To give you guys some context. I was listening to Scott Ingrams Sales Success Stories and really wanted to meet Trong for a number of reasons. 1. He is a Vietnamese male in the high tech sales industry.(There is not that many of us). 2. Clearly, he is doing extremely well for himself being the #1 cloud sales rep at Microsoft. 3. He just seemed like a guy that was having fun during this incredible journey of his.

So here is what I have learned from reaching out to him and grabbing dinner with him at a Vietnamese restaurant last night.

1. Stay committed.When you are committed to your goals. You set high goals for yourself and really have a strong understanding of your self-awareness and what you bring to the table. He is clearly committed to his career and family. Communication is so important especially when you are traveling for weeks at a time.
2. Be a world traveler when you travel outside the US you realize that our pace of life especially in the cities is not how the rest of the world lives(take a look at the European countries). There is so much power in just being present and not having to worry about the future all of the time.
3. Giving back to the world. He didn’t have to say yes to me. He didn’t have to spend a couple of hours with me. A random guy who reached out to him just to pick his brain and learn more about his amazing career and he was kind enough to share his wisdom with me.
4. Even mentors have mentors. He was talking about always seeking and looking for people that are the best at what they do. He proactively searches for mentors especially early in his career and really makes it a commitment to surround himself with the best of the best. They always say you are the average of your 5 closest friends.
5. Stay in touch with the people that you care about. Even with a busy life, getting an MBA while traveling to Chicago, Toronto, and NYC every week and on the weekends finishing his MBA from Booth. He always challenged himself and still made time to keep in close contact with the people that have made a difference in his life.
6. Challenge yourself. He still finished and received his blackbelt in Karate even being much older than the rest of his classmates and really pushing himself mentally and physically.
7. Get an MBA if you want to do complex consultative sales in Enterprise environments. We were talking about how much you can really learn about a large Fortune 100 bank. The analysis of what you during your MBA can really help you add value and be able to do a deep dive analysis of a company’s business model and profitability.
8. Stay healthy. We stressed the importance of taking care of your health. While it is important to take your clients out and make sure they are happy. You need to be aware of your health and even if you are on the road all of the time. Nutrition and staying active is important. If you are making all this money, what’s the point of it all if you can’t even stay healthy to be alive to enjoy it all with your family and friends?
9. Treat your clients like your best friends. One of his secret sauce is that he treats his clients exactly the same as his close friends. They communicate and text each other all of the time. That is something that was really profound to me because I typically do not see people do this.
10. Take your job seriously but do not take yourself seriously. Be committed and dedicate yourself but do not be so hard on yourself. Life is all about having fun and if you are not having fun in the process maybe you shouldn’t be in sales.

Let me know if you have any questions. The reason and purpose of sharing this is because I know how important it is to learn from high achievers. My hope is that you guys took something from this as well.