Vision & Values: Sales & Authenticity Go Hand in Hand with Noah Mishkin: Customer Café Podcast
Noah Mishkin is an Architect turned business owner of a software and product, CraftJack. Noah joined us to talk about how he developed his unique approach to sales calls as organic conversations.
He talks about his healthy guitar obsession and investing in himself, company values, and the need to re-evaluate and update them.
Don’t let your lack of experience intimidate you. Noah started out in sales by selling a product in development. Noah didn’t treat sales calls as sales calls when he started out. “I approached every single sales call as just a conversation. I used it also, not just to my advantage of trying to sell to a new customer to buy into our new product, but also as a means to help design the concepts of future features and functionalities of the product.” Come from a place of curiosity.
Noah still believes that you should not enter any sales call with a script. It is a conversation. You want to learn about your customer and prospective clients, genuinely. Think about long term relationship building and understanding everyone’s interests and needs.
Most important role in a company? “Anybody who is talking directly to the user is going to be the one who is going to have the firsthand knowledge of what works, what doesn’t work, and what is missing that is needed.” That includes sales, customer success, customer support, and anyone no matter their role who interacts with a customer.
How do you stay collaborative and share that valuable information?
- Effective communication
- Tools that work
- Trust
- Clearly delineate roles and hold people accountable
- DON’T overcommunicate. That will
How to collaborate and communicate asynchronously? Noah has a weekly internal podcast to keep everyone on the same page. Side benefit: It also helps with onboarding and to track the various milestones of the company!
Your metric for success should be retention. Retention should be celebrated. Retention requires teamwork from every single department. Everyone is motivated to share information and to be successful together.
Retention is the most cost effective and discourages overselling or pushy sales. Compensation and bonuses are based on retention and long-term customer success.
Core values are the “hallmark” of a successful business. You can reevaluate and redefine the values, but they should define the work environment and relationships. Noah has a lot to say about values on LinkedIn as well.
Here are Noah’s core values (which purposefully align with his company’s values and are listed in his about section):
- Strive for excellence: Good enough is for now, and likely means you’re almost there within a reasonable account of cost-benefit and before reaching diminishing returns.
- Growth minded: Curiosity is the origin of growth and development. Continuing to learn and improve upon, even the subjects you command most, is a virtue that will set you apart from those that settle into a stagnant complacency.
- Be reliable: Make every effort to be available, present, and a person who can be counted on.
- Maintain expectations: Expectations regarding anything from performance, behavior, decorum, and results must be initially set and always maintained if they are to be known, respected, and followed.
- Ask good questions: Be holistically curious about the person you are engaging with and the subject they are sharing. Questions demonstrate invested focus and respect while offering the opportunity to learn.
- Prioritize people: Products, policies, and resources are both limited and fleeting. Good people with learned skills and intrinsic passion make the differences that matter most. Do everything you can to keep them and their fire lit.
- Operate within a meritocracy: Proving oneself successful from past experience merits future credibility and whose perspective will be prioritized.
The value of being growth minded resulted in a company policy that anyone can hop in on any meeting any time. How cool is that?
Noah takes the value to heart personally as well as a life-long learner. His aim is to take away one learning from every book, podcast, etc. He believes that everyone should find inspiration in whatever medium speaks to you. “There is no wrong time to consume content. If you would rather listen or view content, it is everywhere.” Here are his recommendations:
- Books:
- Magazines
- Podcasts
Want more? You’ll have to tune in!
Want to build a strong team and collaborate smoothly and easily with your colleagues? Get started as a beloved beta user!
Looking for more to listen to? Join Menachem Pritzker and Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, hard core Collabrians, as we drink coffee and learn from collaborative leaders in sales, customer success and account management.
Ready to get started? Customer Café by Collabria: Sales Collaboration Tips for Pros is available wherever you listen to podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, or you can click here to start listening now!
