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Josh Schachter 0:00
Hi everybody, and welcome to this episode. I’m Josh Schachter. I’m the founder and CEO of UpdateAI. And I have a very special guest this episode. Mr. David Sable. David is a pioneer of the advertising world of the marketing agency world.

He doesn’t want me to list off his credentials,

David Sable 0:29
pioneer, I’m not that old, like less a pioneer more like I’ve been working in the mines for a long time.

Josh Schachter 0:41
Well, I want to sit here and read off your credentials, all the public company boards that you’re on in the organization so

David Sable 0:47
that everybody can look it up on LinkedIn. That’s fine. That’s fine. So

Josh Schachter 0:51
listen, so we’re going to talk today about building customer relationships. We’ve got my puppy in the background here, I believe, but we we’ve got building customer relationships, talking about process of running an organization in high performing team. Let’s do it this way. Instead of listing off your credentials, why should these folks listening? Listen to you, David?

David Sable 1:11
I was wondering the same thing. I don’t know. There’s gotta be a reason there’s there’s even if I don’t know shit, I’ve seen a lot. You know, I have I haven’t believe that. One of the things that that’s hurting us in the world today is that we have devalued experience, not only my experience, per se, and when I say experience, I mean history, we have completely devalued it. So we believe somehow that everything that we see is ex nihilo, you know, came from nothing. And it’s just not true. So it’s astounding. I was reading this morning about prime right? You know, yesterday was prime sell day. And so they sold 50 million extra units because they used influencers and oh my god, like no one’s ever done this before in the history of mankind. Hello, everybody. We’re here for HSN QVC. Do you know how Kellogg began selling his cereal? Tell me notion is the notion is not no space in the same way that everything was all about celebrity it was all that we was cetera, et cetera. Now about influencer, influencer, selling this stuff isn’t new. What’s new is how we use new methods of communication. It’s how we use new channels. It’s how we use new tools, we enable ourselves, but it’s not in and of itself. Because oh my god, we’ve created something completely new because there’s this thing called Digital. It’s such bullshit. None of these do bullshit. It’s impossible to learn. Now the joke is, or maybe it’s not a joke. Maybe it’s why it’s so successful. Jeff Bezos is the guy who understands it. You see, Bezos is the guy who opens up stores. VSOs is the guy who understands the value of marketing. It’s everybody else that looks at him and thinks, oh my god, we got to be digital first, whatever that means, because I have no clue. And Bezos says no, I’m not Did you I’m not anything first. Because one of my customers like read his stuff. Be so said. I follow the customer. Everybody else follows us. We’re gonna win. Yeah, the way he learned that from Walmart, he got he will learn from Sam Walton basically said the same thing. So, you know, I just think so you want to know what to listen to us because like, I’ve seen a lot of shit. Work Sorry, guys. Don’t waste your time.

Josh Schachter 3:52
You know what I was. I like that with the Jeff Bezos. When I was at into it. We followed it was a little inverted. Actually, their their motto, or maybe this was what they stated to us as employees of Intuit. But Scott Cook was a wonderful founder. His mantra was follow that your employees make them happy. The customers will follow and then the shareholders will follow after that. It’s probably just

David Sable 4:20
I think, I think that that is a little inverted. Because I think that the issue is, you first of all, you have to have it you have to have an offer. And your offering is you follow a customer, right? You put in such goods that gives you that gives you a product is a service, but then you make the best service the best product by making your employees happy so that they’re happy to serve the customer. Now, the only issue with that is that people at Amazon tend not to be very happy. So but, but the only good thing about that is that they have zero interface As with their customers, the most. And you know, most, most people do complain about Amazon service. But there’s a let’s,

Josh Schachter 5:08
let’s talk, let’s talk with somebody, you were talking to customers, you lead large organizations whose sole job was to build relationships with your clients, right? I mean, that’s how these things worked in the service organization. Thank you. How we, how do you build effective service relationships with customers? It’s such a broad question, but I’m gonna start there.

