289: Understanding the Power of Relationships to Achieve Business Goals, with Contactually Founder Zvi Band

Zvi Band describes himself as an introvert—someone who tends to be inward-looking, generally preferring to spend time alone. At the same time, he’s a successful entrepreneur, writer, and speaker who preaches the importance of relationships. “I actually found that all of my business, and more importantly, all of the amazing opportunities in my life came from, of all things, knowing the right people,” Band says. That may not sound like something an introvert would say, but for Band, human connection is about quality over quantity. He isn’t focused on collecting new friends on social media or passing out stacks of business cards at mixers all over town. Instead, he is focused on maintaining and nurturing the relationships he already has. That, he says, is the key to success. Yes, it’s all about relationships, but in a world of constant connectivity, it’s about focusing on the meaningful ones. “I was in a room of a hundred real estate agents this morning and everyone raised their hand when I asked, ‘Who here thinks their relationships are their most important assets for business?’” The power of relationships is more than a philosophy for Band; it’s his business. His enterprise SaaS platform, Contactually, helps professionals, particularly real estate professionals, build and maintain relationships by automating personal communication. A resident of Washington, DC, he’s been named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s Tech Titans six years running, and has been featured in publications like TechCrunch, Washington Post and USA Today. He’s even written a book on the topic, Success Is in Your Sphere: Leverage the Power of Relationships to Achieve Your Business Goals. Why Are Relationships So Important? Band understands that humans are naturally social creatures, and the biological need for connection translates directly to the business world. He sees that as an opportunity to build success through the support of a professional network. “We rely on social connections and relationships to help keep us safe and therefore help us identify who we should work with,” he says. To Band, relationships are directly connected to reputation, something that has become either an asset or a hindrance, depending on how people view you as a professional. Because the world is so connected, professionals are now competing with other professionals with the same skills on a global scale. The only way to differentiate, he believes, is through reputation. “Because no one can fully copy you. So that reputation and your ability to maintain that reputation ended up becoming us.” How does a good reputation resonate in the business world? Through the relationships professionals build. Band points to a study of banking customers in Germany and the relationship they have with their bank. “They found that when a customer is referred by another customer, there’s a 25% higher contribution rate, so referred customers become better.” Relationships Paved His Own Career Path Band started out as a software developer, eventually leading a team at an intelligence agency. In 2009, he struck out on his own, creating a software design and development firm called skeevisArts. It was there that he started thinking more about relationships and how they can make or break a career—or a company. But he also found that maintenance and development of those relationships was tough. “I would meet people for coffee and two weeks later completely forget who they were. So, a lesson learned for me was, ‘Okay, well, what’s the right thing to do, here? Well, how can I solve this with software? How can software help us build and maintain better relationships?’” And that’s how Contactually started. With the help of fellow co-founder Jeff Carbonella, he developed a platform to organize and automate personal contacts in order to maintain and build relationships that he knew were so critical. They brought on Tony Cappaert as the third co-founder to lead business development. Both Cappaert and Carbonella were connections Band already had. Carbonella was a lead engineer at Band’s consulting firm, and he had gotten to know Cappaert through the local community. He started small, not really thinking about building a company but more fleshing out an idea. They initially decided to focus on real estate agents, who rely heavily on relationships to sell homes and build their business. In 2011, they were chosen to participate in the 500 Startups accelerator program, where they raised their first venture capital. “We quite literally had an apartment with three mattresses on the floor,” Band says, laughing. Over the course of eight years, however, the company has raised $12 million in venture capital. It now has, according to Band’s personal site, “tens of thousands of customers, including eight of the top 20 real estate brokerages in the country.” And Band practices what he preaches. To this day, he uses his own tool to maintain his professional relationships, keep up with current and potential investors, recruit new talent, and stay connected to the media and important influencers. He even used it to develop a relationship with Compass, the national real estate company that acquired Contactually in 2019. “Robert , the CEO, knew me well enough that he had absolutely no problem reaching out to me to say, ‘Hey would you be interested in a potential partnership?’ And that’s an important thing, right? It’s not like companies just get sold overnight.” Band now using all he’s learned about relationship building to mentor a new generation of entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded MadeInDC, which markets startups in the DC area and helps entrepreneurs get started. He is a co-founder and co-organizer of DC Tech Meetup, one of the largest tech meetups in the country. And he created DC Tech Summer, where over 550 interns apply to work at tech startups in the area. That’s a lot of new, powerful relationships that Band is out there, helping to form. Not bad for an introvert. Key Lessons in Nurturing Relationships Throughout his career, Band has learned some valuable lessons about harnessing the power of relationships. He shared some of them with us. On Starting a Business Band tried to start a few companies before his success with Contactually, while he was still running his consulting firm. None of them really took off, and he realized it was because he was working on his own and only on the side. He wasn’t committing to their success. This was true of nStructo, a backend-as-a-service tool he tried to get off the ground. “With nStructo, we had no customers, we had no users, we had no team. It was just me. So it almost could exist in my head or it could shut down in my head and no one would know and no one would care. And so I knew that I needed to have a team around me.” He realized how much he needed that team to keep him accountable and give him the discipline to invest time in his next startup venture. On Identifying the Right Relationships While cultivating relationships is the name of the game, Band stressed the importance of identifying the right relationships first. To do that, he says, you first have to identify your goals, which will lead you to the right people to reach out to. He learned that the hard way when networking for his consulting firm. “So, for example,” Band says, “I used to think that going to a lot of tech meetups and developer meetups was a great way of doing business.” But Band had to find companies in need of software services, not other developers. “I was looking to work with a lot of design agencies, so I would go to design meetups and pitch myself as a software consultant. I would go to marketing meetups.” By clarifying his goals, he found the right people to reach out to. On Cold Outreach While Band stresses the importance of cultivating current relationships, he does see merit in cold outreach to expand a network. But, he cautions, a generic or overly produced message will fall flat on your audience. “Everyone is used to getting slammed with cold emails,” he says. “Therefore, if you write a cold email that actually stands out, or if you do it via LinkedIn or you do a handwritten card, or something that says okay...this person genuinely wants to talk to me or be of value to me, then I’ve actually found that people are pretty receptive.” Also, he says, make the contact short and sweet. An email, for example should be no more than a few sentences that engage your contact directly. Asking a simple question of your prospect rather than talking solely about yourself can draw them in and send the message that you’re interested in a conversation. Interview by Nathan Chan, feature article reprinted from Foundr Magazine, by Laurie Mega Key Takeaways How Band’s background in software development and challenges with building new relationships inspired the idea for Contactually Why Band, despite being an introvert, believes in the power of relationships above everything else The connection between relationships and reputation Why Band and his co-founders decided to focus on real estate agents for their SaaS platform From accelerator program to $12 million in venture capital How Band practices what he preaches The relationship with national real estate company, Compass, that eventually led to Contactually’s acquisition in 2019 How Band is using his relationship-building knowledge to mentor a new generation of entrepreneurs A sneak peek into his book about relationship marketing, Success Is In Your Sphere