25: Trong Nguyen - Enterprise Sales Success at Microsoft & "Winning the Cloud"

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm.

0:21 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of ViewedIt. Boost your email response rates and book more meetings with video by downloading ViewedIt by Vidyard at top1.fm/v, or go to any page on top1.fm and click on their ad. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Trong Nguyen. Trong 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's track record has been crazy impressive. Before the truly game-changing multimillion-dollar deals Trong worked on in financial services and healthcare at Microsoft. He was a global account manager at Dell, where in 2006, he was named GAM of the Year. We're talking number 1 of over 400. Welcome to the show, Trong.

1:17 Trong Nguyen: Hey, Scott. I'm so happy and glad to be here.

1:20 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Oh, and a quick shout out to Chris Lawson, who initially connected Trong and I. Chris, thanks so much for that. Now, if you are a regular listener, then you know the deal. But if this is your first time listening to the show, I really try to front-load the value and And I'll ask Trong what he believes are the top 3 things that have allowed him to be so consistently successful in his enterprise sales roles. I'm sure this is going to be a very long conversation, and I want you to be able to get some significant value right away. So, Trong, let's go. What are your top 3?

1:54 Trong Nguyen: Scott, my top 3 are this. First, be honest and genuine and authentic. You know, you got to be comfortable in your own skin in the enterprise software space that we deal in. We're dealing with a lot of very, very smart, talented, seasoned professionals. And if you're not honest and authentic, they'll read that right away, immediately. The second thing is get to know your customers on a personal level. What I found out is that, you know, business is great, but personal agendas always trump business agendas. So I spent a lot of time getting to know my customers on a deep personal level. And that's always been tremendously helpful. And the last thing I would say is be maniacally focused, right? And by that, what I mean is that if you want to break the mold and do something significant, like a game-changing win of some sort that's never been done before, it just takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work. And there's just no substitute for that. So you've got to be maniacally focused to do those things.

2:57 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. Now, I've got some follow-up questions on these, but before I ask that, I need to thank our major underwriting sponsor, ViewedIt. If you're looking to really differentiate yourself and deliver a truly personalized message to your ideal prospect, then try creating a personalized video using ViewedIt by Vidyard. Go to top1.fm/v to download the free Chrome plugin and give it a shot. In fact, I've purchased some copies of Trong's book, Winning the Cloud, and if you'd like me to send you a copy, set up your account and send me a ViewedIt explaining why you like the show, and I'll send a free copy to the person who sends me the best one after about a month after the, the show goes live. Just go to top1.fm/v to get started and send your ViewedIt to me at scott@top1.fm. Now, Trong, you mentioned honesty, and you talked in your book about how you've had really different feelings about honesty in sales at different points in your career. What's your opinion now, and how do you feel about that?

3:59 Trong Nguyen: Scott, that's a good question. You know, it's funny, when I started in sales and I had a lot of different coaching from different people, and they've always 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 I 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're dealing with the top C-level executives at their level, I mean, there's probably 6 or 7 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, I was 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.

5:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and we'll come back to some of the C-level relationship building points that you talk about here in, in a little while. But you also mentioned being maniacally focused. Talk about really how does that impact your work-life balance? And, and you, you quote in your book you have a parole board. What does that mean?

5:38 Trong Nguyen: You know what, I, I, um, my parole board is my wife and my kids. It's kind of funny, I bought into 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, you're going to… 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 a priority and focus for that kind of period of time. And, you know, if you want to win, there's a 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've 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 in 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 everyone's individual decision whether they decide it's worth it or not. Uh, but winning costs.

6:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, how have you kind of set expectations with your wife along the way? Because I think you've maybe had some mixed success there in terms of just like, hey, look, this, this is going to be a ton of work and I've got to invest to kind of achieve some of our goals as a, as a family. How have you done that? That?

7:15 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, you know, at the beginning, I candidly, I made a lot of promises to my wife and said, hey, listen, you know, we're going to go do this, we're going to do that. And I ended up always kind of either canceling vacations or working through vacations and sacrificing a lot of that personal time. And I've learned that, you know, that doesn't really bode well with anybody. It's not fair to my family. It's not fair to myself as well. 'Cause sometimes you just need that mental health break. And so what I've done now is kind of, I've planned stuff around kind of busy periods and non-busy periods. So during busy periods now, I really don't plan a lot of vacations around it. I try not to, uh, with the family and I plan the vacations and events that are non-busy times. And then if it's going to be busy during a planned vacation or something, uh, I make it known to the whole family. I sit them down and I talk to my wife about it and say, hey, listen, You know, I've got this major deal on the go. It's going to impact our vacation, but I'm going to sacrifice, you know, from 5 to 7 in the morning, get the work done, and then we'll go on with our vacation. Or I'll take the calls at nighttime from 5 to 7 PM after our day is done. But that way it minimizes the impact. They don't necessarily like it, but they understand it. So that's how I've gotten through the parole board.

8:38 Scott Ingram: Excellent. Now give us a little bit of context. Talk about your role at Microsoft and really how you got to the top.

8:45 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, so I was a global business manager at Microsoft looking after the largest banks for them. And, you know, I think it's probably no different than any kind of other large company. You get there by just showing and demonstrating leadership and successes. So you've had to have a long track record of major wins, numbers have to kind of show for it as well. And you have to demonstrate the ability to really handle complexity at the highest levels. So that's how I got there.

9:18 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then this is the point where you, you get to completely brag on yourself, quantify your results for us a little bit.

