Hear the secrets of world class sales professionals
Trong Nguyen — Personal Agendas Trump Business Agendas
The power of building personal relationships
Trong Nguyen has spent most of his sales career in complex Enterprise Sales, and recently wrote a book called “Winning the Cloud: Sales Stories and Advice from My Days at Microsoft.” Trong has an incredibleContinue Reading …
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.
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.
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.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
Try to do a first flight out and then the first flight coming back what I’ve learned in the years is that getting that last flight out which may seem good for the family typically results in a delayed flight and you’re getting home at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and exhausted and not good for work or for family. And so the ability to get a good night’s rest and conserve energy because when you travel you can just wear yourself down pretty quick. And so I won’t do more than two nights either. That’s just more of a commitment to my family. I think I learned that from Mike Gampson who’s our V.P. of sales here globally for LinkedIn and that you know the commitment to the family is you know I’ll only be gone for two nights. Now there are going to be some outliers where I’ll be gone for a little more but you know for my wife just for her to know that I’ll be gone two nights out the week is good for her and so it becomes predictable and something as a family we can manage around. And then I try to jam pack the schedule as much as possible because both from a cost standpoint for the company. You know don’t want to waste their dollars to a belief. You know these when you travel and see clients I see them as just like huge leverage for momentum. And you don’t want to waste your opportunity especially when you’re calling within these enterprise companies where you have a lot of different contacts that you can meet with. There’s really no excuse for you not to have a set schedule. And then if I’m you know preparation is huge and obviously making sure that there’s an agenda laid out and that there’s quick follow up like I have a rule for myself 24 hours and you know I asked the my own AEs to to follow up within 24 hours because you know if you don’t you are going to lose that momentum because there’s so many different competitors calling and there are so many agendas floating around and you know there’s so much attention that you’re battling for and if if you lose kind of that again they’re recency theory with your clients then it’s going to be gone. And then at night like again I believe that people like to work with likeable people and so getting clients out and hopefully entertaining them or doing something with them outside of work I believe pays off. So I try to have something scheduled post 5 with clients as much as possible and if not I see it as a great opportunity to bond and connect with the team as well. So we’ll try to do some something something fun outside of work when we’re traveling and exploring a new city.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
Podcast wise you know I’ll do everything from self-improvement listening to things like Tim Ferriss to Michael Hyatt Art of Charm which sounds like a podcast that is like for pickup artists may have actually started that way but it really just understanding kind of human psychology. I do some Zig Ziglar type stuff but I also so people don’t think I’m too crazy on the business side. I listen to a lot of Barstool Sports podcasts and also Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History if there’s any fans out there I’m a huge fan of that. But my top one is probably Tim Ferriss. I think he just does a great job with interviews but also just interesting and differentiated information. Also my favorite is James Altucher Show. For those who are listeners but also spend a ton of time on audiobooks as well. I’ll switch back and forth between that and podcasts and those are. I’ll do a heavy like a month or two on podcast and I’ll do a heavy month or two on books. Other than that like I spend a lot of time in newsletters. I feel like that’s my best way to keep up to date on customers but also on what’s happening in the industry and then I’ll do a lot of Google Alerts in terms of like information I have to know so you know at the time it was any information I needed to know about LinkedIn that Google was crawling but also on Microsoft and so I’m getting every day as many updates as possible about our customers and so I really just try to keep myself ahead of even my customers in terms of knowledge about their company but also knowledge about their industry as well that would make me well informed when meeting with them.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
Two years ago I was the global AE of the year for LinkedIn I would say that was a big accomplishment for myself just given you know was based out of Chicago had a non-ademic book meaning I worked with the Jim Beams, the McDonald’s of the world which aren’t exactly consumer products lining up to to use LinkedIn for advertising needs because we’re much more business to business to be able to work through that and to attain a large client like Microsoft and to become one of the best AEs at LinkedIn and globally was a huge accomplishment for me both in pride and to see that my work and my theories in terms of sales had paid off but also for my wife at the time. Still today is my wife was super proud just to see. She knew how hard I was working at getting there in terms of definitely a lot of trial and error. That would be the first few years at LinkedIn to develop a certain process that clients respected and liked and to see that come full circle and to see high results and also be recognized for being the global AE of the year was a huge accomplishment.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
I wake up between pre I was definitely up between four and five. I love road cycling. So for me it was getting out the door and getting on my bike before six was a big thing but I also like to crank on some of my either my big ideas or email before I leave the door. There’s a bit of accomplishment I like to feel before I get into anything else and if I’m not doing email or working on something big I like to go over my plan again. I know some people might sound as if it’s crazy but for me it’s just like that’s where I’m best is in the morning and so I like to crank on the hard stuff I need to think about because come four or five I’m like crashing and so I know I have to get up and do it or I’m just not going to be as effective during the day and I’m going to have that five to seven to eight guilt that I didn’t get enough done.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
I think we’ve all heard the classic you know quote of always work for a great leader. Don’t work for a great company something to that effect. But you know there’s been times in my career where I’ve chosen a company over the leader. There was a big shiny brand that I went for versus a leader and I would say that that was a mistake that I’ll never do again. But the mentor standpoint you know for me at the time because I was a bit more introverted than most younger it helped me a time because he’s definitely over on the extrovert side and probably brought it out of me a lot more than I realized. But also was extremely kind and compassionate in the development main. I think he you know it was pure luck frankly getting such a good mentor I would like to say I was conscious at the time and liked him but he selected me and you know I think it was having compassion and understanding of my unique skills and I think he just did a great job of bringing them to me in such a short time. And I wish I wish I would’ve been more more selective or conscious of that decision especially even after that. I don’t think I realized at the time how great I had it but I would have. That’s one thing I guess I’d recommend that people be conscious of especially through the interview process and when you’re looking at leadership it matters so much. You know the results saying is is definitely there by making sure that you have a good leader who has a process but also has compassion to learn about you and understand your strengths and know how to put those strengths to use.
Clip from Episode 1: #1 LinkedIn Account Executive – Mike Dudgeon:
My key theme is I don’t want to oversimplify this but you know I try to keep things simple so for me as you know every business has a process and so I always saw myself as almost this independent business within a greater company. It first starts with understanding that there’s going to be business drivers and there’s going to be business hurdles for clients that they’re dealing with. They want to take advantage of their drivers and they want to lower their barriers as much as possible so they can overcome them. So knowing that I can be active in the market place in terms of listening from clients but also the Internet is such a such a great trove of information that you can pretty much walk into a client and understand their problems to be able to least derive some insights both with what’s happening on the internet what’s happening with their business by talking to them. But also LinkedIn is a tremendous resource in terms of understanding insights about their business as well.