Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Evan Siegal and Michael A Forman
Welcome to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Connections. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're talking about something every leader eventually faces. What happens to your credibility when you get it wrong? My guest combines thought leadership and relationship building to open doors at, with executives, building programs inside major organizations, create business op- and creating business opportunities.
But we're also digging into what happened when an AI pilot failed, and what it took to rebuild trust afterwards. I'll get it, I promise. Because your network isn't tested when everything go ... Because your network isn't tested when everything goes right, it's tested when it doesn't. There we go.
I finally got through that. Not bad. All right. So I'd like to introduce to the podcast Evan Siegel. He is a professional in this, and I would love to just the cliff notes of how you got where you are today. Yeah, sure, Michael. First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast.
And I'll give you a breadcrumb. Networking, my network, it directly tied to every job I got. That's a breadcrumb for you to follow up on. So coming out of college, I was fortunate enough to land a very coveted job. I was an associate consultant at Bain & Company, the strategic consulting firm.
A great first experience, I grew up in a entrepreneurial environment. My dad my uncle worked in the garden center that my grandparents started in Minneapolis. And so I always had this entrepreneurial bug burning in me, and I left after two years and did something that actually people talked about at the consulting firm.
They, very unusual. I started a painting company. It is something, a residential painting company, something that I was a little bit ahead of my time because Harvard Business School grads now the hot thing to go do is go into mom-and-pop industries and try to roll it up and build professionalism.
That's exactly what we were trying to do. We grew it. It was an Inc. 500 company, one of the fastest growing Ame- companies in America in the early '90s. But super hard. You're doing the manufacturing process in front of the customer. I got burned out 'cause we had 70 customers at any time, 300 employees.
So I came out to the West Coast to go to graduate school. Out of there, I went back into consulting but a different flavor. Not strategy, more implementation consulting. Did super interesting things like re-engineered the environmental cleanup at Hanford, which is a nuclear waste site up in Washington State.
Incredibly interesting. We shortened the timeframe to clean up a plant there by four years. Then, typical story of consultants. Had kids, wanted to see them more, and so I left consulting and went into industry and actually landed a job in a place I really liked, Wells Fargo. I was there for 16 years.
I did two things. I worked on customer experience strategy across the entire enterprise. And at a mega bank, everything is mega sized. So we were touching 70 million customers, the work that I was doing, trying to improve the customer experience. Then I transitioned to the leadership team of the 10,000 person contact center, where I worked on special projects, marketing, sales, and customer experience.
And then from there, I landed to where I am now, which is at eGain. We're the leading knowledge management provider. And now I work with companies, primarily banks and credit unions, to improve their customer experience and make them AI ready. So not a straight and narrow path but I don't think many people have a straight and narrow path.
I have wandered, and I've been super fortunate that I've enjoyed every role, and I've learned a lot every step along the way Yeah, there is nobody that I've talked to, and I've done over 200 of these has a straight path to where they are. They all took left hooks, right hooks, left turns, right turns, but they all managed to get where they are, and everybody seems to be happy with where they are.
So it's really interesting. And back to that breadcrumb right in the beginning, if everybody remembers that networking is the lifeblood of business, then everything will be all right. Because everything comes down to it, whether it's video, whether it's in person, whatever have you, it's the customer service, it's the person-to-person contact.
And that's what I go across the country talking about. Okay. So thought leadership can attract attention, but relationships create trust. Where does that thought leadership and genuine relationship building begin? So this is a great question, and something I'm going really deep on right now.
I believe, and I'll be curious to get your take on it after I, I finish, I believe that LinkedIn is the networking turbocharger of the modern day. So the way I'm using it with great effect is consider myself an evangelist. One of the things I'm working on now is from my days in banking, I see where banks, credit unions, community banks, where they dropped the ball on customer experience and advice and guidance.