9:25 Trong Nguyen: Uh, you know what, I, I'll say this. I, um, I've made a lot of money, uh, at Microsoft. Uh, I've ranged anywhere from 125 to 300% of plan. I've run a $50 million business. Uh, so I'm… and won numerous kind of, uh, individual contributor awards. So I'm ecstatic about my performance and years at Microsoft.

9:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And as we'll probably talk about here in a little bit, really put together some, some transformative deals that have actually kind of changed industries and set some pretty interesting courses in place. But where did this start? What's your origin story and how did you originally get into sales?

10:04 Trong Nguyen: You know, so after undergrad, I majored in economics and I was hired by Digital Equipment at the time, uh, Corporation. They got bought out by Compaq, which got bought out by HP. And I was the last kind of new hire sales training program in there. And basically what they did was they brought you in, uh, you rotated through different parts of the company for 6 months, and then you got mentored under a senior executive. I chose to go into sales just because I loved it. And I got mentored under a gentleman by the name of John McDonnell, and he was phenomenal. He taught me the art and the science of sales and how to really hone that craft. So that's how I began.

10:49 Scott Ingram: There you go. And if you were starting over today, is there anything that you would have done differently or thought about differently from a career perspective?

10:57 Trong Nguyen: Not really. You know, like, I've always loved sales, every part of it, the ups and downs. And I don't, I'm not sure I would do anything differently. I'd always be selling.

11:08 Scott Ingram: Excellent. Now, from a, let's just talk about one of, one of these deals. Give us a sense of either the biggest or the most complex deal you've had to work on and just help us understand how that works.

11:21 Trong Nguyen: Sure. I'll, I'll give you an example. This is one of my biggest and complex deals. Uh, it was 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 do this deal with you. And then you got to get through procurement, you got to get through legal, you got to get through compliance because 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're global in nature, right? So you have to do all of that with the customer and 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.

12:49 Scott Ingram: Well, and how are you dealing with truly crazy complexity? Because you were talking about you're working at one of the most complex organisms on the planet. You have a really complex offering that you sold to many of these companies who were probably just as convoluted. So how do you deal with all of those layers?

13:10 Trong Nguyen: Uh, you know, I, I could probably write another book on that, but, but I would say this, um, you actually have to understand the, the complexity up and foremost from an academic level, and then you start, you start listing all of the issues and things you need to deal with it. And then you start chipping away at it every day and keep on knocking down the list of items and issues that you have to deal with. And eventually you're going to get to end of job. But unfortunately for that level of complexity, it will take you anywhere from 12 to 24 months to go do. Like, this is not a quick sale.

13:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Now, the other part that I'm really interested in is You're, you're basically managing or coordinating… coordinating is probably a better term because a lot of times you don't have authority over the, the team that you're leading there at, at Microsoft. How do you kind of inspire that and, and get everybody bought into your vision and, and pointed in the same direction? Because that's, that's a ton of work and a ton of complexity just in and of itself.

14:18 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, Scott, I think you, you hit on a couple of key things there that you have to try to do as a global business manager for a company of this size and scale, which is one, you actually have to set the vision first and foremost, right? So at the beginning of every year, what I do is I actually think, where do I want to take this customer for the next 3 to 5 years, right? And that's really my North Star and guiding light. And from there, I actually put that, uh, those thoughts down on paper in terms of, you know, this is our plan and strategy for the customer for the next 3 to 5 years. And then I communicate the heck out of that to everyone internally in the company because they have to be bought into it. And what I found is that, you know, you're not going to get this at the first pass, the second pass. You're going to have to do it multiple, multiple times. You're going to have to do it within large groups and medium groups, and you're going to have to do it individually. And only through really over-communicating your message and vision do you actually get the internal teams bought off on, hey, this is a strategy we should go down on. Here's how we all win on it.

15:31 Scott Ingram: You know, it's, it's interesting you say that. I feel like some of the very best leaders I've ever seen in action, they have a very clear very simple and incredibly consistent message that they repeat. And to them, it must feel insane. They must feel like, I just say the same thing 200 times a day, every day, forever. But they seem to get the, the best results. And it sounds like that's a lot of, of what… I mean, do you, do you really feel like you're… I'm a broken record?

16:04 Trong Nguyen: No, you know, I sometimes I do, but not I understand that this is what you need to do. And Scott, I'll tell you, when you're in a large complex sale with the customer, you actually do the exact same thing. What I found, it's funny, I tell my team this, I said, hey, listen, you know, we're going to give this presentation probably 50, 100 times to the same customer, right? And they're going to actually ask the same questions over and over and over again. And because our solution is so complex, they're not going to get it the first time. They're not going to get it the 10th time. And we're going to do this 50, 100 times. And eventually what you'll see is by the 51st time, the light starts to turn on and they're starting to get it. And that's when you start to get momentum and you know that you've actually hit the right note. And that's how the deal starts to come together and you win, right? It's no different internally.

16:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Interesting. Now, how much of your time are you investing in those internal relationships and bringing that group along?

17:05 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, I would tell you it really, uh, it depends. What I found is that, you know, when you, when you work for a smaller company or the deals are a lot smaller, you don't have to actually invest in a lot of time for that. But what I found is like when you're working at a big, big company, you know, take the Oracles, the IBMs, the Ciscos, the Microsofts of the world, right? And you're dealing with a really, really complex, uh, deal, uh, complex offering that you've got that's going to cost customers, you know, $100 million, 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.

17:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes sense. Now let's go in a little bit different direction. What's the biggest challenge you've had to face, or if you want to place us at a time when you were struggling the most?

