Sales Success Stories

Hear the Secrets of World Class Sales Professionals

Clip: Trong Nguyen’s Morning Routine

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Clip from Episode 25: Trong Nguyen – Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & “Winning the Cloud”:

Usually up by 5:00 in the morning and I’ve got this routine now down pat I make my coffee. I turn on my Bose noise canceling headset turn on my tunes and I start working away at that deep thought for a good two two and a half hours or so and then from there I start planning my day. I’ll do prep for all of my meetings for the whole day and what I want to accomplish and then from there I just start it and it usually probably I’m in meetings from 9:00 in the morning right through till 5 or so. And then if I have dinner meetings I go to those.

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Clip: The realities of doing big deals for big companies

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Clip from Episode 25: Trong Nguyen – Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & “Winning the Cloud”:

What I found is like when you work in a big big company you know take the Oracles the IBMs the Ciscos the Microsoft’s of the world. Right. And you’re dealing with a really really complex deal complex offering that you’ve got that’s going to cost customers a hundred million dollars. I would say half the time that you spend your time trying to sell this internally to kind of get everyone in the same direction. The other half is with the customer.

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Clip: Complex Enterprise Sales Example

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Clip from Episode 25: Trong Nguyen – Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & “Winning the Cloud”:

I’ll give you an example. This is one of my biggest and complex deals with a large Canadian bank. And if anyone’s ever worked in banking before you’ll know this right. So picture a large global bank. They have so many different lines of businesses they have so many different CIOs they have so many different constituents. So when you’re going to try to sell to them it’s actually just not one person it’s a whole committee and group of people that you actually have to influence. And they all have different needs and requirements and what they want to do as a part of the business. So you’ve got to convince all of them to want to go to this deal with you. And then you’ve got to get through procurement you’ve got to get through legally you got to get through compliance. There’s so much regulatory compliance that’s involved here. But not only in one country like Canada but you actually have to go through European regulatory and compliance as well as American regulatory compliance because they are global in nature. Right. So you have to do all of that with the customer and then you actually have to do the exact same thing internally at Microsoft in your company that you work for because Microsoft is organized the exact same way. And so that level of complexity inside and outside of the customer it was really really challenging.

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Clip: Work-Life Balance in Sales

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Clip from Episode 25: Trong Nguyen – Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & “Winning the Cloud”:

I bought in to this whole notion about work life balance. I think like a lot of other people which is you know you want it all. And what I’ve realized is that I don’t think that’s actually the case. You can have it all but you just can’t have it at the same time. And what I found out is that you know there’s going to be ebbs and flows. So at certain points in your life your personal life is going to be very very important to you so you put that on the front burner at certain points your business life is going to be really important you’re closing a major deal you’re doing something game changing. And then that becomes the priority and focus for that kind of period of time. And you know if you want to win there price to be paid for it and there’s just no way around that you know when you look at the true champions the people who actually won it like Michael Jordan who’s won it multiple times at the highest levels. He paid the price for that. Right. He practices every day he works his butt off to get to that level and it’s no different than what we do in sales right. If you want to win you’re going to have to put the time and the effort into it. And I think it’s every one individual decision whether they decide it’s worth it or not. But winning costs.

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Clip: Honesty is the best Approach in Sales

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Clip from Episode 25: Trong Nguyen – Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & “Winning the Cloud”:

You know it’s funny when I started in sales and I had a lot of different coaching from different people and they all said to me listen you can’t be honest with the customer just tell them what they want to hear. Go close your deal and then move on. And what I found out was that wasn’t necessarily the best advice. And as kind of went through my career and journey and started dealing with the higher level executives the C-suite and a lot bigger companies what I realized is that honesty is the best policy. You know I’ll give you an example. When you deal with the top c-level executives at their level I mean there’s probably six or seven levels of management below them. There’s so much that gets filtered when it gets up to them that you know a big problem at the beginning. By the time it reaches them you know they’ve solved world hunger and world peace. At the same time and so when I go in there I’m just completely honest and transparent with them about it. And I tell them what I think the real issues are. And I tell them you know don’t take my word for it check it out for yourself. And invariably they do check it out and they find out that hey you know what it is actually pretty right on spot on in my assessment of it. So that’s why I honestly think today being honest is your best approach to sales.

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Clip: Mike Dudgeon’s Challenge to Improve Sales Results

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Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:

I would challenge them to be the best version of themselves. You know I think it first just starts with understanding yourself what motivates you what are your strengths what are your weaknesses. I know there’s a great book out there Strengths Finder by Jim Roth I believe. Have you read that one? You know years ago but yes years ago. Yeah. You know it’s a good place to start it’s just understanding yourself. Two is understanding like what is your process. How do you go about developing your ideas for your customers. How do you go about developing your insights for them but also kind of what we talked about before is understanding when you work the best. Are you at your best in the morning. Is it the evening are you a night owl. Do you need like complete peace and quiet to work. And then three know how you’re going to deliver your recommendations or proposals to your client and what shape or form. For me it’s always I do my best when I’m in person with clients some people maybe do better over the phone. Know where you do your best work in terms of delivery. And so that will be my challenge you just figure out from yourself internally how do you best go about doing the role of sales in knowing yourself knowing the way that you’re optimized and what you truly have fun at and deliver that. And then when looking back over it the thing for me has always been Am I hitting my marks internally in terms of revenue but also am I having fun and coming across as fulfilled and for me it’s always been the curiosity of the job. But what’s been coming on for me has been the ability to take more and more risk. And so I know I’m having fun and I know when I’m doing that I’m highly differentiated and more valuable to my customers.

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Clip: Selling Internally and Differentiating Yourself

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Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:

The hard part that’s probably happening at that time is you’re not differentiating yourself within the organization. So starting to look at are you selling up. You know depending on where you want to go with your career assuming that maybe they want to go into being the top seller or to be into management I think is recognizing that internal selling is as much as we don’t want to do it. You have to do it in terms of getting recognition and that goes back to when I was talking about helping a client get to their core KPI but also making sure that it’s marketed within that organization do the same for yourself and do it within what you’re comfortable with. Like I was never a big show like extroverted but I did it with in a way that I knew that I least was getting recognized for my efforts. And two is you got to do things that that go above and beyond your core selling ask from the company. And so that’s working on other projects that may not be related to your clients but things hopefully that you’re interested in. I would say take on side projects that help the company help your peers but also help your manager as well. Will help you get recognized as someone who thinks possibly like a manager or thinks like a senior seller so that you’ll get that recognition hopefully down the line.

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Clip: Process > Progress > Success

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Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:

I feel like process gets you to progress which gets you to success and so you have to be disciplined but also know that like it’s not going to be a pretty kind of 9:00 to 5:00 process and you’re sometimes going to have to wake up at 4:00 you’re going to have to work a few hours on Saturday and Sunday to get you there. And so yeah I guess you would think I’m crazy by a working such early hours. But also you know working on Saturday and Sunday but it’s not like I’m crazy working on Saturday and Sunday. It’s just a few hours before anyone’s up to knock a few things out so that you know I have a sound strategy going into the next week.

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