So I'm an evangelist on this point. I have a strong viewpoint, which by the way, many agree with and that viewpoint also aligns with what eGain does. We have solutions that solve some of those problems. So what I am doing on a daily basis, and it's a daily habit, and that's what makes it effective, is I go on LinkedIn and I make comments on other people's posts where I'm agreeing most of the time, and I'm, I'm not overly salesy, but I'm getting my messaging out, my evangelism out on what's wrong with sales, and I subtly suggest the solution.
Again, not to be overly salesy. And then I use that to connect with people. And so I'm dramatically growing my network. Every time I make one of these comments, it's building the brand of myself, my evangelist message, and eGain's message. And then on rare occasions where I've really had a mind meld with someone, I'll make a more aggressive follow-up to see if they'll take a meeting to share ideas- And dig a little deeper into their pain to see if eGain can help solve their issue.
And again, it's, I know you talk in your podcast here about networking events. They're not every day, but you can go on LinkedIn every day, make connections, have, have conversations with people, and it makes your scope instead of local, it makes it national. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.
LinkedIn, as social media goes, LinkedIn is for business, and as long as you treat it that way from your profile on to answering other people's posts... And if you see my posts I post once or twice a day, and I go in and I comment because that means more to the algorithms that you comment with something that you're responding to, whatever.
So that really builds up. But as you do, I'm I am energetic about networking that it comes out in everything that I say and do, and that's what happens when they, people respond to what I post. And I just post slices of podcasts and things like that, but then I have a networking meeting, I have networking shows, I produce network business networking expos.
So I get the comments, so it all goes throughout. But- Yeah ... coming back to your point- Can I just jump in? I wanna, I just wanna add one thing that's really powerful- Absolutely ... about LinkedIn. Absolutely. What I'm noticing is, so there's a particular audience I'm targeting, community bank, regional bank, and credit union executives.
Now, in the... This is a commercial for LinkedIn, but I'm just a big fan at the moment. Now in the member, in the connection suggested requests, the algorithm knows who I like, and it's making recommendations that are really awesome. And it makes the work easier, right? So I'm able to grow the network in exactly my target audience because the, the algorithm is spotting that and helping me there.
And to your point, I do exactly what you do as well. One-on-one comments, and then a weekly, I just do a weekly post that's mostly on brand, but for the company and for what I'm trying to do. But every once in a while you're trying to build your personal brand as well. So I went backpacking with my kids a couple weeks ago up in Yosemite, posted about that.
Tons of reactions. So out of character, but again, out of that grew a few more people that just say, "Hey, this guy's a backpacker. I'm a backpacker." So you never know what comment leads to network growth. Absolutely, and you hit on the key to LinkedIn networking. You can post what you do for business, but every, like once a week or so, put in something personal, something that you've done, something...
And you'd be surprised because I get much more out of, much more viewership from that than I do over business. Yeah. So it's really strange how it all works out. When you're trying to build relationships with banks and credit union executives, what earns succe- what earns access to the room? And what earns the right to stay in the conversation?
Yeah. It is... I have... It's two things. It, I have a resume that builds credibility. What's on that resume? It's strategy consulting at big firms, senior executive at a major bank, a mega bank and then a viewpoint. And I think that third thing is something that anyone can develop. Anyone can have a viewpoint in their industry on what it takes to improve that industry, and a voice and a viewpoint is something people will listen to and they'll want to follow up on.
So I think it's just tho- those three things. And, there are other little tri- tricks and trades. Again, going back to LinkedIn one of the things I'll prioritize when I'm trying to grow my network is anyone, Wells Fargo had 275,000 people working there at any given time. There are a lot of alums out there in the business world.
And so I will prioritize trying to link up or connect with people from the alma mater of employer because you just have a natural affinity. And by the way, everyone has those connections, those tribal affiliations. AI has made it easier than ever to appear knowledgeable. Has that made has that made earned credibility more valuable than visibility?
So I'm gonna answer it at a company level, 'cause that's the where eGain operates. Trusted answers are the stock and trade of any brand's worth. Let me just give you a story of where that falls off. This just happened to me the other day. I called one of the mega investment firms.
