Building Better Business Relationships in the Age of AI

0:00John Jantsch:So everybody knows by now AI can write, I don't know, a thousand warm sounding messages before breakfast. People can feel the difference, though, between a message. I don't know what it is that came from AI. No matter how well that AI is trained, you can generally feel that it came from a prompt. The businesses that pull ahead over the next few years will use AI to remember more people, perhaps, and still bring their own judgment to what they say to each one of those people.

0:37John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Chance. My guest today is Zvi Band. He is the founder of Contactually. In fact, I think he was on this show many years ago when he founded that to the personal CRM that helped thousands of professionals stay in touch with people who mattered before he sold that business to Compass in 2019. He wrote the book, Success is in Your Sphere, Leveraging the Power of Relationships to Achieve Your Business Growth. And he spent years, really, ever since building Relatable, a new AI-powered personal CRM built on a simple idea that let AI remember people and bring your own judgment to how you show up for them.

1:19John Jantsch:So, V, welcome back to the show. Thanks, John. It's been a number of years. It's been a few years since I've seen you in person here in D.C., but it's been a few years since our show. So great to be back here. So remind me again, if I got this wrong, don't people just call you Z? Honestly, like some people care about the pronunciation of their first name, but anything with a Z or an S in my general direction, I'll respond. So you could have called, introduced me as Zivi and I wouldn't have corrected you. Well, I wouldn't have gone there, but how do you actually say is spelled Z-V-I? It's spelled Z-V-I in American.

1:54Again, it's pronounced Zvi, but the people, but people who speak Hebrew and know the proper pronunciation will have, will call me Zvi, like T-S-V-I. But that's not how my great, great grandfather spelled it.

2:07John Jantsch:So, so I'm assuming that came, that's like an Exodus name or something. Yeah, exactly. Like nowadays it's like, it's mainly used by, by Israelis, but I was born in Boston, which is obviously even more confusing, but yeah, it's my great grandfather's name. Awesome. Well, so everybody knows relationships matter in business. I don't think you can find too many people that would argue with that idea. So what's changed in the last year or two in your mind that kind of makes this conversation about relatable and about relationships feel more urgent? Yeah, it's a great question. I think about this a lot because on one end, there's Jeff Bezos has this line of like always focusing on what won't change.

2:51And yes, we are deeply social creatures and we will always rely on human beings and human relationships for various different aspects of our life. I think what has changed to your point is everything else, right? So case in point, if you and I were to open up LinkedIn, we are no longer seeing individual posts by people that we know and trust, but two things have happened. One, algorithms have gotten better at feeding us information that we think is going to be better and more relevant for us. So we're no longer seeing what John's posting. Instead, we're seeing what they think Zvi will want to see, which includes other stuff and ads and everything like that.

3:38But then the other thing that's happened is to your point around AI generated content, the sheer amount of content and information and signal being thrown at us is more overwhelming than ever. And we are having a hard time discerning what's human, what's not. And unfortunately, I think what more and more of us are doing is we're just choosing to shut off the signal, right? If we're getting inundated with so much noise, we're saying, hey, how can I unsubscribe from this channel in general. And what comes in? Relationships.

4:14John Jantsch:Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there are even devices that are now like promoting themselves as we'll block out all the other stuff that, you know, there was a commercial I was watching a football game last night and there was a commercial and this woman was having coffee with a friend, obviously, and they had all these like other distractions like outside the coffee shop coming but she was able to just block them out with her phone. It's some setting on her phone And I think that what I'm getting at is, I mean, I think we're actually now having to use devices to really shut all that noise out as well.

4:46Yeah. And I think it's part of that. That's why I think there's, and I think about this from a marketing perspective too, I think one of two things are going to happen. we will rely on relationships or we're simply going to go to an algorithm to get the exact information we want or need. Right? Like why, for example, would I search a recipe blog and go through pages and pages of ads, for example, when I can just ask ChatGPT for a recipe? Or if John says, hey, make this, I'll make what John has. And there's so many examples. So I think we're either going to rely entirely on AI for answers. And on the other side, we're going to rely on relationships as well.