David Sable 5:40
Question. It’s a very broad question it has put. And let me give you let me let me give you a story. And then I’ll build off of that. But frankly, it is. So I will tell you that there are people in our industry, meaning the marketing is you don’t believe that they’re in the service business. And I think that’s a mistake. And I think those are the ones who who end up not being quite as successful as the rest. So is a story that I tell I was a waiter. When I was young, I worked as a waiter. Right? And I think that everybody should work as a waiter. Because I think there’s no better way to actually understand what it means to give good service under a high pressure environment. And being a waiter is the best way. Now, let me tell you about the high pressure environment where that I was in because I don’t think it doesn’t really exist anymore, and it was the highest pressure. So in my day, like many Jewish guys, my age were waiters in the hotels in the Catskills. So for those of you who don’t know, the Catskills are in upstate New York, and back in I guess, starting in the 20s. In the last century, 20s 30s 40s 50s into the 60s and early 70s. the Catskills were where many Jewish families went for some vacation. And they went to these big hotels, and every one of these hotels, by the way, it started as a little farm. And then they did kind of bed and breakfast, and they grew from there. Now these hotels operated on what was called the American plan. Get it? These people were all immigrants. So the American plan meant a lot to them. American was very simple, long before Club Med. It was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So you was in your room, right? You paid at breakfast, lunch and dinner, anything you wanted. And there’s a menu every day. And you sat at a table is very formal. And a waiter handled three tables. Typically, each table had a minimum of 10 people, some had 12, or 13. And you had depending upon like how many people were seeing all these tables, you had two busboys who work with you. That’s how it worked. But you were the waiter. So imagine like, you’re the CEO, and you got two VPS working for you. That’s kind of how, like, you’re going to think about it in those stores. Every day, every meal, you had it, not just take the orders of these people, right and other but they can order anything. They can order 42 things, it didn’t make a difference. And we’d be like, yeah, just want to taste to that give me. But you also had to remember because if you wanted a big tip, you had to remember what people liked. So the first meal, you’d ask a couple of questions, just to get a sense of it. So that when they came in, in the morning, you knew that the guy liked orange juice, you knew that the grandfather wanted prune juice, very important for older people. And at dinner, you knew who wanted the well done who wanted this, who wanted that, etc, etc, etc. The other thing if you were really smart, you established a relationship with the chef’s, which I did you tip the chef, you as the waiter so that you get prime space in the front. And your cuts were the best. And that’s how you make big tips, right? So as a way, I never thought of myself as being an order taker. I was a waiter. So here’s the story, right? Is this story, I tell this story of all management classes that I get, because I’ve heard 1000 times from people might see oh, no, I don’t take orders. Okay, schmuck, let me explain to you what a real way to does. So imagine this scenario. You and your friends, you’re like a little younger. You’re kind of coming up in the world, and you have this vision. You want to go out it’s like you heard about this restaurant. You can’t wait to Get it’s a little expensive. But you know, it’s above what you would ordinarily do. But you decide you’re gonna go. So you go to other couples. So three couples, you all go together, and you’ve sent in your heads, you’ve discussed sort of what you’re going to order. So you’re going to be careful about the wine. You’re not going to order dessert, but you’re going to focus on one or two things, you want to have a great time. So you come into a restaurant, you sit down, David comes out, he’s your waiter. He says you out in a second, he gets it. And he starts discussing the menu with you. And now David is a good waiter. So David knows which, and they’ve already told them in the kitchen, like the stuff they want you to push, because it’s higher margin, maybe it’s no different. He gets you all to mix up the stuff. So you know, maybe Josh takes this special the day his girlfriend takes something else. He’s done it, then you start ordering side dishes. And you’re each thinking of ordering your own side dish. And as you know what, the six you, you really only need four, because they’re really good size. So now you’re feeling pretty good, because they’ve just taken care of you just save money. Right? When it comes to the appetizers, he’s pushing you a couple of things like to share, and then maybe you each go so whatever is but you’ve now felt really good because you just kind of feel like you’re saving money. It’s awesome. Comes the wine. He’s smart, he recommends something, it’s above what you would pay. He knew it’s above what you already feel good about the rest of it. See you order that bottle. Meanwhile, you get all the stuff it’s staged. Well, it all comes you having the best time is very solicitous. Make sure you’re having a good time, brings you water brings you extra maybe brings you an extra dish, if something happens all the time, a good way to do that comes dessert, you swore you weren’t gonna have dessert, because you could finish and go down the block to the ice cream store. And for a couple of bucks each get an ice cream as opposed to paying 20 bucks. He says, you know, guys, it’d be such a shame if you not to try these two things. And you know what, I’ll bring six spoons for each, and you get it. Now here’s the end of the story. It’s cost you 25% 30% More than you had gone in there thinking you were going to do it. And plus you give them a good tip. Nobody leaves that restaurant, saying I got screwed. Everybody leaves the restaurant saying I had the best time in my life. Now let’s flip that story and think about your business. And how many times have you gone to a client with an idea or thing? And then the client says you know God, you guys screw me on price.