I wrote a check to the State Tax Authority of California off of a fund I have. Check hasn't cashed. I asked at the end of the customer service call, I asked the gentleman, "Hey, what kind of fraud protection does your firm offer if this check falls into the wrong hands?" He gave a two, 2X wrong answer.
Now I know enough about financial services to know it was wrong. He said you're FDIC protected." That has nothing to do with fraud. That has to do if the financial institution goes out of business. And I can't remember the other thing he said that was incorrect in his answer, but, if you multiply that times thousands of the c- number of calls that go into that organization's call centers, you're giving people bad guidance, and that's a terrible experience.
So the, my viewpoint is banks, credit unions, any firm customer-facing, you need to really invest heavily in getting those answers right at scale. It's a really difficult problem to solve, and you need to nowadays with AI which opens up a whole bunch of new avenues of what you can do, you need to tend to the infrastructure, get the sort of the AI infrastructure right.
So I don't know if that's not necessarily around networking per se, but it's, if you're an executive in a company that has answers being given to customers, these are the questions you need to be addressing, critical to how you get AI right. It all boils down to the customer experience, and if you give erroneous answers, that's going to really knock your customer experience down to a level that you don't wanna be.
Yeah. So it all goes for that customer experience. That was very good. You experienced a failed AI pilot. What did that teach you about leadership when your expertise, judgment, and credibility is suddenly questioned? Yeah, so it's more our new clients. We come in after they've done that. So I've seen it, I've seen the movie multiple times.
And we work with them to res- to get the train on the right track. There's so many lessons in something like that. One is you need to go and communicate to all the stakeholders in your organization, what are you doing to fix the f- to fix the train, to fix the process?
Step one you need to lay out the plan. Step two, you need to build credibility slowly. So typically people will, start slow, a pilot a phased implementation with the new solution to show that this time you're gonna get it right. You need to have your baseline metrics solidly in place so you can show improvement off of the baseline.
And then once you've got c- under a controlled example, success at a very high level to the level you set and have communicated to your executives, then you start to roll it out. You keep an eagle eye on those key metrics, correct answers, handle time if it's a call center, first contact resolution if it's a call center.
And any time there's any issues, you and your team need to dive in. What went wrong? Why was that answer incorrect? And then with tools like what my company sells, what eGain sells, we have metrics on what were the top an- questions that were unable to be answered, and then you can fill in the gaps and put in place the policies, procedures, knowledge to make sure those answers get right.
So that's some detailed steps, but the bottom line is build the plan, establish credibility with hard metrics over time, convince the ex- the executives, and I'd add one other piece, over-communicate. Over-communicate with the other stakeholders, with the other executives, because in the absence of you telling them what's going on, they're gonna fill it in with that bad experience of what they had before.
Absolutely. And I was gonna ask you about that very last part, but you answered it without me even asking, so it was very good. When something you've championed fails publicly, what's the difference between defending your reputation and taking ownership of the outcome? I think that's a great question.
I think you have to acknowledge failure. Out here in Silicon Valley where I live and work, people talk about failing fast and about it shouldn't be a career-limiting move. And why is that? Why is that a Silicon Valley ma- mantra? It's because people in tech are always pushing the envelope.
They're gonna be working with unproven technologies. They're gonna be working with ch- the change management associated with new technologies. In other words, the technology may work great, but people may not use that technology. So if you are able to say, "Hey, we messed up. Here's what we learned.
Here's what we're doing different," it gives you credibility, but you need to do it in the organization that says failure is not a career-limiting move. And for some of your listeners who might be operating smaller businesses, you're setting the tone of the culture for your organization and if you allow failure to be something that is tolerated as well, as long as it's learned from and adjusted from, you're gonna be a winning organization that's able to move fast in this AI tech-powered economy that we're in now Absolutely, and I just had this conversation yesterday or the day before yesterday.