17:57 Trong Nguyen: Oh, that's a tough one. I would tell you, you know, I think for those who've been in sales a long time, you've run into so many very, very difficult and challenging instances that there's just so many to kind of count. You know, I'll give you one that's recent. And, you know, this is not a sign of all the things I've dealt with, but just as the recent one, it was kind of funny. I dealt with this SVP at a bank. And, you know, picture he's mid-50s, he's recently divorced over the last kind of 4 or 5 years, and all he wanted to do was kind of carouse, um, live the bachelor lifestyle, go drinking until the wee hours in the morning. And, you know, that's how you got this business, right? And I asked some of my predecessors, like, how do I get on his good side? How do I kind of earn his trust, win his business. And all they said was the same thing, which is go carousing with them, go chase women, go drink yourself silly, and that's how you kind of win them over. And, you know, I'm at this point in my life where I'm in my mid-40s, I'm happily married, I've got 3 kids at home. The last thing I want to do is go carousing and staying up till the wee hours, right? And I made a conscious decision Like, if that's the way he wants to go do business, that's just not me, right? I, I don't do that, and I don't think we as a company should do that to win business because our solution actually is good enough to stand on its own merits. And if that's the only way I'm going to win his business, I'm not interested. And so I just purposely made a decision that, listen, you know, there's other constituents and other leaders I can go earn their trust. But I'm not going to do it this way.

19:50 Scott Ingram: I love that. And it's interesting. I think one of the most consistent themes that have really started, excuse me, to emerge on the show is it's, it's this idea of really just being very, very true to yourself and sticking to the things that make you great and, and just maximizing that and not bending to the winds of whatever it is, right? Customer demands or the the hot sales tactic of the day or whatever it is. And I think that's a, that's a perfect demonstration of that. So, Trong, what does… well, let me… I've learned that I have to kind of preface this, this question and kind of this series a little bit by first asking, would you consider yourself a morning person or are you a night owl?

20:40 Trong Nguyen: I am definitely a morning person. What I found is my natural biorhythms is I work best from like 5 in the morning until about 1 in the afternoon. And so how I kind of structure myself usually is I, I do all of my deep thinking things that I really need to kind of work through, think through proposals I have to work on that require deep thought. I do that from 5 till like 8 in the morning, and I begin my day with all of the other stuff afterwards.

21:13 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So talk a little bit more about kind of the morning routine. What, what time are you getting up and what happens from there?

21:20 Trong Nguyen: Sure. So, you know, I'm usually up by 5 in the morning, uh, and I've got this routine now down pat. I make my coffee, I, uh, turn on my Bose noise-canceling headset, turn on my tunes, and I start working away at that deep thought for a good, you know, from 2, 2 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, you know, I'm in meetings from 9 in the morning right through till 5 or so. And then if I have dinner meetings, I go to those.

22:05 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then are you decide… when are you deciding kind of what the deep thought work is? Does that happen the, the day before? Is there a running list? Like, what, what determines that?

22:17 Trong Nguyen: Uh, I, I always end the day with, uh, you know, what did I accomplish today and was it meaningful, right? And hopefully it is. And then I always start to think about what are the one or two things I need to get done for tomorrow. So there's really two categories: must get done, and that, that's the deep thinking thought. So by 5 or 6 the day before. I know exactly what I need to kind of do for that deep thinking thought. And then I actually have a whole list of tasks that I need to kind of try to accomplish during the day. But if only half of them get accomplished, I'm completely okay with it. But the deep thinking stuff needs to get done.

22:56 Scott Ingram: And what does that deep thinking look like? Is that you with a Word document open? How are you using that time?

23:06 Trong Nguyen: No, uh, deep thinking thought… I used to, um, just write, uh, but what I've… I've actually gone paperless, uh, over the last few years. And so now I kind of sit in front of my OneNote and I start to kind of type in all of the deep thoughts that I need to kind of get through. Or like if I'm thinking through a tough customer negotiation, if I'm thinking through a tough internal situation, if I'm working on a proposal for a customer, right? All of that will kind of either get done in OneNote or through the Word doc or something like that. Got it.

23:42 Scott Ingram: Now, are there other habits or routines that are really central to your success?

23:48 Trong Nguyen: Uh, yes, one. I exercise. I try to exercise pretty much every day. Uh, what I found, and I'm not sure everyone is this way or not, I just need that exercise. So, um, if I can, what I try to do is I go to karate in the evenings. If not, I'll go on the treadmill or I'll go to the gym and I'll go to spin class or something. But I find just the exercise just helps clear my head and body. And now I've got more energy to kind of go through another 4 or 5 hours at nighttime.

24:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah. No, we were joking in one of our previous conversations, sort of, you've, you've got these outlets for de-stressing. And when, when things get particularly intense, remind me what those, what those were and how you might spend extra time on those.

24:31 Trong Nguyen: That's funny. So, uh, I found out I've got a handful of things that I do, uh, when I get really, really stressed. Uh, one is I love to cook. And so, um, you know, if you find a big feast at home, like my wife and kids sometimes do, you know, I'm stressed, right? Because I'll be in the kitchen cooking for a couple of hours and we'll have a a massive gourmet meal. Another thing that I do is I exercise and I find that to be tremendously helpful just to kind of get the endorphins going. Uh, and I like to read. I find that reading actually helps really unwind and de-stress myself. So I do that a lot.

25:10 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So we talked about generally the way that you're structuring your day. Is, is that, is there a different way that you structure your week? Is, is there a higher level planning that you're, that you're thinking about maybe, maybe on Sunday thinking about how the next week's going to unfold?

