“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

I can’t think of a more appropriate quote for this week’s guest. As you can tell from the intro, I’m a huge fan of Ralph Barsi.  Below, Ralph compiled the notes, links, books and takeaways from our conversation so you can put the ideas into action today! As you can see, he went way above and beyond to make this useful. The sign of a true professional. 

Show Notes:

Connect with Ralph Barsi: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Website | Email

ServiceNow: Provides service management for every business unit in the enterprise.

Glassdoor: Search millions of jobs and get the inside scoop on companies with employee reviews, personalized salary tools, and more.

AA-ISP: The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals.

InsideSales.com published research in 2013 that showed inside sales growing 300% faster than traditional field sales.

Slide 5 of
this presentation shows the inverted org chart / pyramid and illustrates servant leadership.

Adopting a “beginner’s mind” comes from philosophies in the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.

“The more value you add to the marketplace, the more valuable you become”
is a quote influenced by Jim Rohn. He talks about it in this seminar (at the 13:44 mark).


Ask open-ended questions
and watch how much you’ll learn. Slide 15 of this deck has great examples.

Learn about establishing a performance plan here.

Sales Hacker
is focused on building and shaping the future of sales through educational, actionable, and unbiased content and events.

ExecVision provides visibility into conversations happening every day throughout organizations, giving way to a new set of analytics – Conversation Insights.
ExecVision’s Call Camp is a monthly session dedicated to deconstructing real calls to discover what works, what doesn’t, and how you can improve performance.
Learn about LinkedIn Groups here.
Google search “inside sales podcast” or “sales development podcast.”
Take a look at the titles of The Sales Development Podcast episodes in iTunes.

This is one way Ralph Barsi
organizes notes.


In January 2015 Ralph created a webinar called
Best Sales Development Tools to Use in 2015. David Dulany was a panelist on that webinar.


There are
four cornerstones most sales development leaders work from:

  1. Strategy

    • What are the outcomes this team is after? Generally, it’s to drive revenue pipeline and a people pipeline.
    • One goal is to coach reps to become contributors of value as fast as possible. This concept, called “The Breakeven Point” is described in the book The First 90 Days.
  2. People

  3. Process

    • The best sales development teams adhere to service level agreements, or SLAs.
    • “Losers have goals and winners have systems” is explained in this article.
    • How to reverse engineer your number (or quota) is explained in this article.
  4. Technology

    • Sales development leaders are focused on building a strong sales stack.
    • What tools do we have in place that will make our sales development reps efficient and productive so they can create repeatable, viable revenue pipeline?

You become indispensable through your work. This is explained well by Russell Simmons in this interview.  

Build an ideal
LinkedIn profile with help from this article by Koka Sexton.


Use tips from
this article to run a Quarterly Business Review as a Sales Development Rep, or “a QBR as an SDR.”


Learn more about
GrowthX Academy here. David and Ralph both mentor for the Academy.


Read Ralph’s article titled
“The Secret to Becoming an A-Player” to learn how A-Players create systems for winning. He talks about Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors prepares for games.


There is no finish line
was a popular ad campaign for Nike in the early 1990’s.


Begin with the end in mind
is explained in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.


Learn as if the next day you’ll need to teach someone what you’ve learned. Document your notes in
Evernote or Google Docs.


Ralph Barsi’s
Five Philosophies:

  1. Get serious about your career; decide today to be a big success in everything you do.
  2. Success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person. (Hear it here.)
  3. You’re not here to survive this, you’re here to take charge of it. (Watch it here.)
  4. To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
  5. Student: Master, I am discouraged, what should I do? Master: Encourage others. (Zen proverb)

DJ Khaled: Motivational Words of Wisdom
Vist ralphbarsi.com and subscribe. Ralph will email you a boat load of valuable content for free.
Learn about the Gable Heart Beats Foundation and consider supporting our cause. We raise awareness and work to prevent sudden cardiac arrest. Donations go toward placing AEDs in school gymnasiums and on sports fields, as well as funding heart screenings.

People Mentioned

Steve Dodsworth
Steve Richard
Michael Watkins
Scott Adams
Stephen Curry
Brian Tracy
Jim Rohn
US Navy SEALs
Steve Prefontaine
DJ Khaled

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