Josh Schachter 12:57
Yeah,

David Sable 12:59
let me think about it. So the guy who you not you Josh, but you out there would say to me Oh, he’s just a word and just taking orders has gotten the biggest tip. And his made these people feel like they’ve had the greatest experience their life and they will be back and ask for him by the way or her. Meanwhile, in your business, your clients are telling you, you’re screwed. That’s what I stand by.

Josh Schachter 13:32
It’s a great story. It’s profound. It’s profound, because you’ve created a science out of something that I never really considered before. And by the way, first of all, I highly agree with you that everybody should work in the service industry as a waiter in a restaurant, right? I’ve worked in five restaurants in my career. And even it has nothing to do with your your professional life afterwards. Just knowing how to respect people that are serving on you, I think is a huge lesson to be learned from that experience.

David Sable 13:55
And by the way, everybody who’s ever been a waiter is the best tipper. Right? Almost,

Josh Schachter 14:03
almost. Right? So your lesson in that story is not just to give out, you know, some small things for free and then and then keep peddling other shit. Right? What’s the what’s the, you’re talking about building a relationship? It sounds like what like how would you abstract what you just said into the key principles that you can apply to the marketing world or to a SaaS company and customer success?

David Sable 14:27
Hey, build the relationship. Right? The relationship is built on understanding your customer need, like what is it the customer needs to be successful? Those people to be successful, needed to have a great dinner, they needed a great experience. They needed a great food. Right? They needed to taste a little bit of everything. They needed somebody who took care of them, and they did somebody they could trust and they got it all in that scenario. And it’s really What it is, you know, it depends, every level of customer care is based on understanding what outcome does my customer, my client, the person on the other side need. So if you’re a CEO, and you have relationship with another CEO, and you’re in the service industry, that you need to understand what that other CEO needs to be successful. Right, that’s what you’re doing. It’s not that you’re delivering them, advertising or marketing, or a legal opinion, you’re delivering them success for their career. Right, if you’re the customer success guy, in a SaaS company, you’re delivering for your customer success. And so you call Customer Success, not your success is his success, her success. You’re making them use your product, to drive their success, not just the company’s success, that’s so obvious. That’s why you’re there, you know, the other company’s success, and your company says, but their success, that person on the other side is gonna be successful, because they’re gonna use your product better than anybody else.

Josh Schachter 16:17
It’s so funny. You know, it’s funny, you say that, you know, I hear all the time I do these interviews, and I hear all the time. You know, I asked the question often, what’s the time that you felt really good about delivering value to a customer, and you don’t hear the stories of Well, I was able to increase the company’s revenues or decrease their costs, whatever. What I hear more as an emotional connection with these folks, you know, CS leaders, is, I really help that individual build their career, or I help them solve a problem. It’s a very personal one to one type of interaction. And I think that’s really that is sage advice.

David Sable 16:57
That’s what, that’s what changes the world. Right? That’s what changes the relationship not. Okay. Yeah, they showed the guy had to use like a button that he didn’t know existed. It’s very nice. But, but that’s not what the person is going to remember you for. But the person remember you for is that you took the time to help them be success, because you didn’t just show him the button, you probably gave him like a secret. And you said, you know, I want you to be I don’t think this, I don’t think there’s a better way to be successful. You always have to think about like, what’s, what’s it, how do I go the extra mile to be to make that person’s successful? That’s really what it’s about.

Josh Schachter 17:46
And it’s, and I think you said this a second ago, it’s also about trust, or giving them the secret is a way of, you know, giving them trust. And I once heard somebody say, you know, in order to get trust, you have to give trust. So I think that’s also what your