5:32John Jantsch:So contractually, contextually, sorry, that was almost Freudian in a way, was built really on a framework of kind of social capital. But in the end, it was kind of about your warm leads and nurturing them. And I get the sense that Relatable's built around a little different starting point or different philosophy. Would that be accurate? Yeah. So I think the core idea of both products, both contactually, which we sold and now relatable is this idea of mindshare that we all have people in our lives that we know, like and trust and want to make sure that those people know, like and trust us continuously.

6:11However, we only can retain a certain amount of information in our head. And so if we can't remember what we had for breakfast two weeks ago, we're not also going to remember like the people that we met. So I think the core of that is still the same. Contact, obviously, being built back in 2012, had relied on the technology that we had back then and the tools. What I'm eager and what I've been really diving into with Relatable over the past few years is how can AI actually help us be more and more human and take a lot of the admin burden of building and maintaining relationships off our plate so we can do what we do best, which is building relationships.

7:00John Jantsch:so i think that this theme i mean a lot of people are saying that what you just say that i've heard from numerous people that have been on this show it's going to free us up to to be more human but you still have to have the caring part of being human right and i think that still a lot of people treat relationships as transactional or i'm going to keep this relationship going because I think at some point you can send me business. So how do you, how can AI make, can AI or can it not help us with that part of actually caring? Yeah, absolutely. The way I think about it is I think the more in two ways, one is the more burden AI can take off our plate, the more cognitive capacity we have to care.

7:53So like one of my favorite examples is I'm a huge fan of meeting recorders. I have a meeting recorder join every one of my meetings. I have a drop into my notes, my notepad. I have it drop into relatable and extract the personal details. Like for example, that John, like you take four day weekends and all those details become really helpful because that means that the next time I'm on a call with you, I could be hands off. I'm not writing down a bunch of notes. I can be fully present and focused on you and not thinking in my head, okay, let me write these notes. Let me write these details. Let me think about these follow-ups.

8:33And then later on, because that brain now has all the information, all the connections that I've ever had, it can say, hey, I met someone who's actually thinking about taking Fridays off but is really worried about the jump. oh, maybe John would actually be like a great person to me, right? And so that's where I think it can actually extend our cognitive capacity and allow us to care as much as I think we'd like, but oftentimes fall short.

9:01John Jantsch:And you're saying AI is doing a lot of that because it's, it may be capturing things that you wouldn't even necessarily note and then is able to cross-reference those in a lot of ways. Is that kind of how you're describing it? That's one of the perfect examples. Now to build on that though, I think this is where because the admin burden is taken off, like you and I don't have to be sitting there like court stenographers, like taking every word that happened in a conversation. We can then not only be more present, but like actually allow ourselves to really start noting things that wouldn't necessarily pop up otherwise.

9:40Like I find myself on calls these days, actually like focusing more on like, do I like this person? Is there some kind of connection? Do I see that person smile when they're talking to me? And AI can obviously take the transcript and can have the details, but it's not going to pick up those little bits and pieces that I think only a human can. So I actually think like the soft skills are going to matter even more because of course, anyone can get on a call and have a note taker. But it takes like someone with real skills to get on a call and ask the right questions and to go into the right detail and really tell like, is there something here?

10:24John Jantsch:Yeah, I heard somebody say one time that we don't need, I mean, we don't need IQ anymore because we've got the world's IQ right at our fingertips. And that EQ is actually, as you sort of mentioned, the soft skills is actually going to be the differentiator. And I think what you just hit on is a very sort of practical application of that. Absolutely. And that's why I think like in what I spend a lot of time talking and speaking about now is things like instead of recording notes and then like how to log in into your database, just assume that's going to happen. and instead it comes more down to like the soft skills, like how to have a conversation.

