not agree with you more and emphasize more the importance of high integrity and high standards. That's a big one in my book.

And I would also add, Will, just overall attitude and disposition—the way you show up, the tone you use when you're speaking with people. And that goes for even in your writing. There's a tone that people are going to notice, and they'll vibe off of you. And you want to lead by example, no question.

Will Barron (36:28):
Yeah. I love the way that most of this show could be summed up as: hit your target, communicate, and don't be an idiot. Is that fair to say?

Ralph Barsi (36:37):
Pretty simple formula, but it works. Unsackable.

Will Barron (36:41):
Love it. Well, Ralph, tell us a little bit about Tray.io and then tell us where we can find out more about you as well, sir.

Ralph Barsi (36:47):
Oh, I love it. Thank you. So really easy to follow: Tray.io. That is the URL that you would type in to take a look at us. But essentially we're helping a lot of businesses with the problem of integrating and automating all the components of their tech stack and driving automated workflows across their enterprise.

So I've been at Tray for a little over a year now, overseeing their inside sales organization. Right now we have offices in the UK and in the United States, namely in San Francisco, and I'm just having a blast. It's comprised of a lot of really sharp, good people, and that's who you want to surround yourself with.

If you want to follow me, it's very simple. On LinkedIn, it's Ralph Barsi. Twitter is @RBarsi. And you can also check out my blog, specifically the projects I've done in the past, again, talking about leaving behind this trail of breadcrumbs of value for the marketplace. It's ralphbarsi.com/showyourwork. And it's "show your work." But yeah, that's how you can find me, Will. Pretty easy.

Will Barron (37:55):
Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to all that and a transcript to this episode over at thesalesman.org. And with that, Ralph, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise, and I'll make this promise to you and the audience now that we'll get you back on in less than four years next time around, mate. And with that, I want to thank you again for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.

Ralph Barsi (38:10):
Looking forward to it. Thank you.