Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Rich Smith and Michael A Forman

 Welcome to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections. The show where conversations aren't just social, they're strategic. I'm your host, Michael Forman. Most people walk into a room thinking about what to say, but high level professionals think differently. They think about how decisions are made, how value is perceived, and how to guide a conversation in a way that actually leads somewhere.

My guest today brings that perspective. He believes you should think like a marketer, but talk like a CEO. That means moving away from random conversations and toward, towards clear intentional communication that reflects real business understanding. We're diving into how bus, how biases, shape, first impressions, why many professionals confuse activity with strategy and how decision saw, how decision.

Science plays a role in whether someone chooses to continue a relationship or not. If you want to elevate how you're perceived, communicate with more clarity and turn conversations into real opportunity, you're in the right place. I'd like to welcome to the podcast rich. Rich is an expert in everything that we just talked about, and I would like to introduce Rich and have him just give us a, like the cliff notes of how you got where you are today.

Hey Michael. Good to see you, and thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, so I mean my, I've, I'll maybe work backwards from where I am today. So I've been the chief marketing officer of seven different companies in roughly the last. 25 years ranging from Fortune 500 large financial institutions down to privately held data companies and, even a management consulting firm.

I came to marketing. I wish I could say that I had a grand plan, when I was getting into it. But the truth of the matter is I was actually studying chemical engineering in. College and I spent a summer kind of working in the field at an engineering firm, realized that was not what I wanted to do, didn't know what I wanted to do, so I switched my major to economics.

And again, just because I liked math and science and numbers and, those sorts of statistics, that kind of stuff. And I did a one again, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I applied for a one week internship during my junior year at a small credit card company based in Newark, Delaware called MBNA America.

I spent a week down there and they offered me a job as a summer intern in the marketing department. And so I came back there for the summer, worked in the marketing department, loved it. Ended up getting a full-time offer there and so that's how it all began for me. That's great.

That's it. I how you went from chemical engineering to marketing probably, it's probably even more of a story than what you just said. Yeah. I gave my parents a little bit of whiplash, I'll be honest. Yeah. Little bit. Little bit, because that's quite a jump. Okay. You say think like a marketer, talk like a CEO.

How does that shift the way someone approaches a networking conversation? So I think this is a really important concept and it's something again, I wish I had known, when I was getting started, but I learned it by default over time, and that is, most marketers speak in using certain marketing terms and they talk about what I would often consider second order.

KPIs, things like likes, page views, followers awareness measurements, those sorts of things. CEOs on the other hand think more in terms of first order KPIs, things like revenue growth, a RR churn, acquisition cost, right? Profit margin. And so when you as a marketer and I see the, I coached and seen this mistake.

With a lot of junior marketers in the past is they'll walk into a high level meeting with leadership and they'll start using marketing terms and you can almost see everybody glaze over because when you're talking about likes and followers and awareness, the CEO's sitting there thinking, is any of this making me us any money?

In order to, effectively. Rise up in your career if this is the path that you're in. And even more importantly, be effective when you get there and be able to get your strategies and the things that you think the company should do and get buy-in and leadership team and board of directors to make all that happen, you really have to translate.

The marketing outcomes that you're looking at into business outcomes that the CEO is gonna care about. And if you're not making that connection in your discussions, your presentation you're probably not going to be successful. And you certainly also run the risk of losing con, losing the confidence of the rest of the C-suite.

What you have to know your audience first of all. Know who you're talking to. Know whether you're talking, to your peers, whether you're talking up the chain or you're talking down the chain, because your talk should be different for all three. And knowing fully well that you have to realize that you have to talk about the money coming in and coming out when you're talking up the ladder.

'Cause their thought process is different than that. Those that are below, and those are below, you can talk about getting likes, dislikes, and all that kind of stuff. But, when I go in and I do a workshop, I have to see whether I'm talking to C-suite executives or I'm talking to the masses, so I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that, that's totally right. And that's true with. Most everything that we do, right? Just from our marketing, sales, communications perspective, always need to know your audience. I think the, in, in this, for this particular case example, it really requires some some ability to think about the projects and the things that you are recommending that the company take on almost as an investment portfolio.

So imagine that you're, you have this new campaign that you wanna launch. Great. Imagine that instead of going to the CEO and asking for approval or going to your management team and asking for approval, imagine if you had to find investors to fund that project, right? How would you talk to an investor about funding that project?

That's how the CEO wants to hear it, right? That's the language that the CFO speaks to the CEO, right? And that's usually one of the strongest relationships in the C-suite is the C-E-O-C-F-O relationship. So if you can start talking in terms of investment, in terms of how that. Ties to the company's objectives.

You're singing the same song that the CFO sings and you have a much better chance of building confidence within your leadership team and getting the things that you want to get done accomplished. That's very good line to draw and I never really thought about that, but you're right. If you're saying, if you're trying to speak to.

Somebody that's going to give you money, then you're talking the language of the CEO, the CFO and everything else. That's a very good line. What's the difference between someone who sounds busy and someone who sounds like they understand how business actually works? Again, I think it really comes back to tying your activity to the outcomes that are important to the organization.