11:05Even just what you and I did where you open up a call, not asking, hey, how's your day? How's the weather? How's traffic? Blah, blah, blah. But actually like what's been the highlight every week so far? Because that completely changes the direction of a conversation and like creates a much more deeper personal relationship. And that's, I think, going to matter even more in the coming years.

11:29John Jantsch:So a lot of my listeners are solo consultants, solo practitioners. Maybe they run the whole show at their business. How does a tool like, I mean, is it, how do you characterize your tools? Is it an AI-assisted relationship tool? Is it a personal assistant? I mean, how would you characterize it? And then really my question is, what would the best way for that solo entrepreneur who's running a business use relatable? Yeah, absolutely. And so the way that Relatable is built, it's built as a relationship OS, which means it has all the components you need to build and maintain deep relationships. And yes, I'm a solopreneur myself.

12:12So I have to maintain a lot of different relationships for my business and my interests and all the investments I make and everything like that. what at a core what it does is it brings in all of your relationships from all sorts of different places and helps you stay organized and then every day gives you actions that you can take to be able to better maintain those relationships and john i think the real switch behind it and i think this is what i coach a lot of people into is i think you and i think everyone knows and agrees and this is what you said at the top of the call that relationships are really important but very few make the jump from being, it being like a new year's resolution to it being like something I strategically execute on a regular basis and have a system behind.

13:04And so the way I think about it is relatable is the scaffolding to help you start treating your relationships as more of a system rather than like a, I should get to it tomorrow kind of thing.

13:16John Jantsch:Well, yeah, or even in my case, a lot of times I'll say, I've got an hour today, I need to reach out to some people. I haven't talked to you for a long time. Then I sit there and say, but like who? Do I want to go through my entire contact list and try to figure it out? I'm guessing that Relatable actually has some strategic or ability to be strategic about, hey, here's who you should be. Or if you tell me what you're trying to do or what kind of relationships you're trying to further, here's who you should be talking to. Is it safe to say it can go that far? Exactly. And I think it's purpose built for the exact thing that you have that you brought up where like you have the desire for and the energy to be able to build relationships.

13:58But what should I do right now? Right. The three questions we always help make sure that we are software can answer is who do I know? Who should I talk to today and what should I do to nurture that relationship? And so we can help surface things like, hey, here are some past clients that you really like who you haven't spoken to in three months. Here's an email that we can help you draft that you can reach out to them today. If you're traveling to Dallas, you say, hey, who are the people that I know and like in Dallas that I haven't spoken to in a year? We can help you answer those questions. You can say, all right, who are the digital marketers that I know and that I have a really good relationship with?

14:38Great. Let me go ahead and email all of them a question if I wanted to. So for all the things around your relationships and all the goals and jobs to be done you have, it oftentimes comes down to like, well, who do I know and how do I reach out to them? And that's what we've really spent all this time like really trying to answer.

14:59John Jantsch:What do you surmise? And maybe you actually have data that could prove this. The decay rate of a relationship is, I mean, like, I mean, there are different kinds of relationships, but like somebody that you want to make sure that they think of you when like that perfect opportunity presents itself. What would you say? What I'm really getting at is, do I need to contact you three times a year? Do I, what have you seen? Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. And there's a, I would say there's a key input for that, which is how unique are you? Right? If you are the only person who does what you do, right?

15:39And you've not only are good at that, but you've also been great at building rapport with people. I've seen people reach out sometimes like 10 plus years later because you are known as that person. For most people who, let's face it, like, you know, have some type of whether some kind of competition or, you know, that like the people in your network oftentimes know multiple people like, let's say, a realtor. the magic kind of line I've seen is around six months right that once you go past six months especially these days they are it and it's no fault of you or for them but just we are being inundated with so many people and so much messaging and marketing so again I can't remember what I had for breakfast last week let alone the people in my network so yeah if someone asks me like yo hey hey, do you know a really great realtor?