25:25 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, usually my, um, my weeks are kind of planned well in advance and they kind of follow the same routine. I try to, for the most part, on Mondays have them as admin days, assuming I'm not traveling somewhere. I, I have all of my kind of internal meetings on Mondays, just kind of kick it off with the whole team. I run my team calls Monday morning at 8 AM just to make sure that everyone's in sync for the week. In terms of what we need to accomplish and plan for the next 2, 3 weeks or so. I either travel out on Monday night or first thing on Tuesday morning, and I try to come back by Thursday night, late Thursday night, and I reserve Friday as an admin day and a catch-up day. So during the week, if things come up that I need to resync with my team on, I try to schedule those calls on Friday. Uh, and to do all of those things then.

26:22 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then tell us about the travel. How, how are you managing to stay productive on the road and just deal with all the craziness that is travel?

26:31 Trong Nguyen: Uh, you know, I, um, I, I do a couple of things and I think all road warriors will probably tell you the same thing, you know, um, make use of your smartphone. Uh, so I, I can pretty much write War and Peace on my smartphone, my iPhone. Uh, I do a lot of things through that. The deep proposal stuff I reserve for the PCs. It sounds kind of funny, but I'm a big believer in voice as well. So where I can, I'll just call up people and get things ironed out quickly versus kind of spending a lot of time hashing things back and forth through email. So voice is my kind of preferred method to go to. And then the other thing that I find really, really productive is you need time to kind of just shut down. So I purposely block certain times where I can take a breather, go do something and not think about work and come back fully charged to do so.

27:28 Scott Ingram: So, Trong, let's keep going on that. Are there other kind of tools and apps that you can't live without?

27:35 Trong Nguyen: Uh, I said this before, OneNote. Uh, it's an amazing tool. It's kind of like a digital note-taking app. And there's lots of other ones out there like Evernote. I went paperless a few years ago and I found it to be one so tremendously helpful just to have all your notes with you on any device, anytime, anywhere is so helpful. You know, there, there will be times when I'm at a customer meeting and I need certain data. I will just pull out my phone, go to my OneNote and pull it up right then and there. So you're never without data and information. So that's been phenomenal. The other thing is I sync everything to the cloud with OneDrive, Microsoft's OneDrive Business, but it doesn't really matter what tool you use, whether you use Box or Google or whatnot, but the ability to have all your files in the cloud and to be able to access it anytime, I found tremendously helpful. And the last thing I really can't live without is my noise-canceling headset just because I travel so much. I found, you know, when you're at the airport, when you're in the lounge, when you're on a train somewhere, just to kind of put it on, shut out the noise so that you can really think, uh, has been so tremendously helpful.

28:49 Scott Ingram: And is that a Bose headset or something else?

28:51 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, it is.

28:52 Scott Ingram: Nice.

28:53 Trong Nguyen: It is.

28:53 Scott Ingram: Now you talked about using reading to de-stress. What does your information diet look like? What are you reading, listening to, and watching, and when?

29:01 Trong Nguyen: Okay. Uh, you know, I read a lot of different things. Um, I'm addicted to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist. So those are the kind of magazines that I kind of go to frequently and newspapers. Um, I love to read all types of different books. And what I do is I kind of rotate between fiction and nonfiction. So I'll read a lot of Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis books. Um, I love biographies. On individuals and leaders. So I'll read a lot of that just to kind of get different perspective. And then on TV, I love watching cooking shows. Anthony Bourdain is one of my favorite, favorite characters. I love home garden TV as a channel to watch with my wife. And then the last thing we do is we always watch shows that have been around for 3 or 4 years, uh, and then we start watching them on Netflix or something, and then we start binging on them just so that we don't waste time.

30:05 Scott Ingram: Nice, love that. Now let's go back to kind of the, the sales side of things. Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

30:14 Trong Nguyen: You know, I'm not sure I do, uh, but I, I think the one thing that I would say is like, if you're going to be in in high-end sales like we are here, you have to know your customer's business better than they do, right? Because that's the only way that I found you truly add value. When you start deep diving into your customer's business and you know it way better than they do, then you become the trusted advisor, and then they come to you for advice and what they should do. And the times when I've done that, which is a lot. I've seen VPs, SVPs, EVPs, C-level suites, uh, all wanting to set up one-on-ones with me so that they can kind of bounce my brain and get ideas and stuff.

31:01 Scott Ingram: Well, and talk about that a little bit more, sort of your approach to learning. You, you've got some really good stories in the book, uh, about this and maybe some of the challenges that, that come with it too. But how do you go about learning a business to that degree?

31:17 Trong Nguyen: Uh, first I'll say, one, it takes time, but two, it just takes a lot of kind of hand-holding and talking to your customers. So what I end up doing is, you know, I'll start at the lowest levels and I'll talk to 100 different people and, you know, I'll get nuggets of data from them and then I triangulate that data. And then what I do is then I kind of parlay that data to the next level. So then I'll go with the… at the director level and say, hey, you know, I've been talking to these 10, 20 different people. Here are some of the consistent themes that I've heard, and here's my perspective on that. What do you think? And then I'll have that conversation with another 20, 30 different directors and get their thoughts and perspectives on that. And it's amazing because you'll get so much more insights because you're providing a level of information that they didn't necessarily have, and you've correlated to a level that they necessarily didn't see before. Then from there, after I have those conversations with the VPs, sorry, the directors, then I correlate that data together and triangulate it, and then I bring that up to the VPs. Do that again to the VPs, and then you get to the C-level folks. And when you get to the C-level suite and have that conversation, now you've actually hit gold because no one has ever done that for them, right? With that kind of thought or depth before. Because a lot of folks, what they do is they go into the C-level suite, CFO, CIO, whatever, and they have the same generic conversation, which is, tell me about your business problem, right? And that conversation dies pretty quickly.