David Sable 18:01
relationship we have to Yeah, totally. But trust is critical, because we don’t trust people anymore. Trust is it? Sadly, sadly, there’s a lack of trust in the world. And for good reasons, frankly. I mean, it’s like, Who do you trust? You know, are you going to trust Google? Are you gonna trust Facebook, in your trust Twitter, are you kidding me? So who you’re going to trust. So you have to find, you have to be able to connect with individual people who can help you and who are able to take to get you over that hump. So that, the next thing that you because that’s the thing that Ken is going to connect you forever to our company, oh, this is an old, this is all true. Every survey back in the day show this. When customers you know, we used to do this a lot in the days of the 800 numbers, I say 800 number you would call you comply. And we would do survey after survey after survey. And one of the things that we found is that the customer who complain if you solve their problem, they became your most loyal customer. Now why is that? Is the incidence very simple. They complain because they cared. You see the client who had an issue, or the customer had an issue, who just said screw these guys, never do business with them again and didn’t call were your nightmare. Because those are the ones who got over your ship company. The ones who called will looking for resolution of an issue. And if you resolved it while you’re on them forever. If you didn’t resolve it, you were screwed again you deserve You’d be screwed. But it’s the ones who didn’t call. It’s the ones who didn’t care enough about who you were or your product, your service, those were the dangerous ones.

Josh Schachter 20:13
And I think that’s why in customer success right now, you hear that it’s not about being reactive, that’s more of a customer support customer service. But it’s about there’s elements, that tube is about being proactive. Probably, that’s because you can’t, you’re not always going to hear from those that are unsatisfied, they may not have as much conviction, but you have to proactively, you know, draw them in. I think that that.

David Sable 20:42
And you see, that’s the thing, right? It’s a it’s a lot easier today to be able to do that back in the day, it was much harder, because you didn’t have the same tools. But today, you can look like you know, who’s on the platform, you know, or whatever it is you do you know who’s using it, you know, who’s not using it, you know, the power user, you know, the the weak users are? See, you can go back on and it’s easy for you to see who who you need to be reaching out to? And hey, is everything good? You’re right, what’s the story? I mean, that’s how I deal with all my clients.

Josh Schachter 21:16
I want to one more topic here, before we jump off, you actually made this a little bit more of a natural segue for me, because you were talking about the Catskills and serving patrons there. And it’s funny because I know you’re contemporaries with my father. And he was also a waiter in the Catskills, you know, in high school, and maybe college. And I remember he’s told me the story a bunch, that the, the head of the front of the house right, was so demanding at these restaurants, that they would not allow you to have a notepad of what the person’s order was, at least wherever he worked. He had to memorize everyone’s order. And you kind of alluded to that a little bit too, right of being proactive and preemptively, you know, knowing what their preferences were. But he remember he remembers the challenge of like, the first day just messing it up everybody’s dishes, and then eventually, you know, kind of caught on to it. But no notes. Update AI is in the business, of helping to eliminate the busy work of notetaking for customer success and other customer facing folks on calls with customers, right to just make their lives easier, so they can stay more present in the customer. No, no notepad, just stay present. Stay focused. You have an interesting philosophy, on note taking, you know, you’ve got years under your belt with this. Tell me a little bit about that how you view the importance of note taking in conversations.

David Sable 22:48
When I started in the business, in the training program at Yoruba cam, one of the first things they taught me was publish or perish. And publish or perish, didn’t mean like you were Charles Dickens, and you had to bring the next novel, which meant is you had to pay close attention during the meeting, take exemplary notes, and then send back to the client, a contact report, a conference, whatever you want to call it. That said, Hey, this what we talked about, just want to check that here’s the here’s the here the doable, etc, etc, etc. deliverables, now is a kid, your job was to sit there and take the notes. Now, that’s not to say that your boss didn’t take notes to it, but then they checked you. And by the way, we weren’t allowed to eat in meetings. as juniors, like you weren’t allowed, God forbid, you took a sandwich got literally inside joke, because you had to have, first of all, you had to have your hands through all the time to write. Secondly, in case somebody asked you a question, they didn’t want our exclusion or just yet to get. So it was very strict. Now, in those days, it was, you know, yellow legal pads. And you come to every meeting with a big yellow legal pad. And then, you know, if you are like me and obsessive you bought, it took what every little money you had, which wasn’t that much in those days, because you didn’t pay very well, because you’re in the train program. But a leather folder, and that leather folder was with me for maybe 30 years. It’s not a joke. And I have hundreds and hundreds of yellow pads, maybe 1000s. From all the years. And you would take notes, when you became a vice president and young and Ruby camp notetaking was so important, but now it was different. Because you’re expected to go out to fancy restaurants with your clients, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, whatever. And you can’t put a big yellow legal pad on the table. Doesn’t look good. So they gave you a little pocket one Solid, beautiful little leather thing like this big, you know, that went into your pocket with your pen next to it flat. And you had these cards that fit in with your name on it, and the company logo. And you were taught, sit down at the table, you put it on the table, the pen and that little thing, and you take notes. Like we took this, this credit, I still do it to this day. I mean, sometimes when you go out with your wife, it’s like you put it out you can tell him before his contemporary listen to my ringtone.