And for the size of the companies that listen to the podcast, they're all between one and 10 employees, and that's exactly right. But the culture of the company operates from the top down. So you dictate the culture of the company and you s- you, whether or not a, a failure is going to break you or make you.
And you learn so much more by your failures than success that it can only drive you forward if you handle it the right way. Yep, the postmortem. People A postmortem is a valuable exercise. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Inside a massive organization, influence often matters more than authority. How did relationships help you build support for a coaching program when you couldn't simply order people to participate?
Yeah, so let me give a little bit of the backstory, 'cause it's one of the career things I'm most proud of. So at Wells Fargo I built a team of financial health coaches in the contact center. We coached 75,000 people. So again at something like Wells Fargo, the impact is big. F- the way the coaching was around topics such as how do you build credit, how do you pay down debt, how do you save more?
Core sort of financial health topics. Getting so- a big bank to implement something new is not easy. And I did this. This was pure- it was my idea, and I was the genesis that, the, the guy that pushed it and worked across the stakeholders. So how did I get it done? Part one was it was an idea that aligned with Wells Fargo's mission.
They, at the time, they were talking about, we wanna help people achieve their financial goals. So I picked something that aligned with the organizational mission. That made it easy to get meetings with people because they're always looking for opportunities to further the mission. The second thing that I did is I met with everyone who I could to pitch the idea to build a coalition.
Obviously, I got my manager on board first, and he was supportive, but I met with people that I typically didn't meet with, and the best example there was compliance and legal, 'cause they're the people that can say no. But once I got them into the camp proac- pro- pro proactively it made, it greased the skids for final approval once it was all lined up there.
And then going back to something we talked about with your last question, I kept everyone updated because even though it's live doesn't mean it's gonna stay live. And so you have, I had to circle back to folks, let them know how it's going, let them know it's working, where we've had some, some bumps in the road.
And it actually made the company's annual report. We profiled, And Wells Fargo was a $90 billion company at the time, so a giant enterprise, and we profiled a customer that had been turned down for a basic credit card. My team coached them. This woman, she eventually got a regular credit card and a mortgage, so helped her kind of realize the dream of homeownership and the bank make a lot of money and, 'cause a mortgage is a very profitable product.
And stuff like that in your career doesn't happen much, so I'm proud of that. And it all comes down to that conscious effort to build the relationships, build the coalition and get people on board. Yeah, and you should be proud of that. That's a, that's quite a, a feather in your cap.
Do you believe your professional network discovers your character most clearly when you're successful or when something goes wrong, and why? I think character is revealed on... I'm gonna take a third path that you didn't lay out. Okay. I think character is revealed in every interaction.
Let's take an example, let's take a networking example. Let's say I say to someone, "Hey, let's meet to talk about X, Y, Z topic." Okay, I teed up a conversation, someone and I are on LinkedIn have a are jiving on the same topic. If I position that meeting as, "Hey, let's just exchange notes," and I flip it to a hard sell for my company's product, I have betrayed my word and I have diminished my character.
So I try very hard to, if I make a s- positioning of any conversation, to live up to that. And so that's why I think it's every interaction reveals your character. Now, obviously when the, the shit hits the fan, to use a technical term, and something goes wrong in your career, that's where it's easy to take a shortcut to try to get out of it by cutting a corner and to your point, I think every expert would agree, it's in the points of adversity that if you stick to the doing the right thing, ultimately you'll be better served, if I were to use a platitude.
Absolutely. And really the only thing that I want to add to that is if you make that type of mistake, then you should own it. You should say, "Look, yep, that was my bad and I'm gonna do everything I can to fix it, but this is where we are." And if you own it, you don't try to, I used to call somebody Mr.
Teflon, because he always tried to get it off of him and put it on somebody else. But it always came down to the fact of you've owned it, you took care of it, and y- you can move on from it. So that was a, a big part of this. Okay. When rebuilding credibility after failure, which matters more?