16:34I'm like, I probably do, but I just kind of go by the last person that I had coffee with.

16:39John Jantsch:Yep, yep. So when you've seen somebody say, I'm the news resolution idea, I'm gonna start taking this seriously. I'm gonna jump in with both feet. I'm gonna sign up for Relatable. I'm gonna do all the things. Where do they typically go wrong? Yeah, honestly, I would say it's usually one of the first steps because I think, listen, you and I are nerds. like we tend to like say like, oh, like what, what's a cool tool I can use or a prompt I can try or something like that. I actually find that oftentimes when the first things they do to get tripped up is not have a clear why in mind. Like we all know relationships are important, but why are relationships important for you today?

17:22So for example, when I was building up and taxually, I very clearly knew that my network was critical for me to help get more funding for our company, to stay in touch with key hires, to stay in touch with our key customers and prospects and the people that I wanted to work with months or years down the line. Since selling it, obviously my priorities have changed. Now I find myself wanting to stay in touch with other founders, stay in touch with people who inspire me, stay in touch with people that I generally just like and I want on the entrepreneurial journey with me. And so because those are different whys, obviously the types of relationships that I put proactive time and effort, those shift over time.

18:10So my guidance for people is first and foremost, have that clear why. And once you have that clear reason, like why is this worth my time? Why is this worth money? Why is this worth all the time what I could be spending with my family or elsewhere in my business? Once they have that why, then like the other aspects tend to fall in place very quickly.

18:34John Jantsch:So if listeners are a little like me, I probably have contacts in a lot of places. And worse than that, I've got contacts on LinkedIn that 80 % of, I don't know why I'm in contact with, a relationship or a follower or whatever it is. How does somebody start sort of organizing that chaos? Yeah, it's a great question. So the first thing that you need to do is get all of your contacts into one place, whether you're using Relatable or another CRM or even just like exporting all of your contacts out of your email and Google contacts and LinkedIn and putting them on a spreadsheet, whatever. Then make a habit of every day going through a few contacts.

19:17And I say make a habit of it is because one of the other tripwires that I've seen people fall into, John, is that some people will spend, for example, all Sunday, six hours organizing their database. And they're like, good, I did it. Thousands of contacts. And then what happens next morning? Someone emails them. And all of a sudden, that database is out of date. And so I find it's actually really helpful from the very beginning to establish a regular routine of just every day working on your database, just like gardening, just like a little bit on a regular basis. It's a task that will never end.

19:56But that's the great thing, because if you do three contacts a day over the course of a year, you've gone through a thousand contacts. Whereas if you spend a weekend on it and you go through a hundred, you're exhausted and you never want to do it again. And then all of a sudden you've lost touch with people.

20:15John Jantsch:Yeah. So we actually are getting close to needing to wrap up. Why don't you give me the kind of the, if somebody said, well, you've been talking about relatable, but like, what is it actually? Yeah, sure. So Relatable is a personal relationship OS. Think of it as a CRM with a lot more in it that is built around helping you build and maintain the relationships that are most important for you. You can sign up at bemorerelatable.com. But the key idea here is that if relationships are important for you, then it's time to put real systems in place, not just tools like Relatable, but actual like structures and habits and processes to build and maintain relationships.

20:58John Jantsch:Awesome. Well, Zvi, it was great having you stop by the Ductate Marketing Podcast again. On top of where you mentioned where Relatable is, is there anywhere else you'd invite people to connect with you or find out more about your work? Yeah, absolutely. Well, my name is Zvi Band. So far, there's only one Zvi Band out there that I know of, and that's me. So you can search for Zvi Band and find all the different projects and connect with me on LinkedIn, etc. And then if you are also interested in learning more about the tactics and mindset around building relationships, I have a sub stack called Your Network Starts With You that you can easily look up.

21:34John Jantsch:Awesome. Again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully, we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Thanks, John. We'll be right back.