Josh Schachter 25:40
But you have you know, you have a rock star kind of persona essence to you, David. So that doesn’t surprise me. That’s your

David Sable 25:47
fantasy. So anyways, anyway, and one of my good friends is actually as a rock. So so it just goes to show. So the the, the but the issue is that taking notes, it’s like so engrained in my head. And it’s one of the reasons that I like what you do so much, because I think that the notion of, and to me, the Note taking is, is being in the in the moment, right? Like you can only take notes, if you’re listening carefully. And it’s not like you’re taking notes and not listening because you can’t react, you have to like learn it’s very, this, it’s all part of the thing, right? Because you’ve got to learn to listen and take notes. But the importance of notes is that later on the notes become a thing that helped funnel your thinking, and help you get to where you need to go. And I have found over the years that my notes are typically way more insightful than many others. Like I’ve sat and rehashed meetings of people is like what meaning we you it? Like? Did you not hear what the client said? And so this is the notes I took. I said, Yeah, but you missed the whole point. Like you didn’t take the notes. All you did was take a little bullet points. But you didn’t take the notes. So I think that that I think that the notion of I think the notion of being able to have this sidebar doesn’t mean you still can’t write stuff down, which is also fine. But I, I’ve often wondered, could I have something else? And I never liked the full record, like anybody can record you can record any Zoom meeting. But then you got to sit through and listen to an hour back of what you did. And you kind of it’s it’s not the same?

Josh Schachter 27:32
Yeah. And I think for me, the way I think about it is it just adds accountability, you’re talking about building trust with the customer? How do you build trust for the customer? Well, you do things to show that you care that you understand their problems, but you also just show that you’re accountable. Because that’s, that’s the first place that trust is earned. And that’s the first place that trust is dissolved as well.

David Sable 27:52
It’s absolutely and you share it, you share it with your with your clients, it’s a thing. None of this works unless you share. And that’s I think that’s the that’s the single most, I think it’s the single most critical thing. And I think one of the problems I’ve seen with a lot of the the SAS base, whether it’s customer service, customer care, whatever, is that they focus too much on themselves, and not focused on the share. It’s not just about you see, trust is created because you’re okay to share what you heard. You make yourself you know, there’s a there’s a bit of vulnerability, if you think about it, in taking notes and sending it to a client and say, hey, if I get this, right, I just want to confer I love that. I’ll

Josh Schachter 28:41
be sure I’m being vulnerable in some way. I’m being open and transparent. And I’m showing some immediacy, right some some some speed of execution and response.

David Sable 28:52
People love that. This it’s it’s the thing, it’s the thing that makes it there, in my view. It’s the thing that makes the difference.

Josh Schachter 29:01
Yeah. Okay. Well, we’ve heard some great stories here today, David, we’ll get to the story about when you met the Pope on the next time we do this,

David Sable 29:13
which talk about it talk about a humble person and leadership lessons, you can all read my

Josh Schachter 29:19
we’re just gonna we’re gonna sign off with this. So you’ve heard it here. First, folks from David table, Titan of business pioneer of marketing. sign us off with what you said to the Pope. When you met him?

David Sable 29:35
Well, I’ll tell you what I thought when I met him when I left him is what to the point so we we’d spent an hour with him, just five of us in a private meeting. And I’ll tell the story another time was pretty amazing. And you can see in the final part was the last part of this thing combined. You can see in the picture, the Pope is laughing. And when we left there be Civic. How would you say? I was always worried about what I say? Like what did you say like how did you get the public This was really simple. When we left. The Pope said to each one of us, he looked us in the eye, it was actually pretty, pretty amazing. And said, Pray for me. Pray for me. So he came up to me and he said, Pray for me. I said, Holy Father, with all due respect, I came here hoping you can pray for me. And so he started to laugh. And he said, Okay, I pray for you. You pray for me. So I guess that’s kind of customer service. So I just level that he was going to pray for me so made me feel building that trust one.