33:01 Scott Ingram: Trung, I love that. And one of the other things I wanted to talk about, since you're already sort of down that path, is sort of your approach to building relationships with the C-level, because it's obviously a little bit different than I think the way most people think about it. So maybe, maybe give… what's, what's the standard approach that you sort of see out there? And again, tell us a little bit more about how your approach is different and really works.

33:28 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, so, you know, the standard approach that I see out there is, you know, sales reps will get a meeting with a CIO, CFO, CMO, C-level suite executive, and, you know, they go in there and they'll say, tell me about your problem, tell me how we can help, right? Let me tell you a bit about my company. And usually it's their first and last conversation with the C-level suite executive. C-suite executive. The approach that I take is what I'd said before, which is triangulating data at the lowest levels and then eventually raising it up to their level. And then from there, just be completely honest and transparent with them. I remember one time I met with the CFO at this company and I said, you know, the first thing I said to him is, you know, I think you have a problem on your business side. And he said, well, what do you mean? And he was a… I think he was expecting me to tell him how, you know, the software package or the technology they'd chosen wasn't really good and that they should actually buy Microsoft's. And what I told him was, I said, I think your mergers and acquisitions strategy is flawed. And he was totally taken aback. And he said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, here's how you do it. Basically what your company does is they go out there, acquire a company, and they let the company run as is for the next 5 years. Then in year 6, you go in and you tell everyone, hey, listen, you're a part of this company. You need to change your processes, business processes, IT processes to align to the company. You know, then you spend the next year fighting them because they're like, wait a minute, we've been here for the last 5 years. What's changed? Why do we have to change now? And, you know, by year 8, you win the battle. Now you've lost 8 years. What I would have done is, you know, when you buy the company, integrate them from day 1, right? So that there is no issue and you fix it immediately. Right? So he was completely taken aback by that. And at that point, I'd actually earned his kind of respect, right? I earned a bit of trust, but I parlayed that first meeting into, uh, another series of meetings where I earned so much more trust from him. So that's how I approached the C-suite.

35:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny, somebody just asked me about this question where they're like, yeah, it's not a problem for us because they work for a big brand name company. Not a problem for us to get the first meeting. With the C-level executive, but we can't ever get past that. We can't get in for a second meeting. So I think that's a great, great insight. And you talked about in your top 3 kind of the personal relationship and personal values a lot of times trump the business values. Talk about touching a client's soul and how purple hair might help with that kind of an effort.

36:32 Trong Nguyen: Scott, that is so funny. And, you know, our, uh, our viewers, our listeners, um, when they read the book, I think they'll, they'll get exactly what you mean. So I was working with this client and I was flying all over the US for them, and I'd gotten to know a bunch of great people. And it was just a series of meetings that really kind of touched me. I met one gentleman and I found out, you know, personally his son actually had a form of cancer. And then I met another executive, and, you know, her mom was going through cancer. And then I was out, um, in Ohio, and I'd met with one of the EAs of, um, the executive I was working with. And, you know, she didn't look all that right to me, and I couldn't figure it out why it was a bit off. And then I looked at her and I realized her hair was not right. And so I asked her about it, and it turns out, you know, she was actually just going through chemo, and her… she didn't put on her wig the right way that morning. I guess she was in a rush. And I felt so bad because, you know, here's the salt-of-the-earth lady. She works so hard, you know, she probably doesn't make all that much money. She's going through such a hard thing right now, and Cancer and health is one of those things that none of us can take for granted. It touched me in a big way and I thought, you know what, I want to do something to give back because everyone's touched by this. I talked to a bunch of my colleagues at the customer that I work with and said, hey, here's what I want to do. I want to go raise some money for cancer. There's a great charity event called St. Baldrick's that we can go do. Would you guys be up for shaving your head for charity? And they unanimously said, yes, let's go do it. And so we ran a bunch of contests over a series of weeks. You know, one of them was I would dye my hair any color for the highest bidder that week. And someone came in, I think they, they donated $5,000 or $6,000. And so they won the contest for that week. And they said, You know, I want you to dye your hair purple. So I actually had to dye my hair purple and go around for a month with that. But it was an amazing event. And because I did that, you know, the customer was so touched by that, the word and the news got around and we ended up transforming and changing our relationship at the customer completely.

39:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And you obviously talk about this. The story is outlined a little bit more even in the, in the book. And you talk about this was just like the impossible to break through. Customers. So, I, I, it's just such a powerful story. And again, I think really being creative and getting outside of the box and, and just thinking about who are the people and what do they care about, what really matters in, in all of this. So, Trong, let's take a quick break here where hopefully I can help you out a little bit. I really haven't talked about how good your book is. And I started this show precisely because there just aren't any sales books like this out there. You know, something super real, written by somebody who very recently has been incredibly successful in sales, not somebody who was successful decades ago and wants to sell you their training program. So first, no matter what, if you're listening to this, you've got to get a copy. And I've, I've set up a link that'll take you right to the Amazon page. If you go to top1.fm/Winning, that'll take you, uh, to, to the link for Trong's book. But I want to give a couple more away. Now, you already know you can send me a ViewedIt video, uh, but here's another option for those of you who maybe are camera shy, or maybe you just want to double your odds. If you'll leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen to your podcasts, I'm going to give away 2 books, uh, one for the best review and the other I'll choose randomly from all the reviews. So get your review going, but before you submit it, copy and paste the contents and send it to me in an email along with your mailing address so I know where to and the book. And again, I'm at scott@top1.fm. All right, Trong, you have a whole chapter about mentors. Talk about how important mentors are to your success and give us some guidance on how we can best build out our own mentoring relationships.