Explaining what happened, demonstrating what you've learned, or changing what you do next? I'm gonna go with one and three. Okay. So I think- Okay ... I think you need to do a root cause analysis and explain what went wrong, 'cause people wanna know it doesn't, it's not gonna happen again, and then you need to course correct.
'Cause if you're working on something that's worth working on, you still wanna make progress and still tackle whatever problem you're trying to solve, and you need a plan. And by communicating that, you'll get people to help you improve the plan. To, to... i'm gonna make one point that goes back to the last question and this question.
One of my personal beliefs is ego is one of the greatest hindrances in business. So what do I mean by that? If you have a big ego and you can't admit a failure, that's gonna hurt you. If you have a big ego and you can't listen for feedback to improve your ideas, improve your presentation, these are all hindrances.
I personally believe that those that are most successful check their ego are always open to feedback, to changing, to learning, and it's not always easy, but that is a secret, I believe. It isn't easy being green. Absolutely. Okay. Let's bring this podcast full circle. If your thought leadership disappeared tomorrow, no content, no platform, no title, what would remain about your character that would still make people want to work with you?
I think it's a passion to make a difference on the areas that I'm working on. I've spent my career working on customer experience, advice and guidance, and I truly am passionate about the topic. I can talk at length with people about it. I can call on experiences, both positive and negative, and pattern recognition, and I think that comes through.
I think people who are wrestling with those problems wanna be with experts, if you will, people who have scars on their back of what works and what doesn't work, and some, some viewpoint and opinions about how to make it better. So when you've got subject matter expertise, I think that goes a long way.
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Evan, this was a great podcast. You're a great guest. And listen, if somebody wanted to get hold of you, either for your company, for you personally, they wanna be mentored by you, how... what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Yep. Let me give you a couple things.
So my email, esiegel, E-S-I-E-G-E-L, @egain.com. I'm on LinkedIn, just search Evan Siegel at LinkedIn. And if any of your small business listeners wanna have an AI agent, I'm gonna make a plug if you don't mind, an AI agent for their businesses, we have a self-provisioned, meaning you can set it up, a self-provisioned solution you can find at egain.com.
And if anyone wants, any of your listeners, I'm gonna make an offer that we have a team that can give them a white glove overview of how to set that up and get it going to do AI agent self-service. Have them email me, I'll set them up with one of our experts. We love small businesses. We love to help them enter the AI age, reduce their costs, and improve their service.
Absolutely. That's great. And let's, today's big takeaway, credibility isn't built by always being right. It's built by how you respond when you're wrong. Own the mistake, learn from it, communicate early and clearly. Give people a reason to trust you again. If you enjoyed this episode, like, follow, and subscribe to Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections, and share it with someone who needs to hear this conversation.
And remember, expertise may get you into the room, but relationships open the door. But relationships may open the door, but character determines whether you'll be invited back. I'm Michael Forman, thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. Evan, I'll speak to you soon, and have a great one. Thanks a lot, Michael
That's a wrap, folks. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today. And of course, a big shout-out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses, being coached, or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today, get out there, and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website, michaelaforman.com/podcast
Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
Digital Courses
#BusinessNetworking #CorporateSuccess #Leadership #CommunicationSkills #ProfitGrowth #ExecutiveCoaching#Conference #EventSpeakers #ConferenceSpeaker #MarketingConference #NonprofitConference #BusinessEvent#Networking #Conferenses#Profit #Sales #Communication#Podcast #networkingevents #businessowners #businessideas #businessinnovation #growyourbusiness #professionaldevelopment #businessconnections #networkmarketing #EventProfs #PublicSpeaking #SpeakerTips #ConferenceSpeaker #EventMarketing #ProfessionalSpeaker #MemorableExperiences #EventStrategy #SpeakingEngagements #BeUnforgettable #SpeakerLife #EventSuccess#NetworkingUnleashed #BusinessCommunication #PublicSpeaker #ProfessionalDevelopment #StrategicNetworking #MichaelAForman #SpeakToConnect #AwardWinner #LeadershipThroughConnection
Comments