41:09 Trong Nguyen: Sure, Scott. Mentors have been tremendously, um, impactful to my success, and I, I would tell you without them I would not be here today. And when I say mentors, I think you need to kind of look at it in 2 different perspectives. One is, you know, around you in terms of, you know, in your company or outside of your company. I actually have a whole bunch of different mentors that help me out with a whole bunch of different areas that I want to improve on. And then the other thing that's just as important is mentors and coaches at your customers. So I actually, all my customers that I've ever dealt with and worked with, I make sure to develop a network of mentors there that help me kind of think through complex issues in terms of how we kind of work the relationship, how we work different issues that come up between our 2 companies. And I would tell you, without their mentorship and guidance, we would have never experienced the success we've had with all of my clients. So, uh, that's the view that I kind of take to mentoring. In terms of how you kind of build it out, I would say mentorship relationships are like any other relationship, right? There's got to be give and take. And so it's great that you're getting something from these mentors, but also think about how you can actually help and impact them as well. What can you give back to them to kind of enrich their life in some way, right? Whether it be business or personal. And then it becomes a 2-way street. And I think those are the best type of mentor-mentee relationships I've seen.

42:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. And how, how are you initiating those, those types of relationships and just setting expectations around how you might be working together?

43:00 Trong Nguyen: You know, I, I start with what do I actually need to improve on? Like, what do I need to do differently? And I find a their skill set that I don't have. And then I go find out, you know, who are the best mentors, potential mentors for those. And I put a list together, you know, of 3, 4, or 5 people. And then I just go ask them, Scott, like I'm completely transparent and honest with them. And I'll say, hey, you know, I have this issue that I really want to try and address. I want to develop this skill set. And you are one of the best people I've ever seen do this type of stuff. Could you help and coach me through this? Right? And I tell you, Scott, 9 out of 10 times when you come to people for help and ask them for help, I've not seen them turn me down. Right? Like, people in general are really more, uh, very willing to help you if you're honest and you, you ask for it. And so, you know, I approach it the same way when people come to me for help. And I'm in a position where I can actually help them, I, I do so because you need to pay it forward.

44:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that, love that. Now, what motivates you and, and how do you think about motivation in general?

44:14 Trong Nguyen: You know, I, I would say, uh, I think motivations kind of change over time, uh, and, you know, the best motivations are intrinsic ones. And what I found was that I'll kind of give you my kind of journey. Uh, my initial motivation was really around making money. You know, I grew up so poor that the shirt on my back wasn't even my shirt. It was someone else's, right? And early in my career, I just wanted to make a lot of money. And so I focused on that and I achieved it. And, you know, sales enables you to do that when you're very, very successful. And then I got to a certain stage in my career where, you know, now I've made the money. What do I want to do next? And that's when I found my motivations actually changed. And now my motivation was, how do I make a difference? How do I have impact? Right? And so that's when I started kind of looking about doing deals like the cloud deals at Microsoft that no one's ever done before, right? Because it's so hard, so complicated. And I wanted to kind of do it. And that's how I kind of made an impact. And then, you know, eventually now I'm at the stage where I want to give back, right? Like I've gotten so much from so many over the years that I think about, well, how can I actually start giving back now as opposed to taking? And that's what really prompted me to kind of write the book.

45:39 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. And we're going to, we're going to talk about a couple of things after we wrap up. There's something, there's something I'm working on where hopefully we can find some ways to scale that a little bit. Is there Is there something you believe that the average seller would think is crazy?

45:57 Trong Nguyen: You know, I think we touched on this a bit earlier too. I think, you know, I believe in honesty and transparency with your customers. Like if you don't have the best solution or the right solution, just be honest with them about it and tell them, hey, you know, our solutions can do A, B, C, and D, but they can't do a couple of things that you're really looking for. You might want to look at some other options. Right. And what I found is that kind of pays back in spades. I think a lot of reps today will be out there and they're like, I need to make my quota. I need to kind of go close the deal. I'll spin it. I'll sell it. I'll do something, but I'm going to get the deal done. And what I have always found is that just catches up to you. Right.

46:39 Scott Ingram: So yeah, absolutely. Well, and this is probably a perfect point to ask you about blowing things up. What does that mean to you?

46:47 Trong Nguyen: You know, I, um, I jest about that a bit in my book, but I think my main message is, you know, don't be afraid to be disruptive, right? Um, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson wrote a great book called The Challenger Sale, and, you know, the gist of the book is don't be afraid to challenge your customers and challenge their thinking around it. And, you know, my point about blowing things up is, you know, it's okay to be controversial. It's okay to kind of make people uneasy and on the edge. If you think you've got a point of view that needs to be heard, raise it, escalate it. And, you know, some of the folks who are there at your customers who have been around for a while and they want nothing but the status quo, they're going to get uncomfortable. They're not going to like you. And just be completely prepared for that and be prepared to live with the consequences. And if you do it right, it will pay off in dividends, spades.

47:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. And I, I think what's… you've got some really fun stories in the, in the book about just needing to escape and go into hiding, uh, after, after sometimes doing some of those things, because it is going to be disruptive and there is going to be some flack. But at the end of the day, it's… I think it goes back to it's just the truth, right? It's, it's the… it's going to help them, and it may be challenging and not what they want to hear, but at the end of the day, it's gonna, it's gonna move everything forward and help you progress. Trong, have there been really important decisions you've made or lessons you had to learn maybe early on that really set the path for where you are today?

48:24 Trong Nguyen: You know, it's a, it's a good question and I'll put it to you this way. I think there's a lot of lessons I learned along the way that I wish I'd known a bit earlier. But, you know, when I got it, I got it, and I'll kind of share them with you. First is that selling in a complex environment is a team sport, right? You can't do it alone. I know in sales there's a lot of lone wolves out there. There's a lot of heroes out there where, hey, I'm gonna go do this. I'm gonna go hunt the whale on my own. And, you know, 1 or 2 times out of 10, they may be able to do it. But our solutions today and our environment is so complex that you can't do it by yourself. You can't be the expert in everything, and it's really a team sport, and it's about getting the best out of your teams in every which way that you can. The second we touched on earlier, which is communications. You just have to really, really… there's no such thing as overcommunicating, whether it's internally with your teams or externally with your customers and clients when you're leading a big, big project. So many things can kind of derail it and get it off the hinges. So really, really communicate, communicate, communicate. And the last thing is always keep a long-term perspective, right? You know, some of these big game-changing deals take a year or 2 to go do, right? It's not going to be quick. It's not going to be 3, 4 months and you're in and out. And keep the long-term perspective with the customers because you build the customer relationships today and they're happy, they'll be around with you for the next 20 years. And I've seen it happen to me multiple times where customers I've dealt with, had a great experience, great relationship with them, I'm dealing with them 10 years after, right?

50:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And, and another piece I was hoping you would talk about, and it's, it's a question I forget to ask too frequently because I think it is an interesting factor: how, how big of an impact does your boss have on your results and your success?

50:31 Trong Nguyen: You know, I'm kind of mixed on this, Scott. I would tell you I think it has a big impact, and I'll tell you why. You know, in general, sales is hard enough as it is. You know, you've been around sales a long time, I've been around sales a long time. When you, when you've had a great boss, it's so motivating, it's so invigorating, and you know, you go out and you kill it, and that your great boss makes you that much better because they push you to the edge, right? Having a bad boss, I think, is so energy-draining, and we only have so much energy where, you know, you're better spent using that energy kind of driving the deals with the customers, developing the customer relationships, versus kind of expending that energy on you know, trying to kind of work with your boss or your internal issues that you've got to deal with. So I think it could be hugely impactful for you if you don't have a great boss.

51:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally agree. And you talk about really being selective about who you're going to work for. Do you have like a due diligence type process? Like, how are you vetting whether this is going to be a good partner or a… or just a drag?

51:49 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, you know, I, I think it, it depends on, and you as a person and what you're looking for, right? I, I tell you what, what kind of motivates and drives me when I'm looking for a boss is, you know, I want someone who is not necessarily a micromanager. Like, one of the best bosses I've ever had was, uh, you know, she said, hey, Trong, I need you to go win this, uh, battle or go take this hill. And she trusted my knowledge and my expertise enough to kind of just go figure it out on my own, and I would go do that. And that's been phenomenally helpful. I also look for a leader who's authentic and genuine, right? And you'll know it when you see it. You know, like, you know, when you work for a leader, a boss who puts on this facade, or who, you know, acts and behaves 10 different ways and you just don't know which way is up. I think that can be so distracting. So I love working for really authentic leaders who are comfortable in their own skin, who know what they're good at, who know what they're not good at, and then, you know, are completely transparent with you about it.

53:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's really, really useful stuff. Certainly resonates with, with both sides of the experiences that, that I've had over time. So, Trung, you've got 3 really great chapters on sales tips that you broke out into new, intermediate, and expert reps, and just super solid stuff in there. Let me pick out just one thing, and that is your suggestion to expert reps that they should stay with their customers for 3 years. What's, what's your rationale behind that?

53:30 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, my rationale for that is, um, is this: what I found, and this is probably universally true, is when you go into a really, really tough, big, complex customer environment, I don't care how good you are, the first year, for the most part, you're learning, right? You're learning about your job, you're learning about your role, you're learning about the customer. So you're really, really ramping up, right? And year 2 is when you actually start making an impact. So, you know, now you know enough to actually become the trusted advisor within the customer and you start making, giving advice, making suggestions, doing your transformation with the customer, doing your deals, right? And then year 3 is really about executing on it, right? Like, you need to be accountable. So stay around long enough to be accountable. So if you're executing… if what you sold to the customer, you need to be there to help them execute and roll it out and be there for it. And if you were wrong, you need to be accountable for it. And because you were there from the beginning, Right? You know all the ins and outs to make it successful. And so that's why year 3 is so important for you to be around. I've seen so many situations where, you know, reps will come into a customer, sell them a bag of goods, and then boom, they're out the next year and no one's held accountable for it. And that's just so disruptive for a customer.

54:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And, and why the, why the 3-year… you basically suggest 3 years be a limit too?

55:00 Trong Nguyen: Yeah, because, you know, after year 3, after you've kind of rolled it out at that point you become really… you become comfortable. And when you get comfortable, you become complacent. And it's really, really hard to kind of get out of that unless you're purposely, uh, pushing yourself on the edge every day. So I think, you know, by year 3, you should look at doing something else and get a new challenge. So it's really, really good for the rep, but then it's really good for the customer too, because they'll get fresh blood in to kind of reinvigorate the relationship.

55:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good stuff. Now, Trong, we also had a pretty interesting conversation about just… there, there don't seem to be a lot of resources that are helpful to educate advanced sellers that are doing very, very complex deals like, like this. What, what would you want to know of other top sellers in this kind of an environment.

55:59 Trong Nguyen: I, I think some of the work that you're doing here, Scott, is going to be so helpful, uh, these questions. And I'm hoping that, you know, more people will listen to the podcast because they'll start to get nuggets, uh, from these conversations. And I think, you know, how you run your business, how you do your day-to-day, um, tell me some success stories you've had some of the things you've done with the customers, how do you go building the C-level executive relationships? I think that collated over a series of time will be so tremendously helpful. So, you know, I think I'm going to listen to all your podcasts and kind of get to know this and kind of develop and hone my craft a bit more. And so I think that's what I would like to kind of get from that going forward.

56:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Is, is there another question or something else you'd want to learn about that I, that I'm not already asking about?

56:54 Trong Nguyen: You know, one of the things that, uh, you've asked, and I've heard in some of yours that I actually really like, uh, because is, you know, sometimes when you fail, what did you learn from it, right? And what approaches did you take? I think, you know, the more we hear about that, I think the good it will be, right? Because I think it's great to kind of learn from how did you do it to succeed. But the opposite is true as well, which is, you know, in sales, we get rejected 9 out of 10 times, or we've gone through major setbacks, setbacks, major losses. Learning from reps in terms of their approach to failure and how they rebounded back, I find it's just tremendously helpful as well.

57:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what is that for you? I mean, is there a particular, you know, either instructive failure or just maybe an epic, like, thing completely went down in flames? I mean, what, what can you share with us there?

57:50 Trong Nguyen: Oh my God, Scott, I've had so many. I would tell you, as many successes that I've had, I've had just as many failures, and I've lost just as many deals. I've had a bunch of relationships with customers kind of go in the tank as well. And, you know, after something like that What I would tell you is just, you need to go through the grieving process, right? Like give yourself enough time to kind of go through it, but go through it quickly and learn from that mistake. Uh, take some notes on it and then just move forward. Uh, that, that's what I normally do.

58:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Excellent. Who, who's the most successful salesperson you know personally?

58:37 Trong Nguyen: Uh, you know, I've, I, I know so many, but I tell you, one of the best salespeople I've ever met was my initial mentor, John McDonnell. Uh, I would tell you, he is a master salesman. Like, he, he takes the art and the science of sales to the next level. He's one of those guys that people love being around him. He's the, this big cuddly teddy bear. And when he's with you, he makes you feel so good about you that you always want to be around him. So that… I think that's one of his defining traits. Um, the second thing is, you know, he, he knows how to read people inside out. Like, he'll meet you within like a minute, he knows exactly who you are, uh, what you're about, and, and he'll play to that. So he's that good. Um, and the last thing that I find is so funny, cause I've seen him do it so many times, is he always positions himself in a place where he's going to win and win massively. So, you know, as the industries have changed, as the companies and the winners have changed, he's always been the first one to ride that next wave with that winner.

59:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So interesting. And again, just another great tease for the book. I mean, you've got a whole, basically a whole chapter on, on John and kind the mentor that he's been to you. So that's, that's great stuff. So, Trong, we've, we've basically made it. Let me, let me just ask before I get to what kind of our last challenge question, is there anything else that you were hoping to share today that somehow or other I didn't manage to touch on?

1:00:17 Trong Nguyen: No, Scott, I think you've asked a lot of really, really good questions, and I'm hoping that our listeners get value out of this and that they get a chance to kind of read the book, and hopefully they can take some nuggets out of that as well.

1:00:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. So to summarize, what I always try and do is create or suggest some type of very actionable challenge that the listener can take on over the course of the next 2 weeks while they wait for our next episode to really help them just improve themselves and improve their own sales results. So what would you suggest that our listener do?

1:00:53 Trong Nguyen: You know, what I challenge our listeners to do is kind of to think about 3 things. Uh, first, you know, treat sales as a craft and art, right? I, I treat it as a craft and art, and every day I think about how do I hone this craft, how do I make myself better at it. You know, you're an artist. You know, actors do it, athletes do it, the highest level performers do it. They treat whatever it is their specialty is as really an art and craft. And I want all of our listeners, your listeners, Scott, to kind of treat sales as a craft because I do. The second thing that I would challenge them to do is think about how you can make a difference with your customers because it really starts with that. When you can make a massive difference with your customers, that's how you win, right? So think about how do you kind of build those blocks to get there. Care. And the last thing is never stop learning. Always be a sponge. I go try to learn something new every day. I'm reading something all the time. I'm learning from people, different mediums. But never stop learning because that's how you truly get better.

1:02:06 Scott Ingram: Great stuff, Trong. This has been absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for sharing this much time and this many insights with us.

1:02:13 Trong Nguyen: Scott, thank you. I'm so happy to be on this podcast.

1:02:16 Scott Ingram: So I've got one last opportunity for you, the listener, to get a copy of Trong's book, and that is by joining our free Sales Success Community. So if you go to top1.fm and just drop in your email address, that will immediately generate an invite link to the community. And I've got Trong's book set up as a reward. So I'll bet that if you spend 15 or 20 minutes in there, you'll earn enough points for me to send you your own copy of Winning the Cloud. So go to top1.fm right now, or you can text text TOP1 to 444999 if you're in the US. Otherwise, again, it's top1.fm. Thanks for listening.

1:02:56 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.