If you're just saying we are, we, I often tell my teams, when we get into a staff meeting, just by way of example, that I don't want a weather report. I don't want you to sit there and tell me about all the things that you did last week. That's not a fruitful conversation, right?

What I want to hear is are our objectives on track are not on track? And if they're not on track, what do we need? What do you need? What resources do you need? What changes do we need to make? Who do I need to talk to, right? If they are on track or ahead of track, great. Any, anything that we can do to even make it better and capitalize on that and get something done faster, right?

So really the weather report about what you did last week is not really useful or important. And the same is true when you walk into your CEO's office or you walk into the boardroom. They don't want a weather report about all of the great things that you've done. It's not of interest to them.

What they want to know is how are the things that you're doing affecting the objectives that the company cares about? How are they affecting revenue? How are they affecting churn? How are they lowering acquisition costs? Those are the things that they want to hear. Not all the activity that you did, because they can't make that connection.

You're making them do too much work. It's quite honestly they're not gonna make that connection between all of your activity and the outcomes. So you have to talk just in terms of outcomes. Absolutely. It's not a social event that you're going in and you're speak, have the sit down, he, you're being called in for a reason.

And the reason is, tell me what's going on. Tell me how all of this is going to make us money. He's not saying Take, how's it going to make me money? How's it going to make us more profitable? And you have to be not robotic, you have to get all that ancillary stuff out of the way, the weather, report everything else out of the way, and just give him all the facts and figures and then see where the conversation leads you.

And there's there, there's another just Im important thing aspect to this and that is that there's, I. The board of directors and the CEO, they tend to be very loss averse, like all of us. Loss aversion is a common cognitive bias that we all have.

So one, one good way to position the things that you're doing are the things that you want to do is instead of, and a lot of marketers will go in and talk about we're gonna inquire all these new customers and we're, all the gains that you're going to make. By doing your project, it's sometimes more effective to go in and reframe those as risk avoidance, as opposed to gain seeking, right?

If you walk in and you say, Hey, here's an investment opportunity that will help us capture, help us not lose revenue, that's already in our system. If you're talking about, let's say a nurturing campaign to existing leads, right? Hey, here's an investment opportunity that we're gonna do that's going to help us capture revenue, help us not lose revenue.

That's already in our process, right? Oh yeah. That's probably gonna get a lot more attention than, Hey, here's something that we can do to try to get a few more customers out, the leads that we already have. Good point. Good point. Many professionals take a spray and pray approach to networking. What does more intentional, scalable approach look like in real conversations?

Yeah, again it comes back to knowing your audience. And being really crystal clear on, whether it's from a networking perspective or even from a marketing, sales and communications perspective. But just to focus on networking for a moment you can walk into, let's say you're going to a trade show.

You can walk into the trade show and you can randomly. Lots of people and you have 48 hours, 72 hours that you're gonna be there. You have everybody from a particular industries coming together in one place at one time. And if you just walk in and just randomly go through, yeah, you might get lucky and meet some people that will actually help you, your career, your business.

But if instead. You take a look at the companies that are going to be there. You go on LinkedIn you, sometimes people even post attendees, depending on, if you're sponsoring the con, you can get an attendee list, but really get into, okay, who's gonna be there and make yourself a target list.

Of the people that you would really like to meet when you go there and make a point of meeting as many of them as you can, seek them out, find them and meet them. That's gonna be a much more effective way to network than just, oh, I'm going to the conference. There's gonna be a lot of great people there, and I'm just gonna randomly walk around and meet folks.

Absolutely. That's called strategic networking. And I went to the school of hard knocks. I learned how to do everything wrong before I did it correctly. And one very important, fact that I remind myself every time I go to a networking event, and my suggestion is find two networking meetings a week and go and just network your heart out.

But you go and you don't go thinking you're gonna sell something, whether it's yourself or a company or something else. You're going there with what's called a servant's heart. You're going there to see, whenever you sit, find that person and you sit down with them, how can I make you more successful?

How can I be a good referral source for you? And by doing so, it takes all the pressure off you and it puts your conversation right at the top of the list and as that person is talking, because you'll know as well as I do, everybody loves to talk about themselves. So the talk and talk and talk and you are getting all the information you can by asking questions and everything else, but that's how you strategically network and do that with confidence and everything else.

Yeah I totally agree with that and I like the way that you. Position that as a servant's heart, I always call it helper mentality, which is getting at the same thing. You go into it not thinking about what can they do for you, but think about what can you do for them and what they do for you will just come naturally from that.

Conversation. I think the same is true in sales conversations as well too. Even, outside of the realm of networking, if you're, oftentimes salespeople view themselves as here and the potential buyer as here, from a status and power perspective. So they go in with that mentality of, almost like you're getting an audience with the king.

And really what's far more effective from a sales perspective is to go in with a helper mentality as well and think about, Hey, we're two business people. We're here and we're trying to figure out together whether. What we have is going to advance what you need, right? And so it's like business person to business person.

And it's not about sales. It's about helping. It's about helping them be successful. And if you're able to figure out a way to help them be successful, that's gonna translate into revenue for your organization and success for yourself. Absolutely. And I talk about this all the time.

When you go in and you meet with somebody in their office, you have about 30 seconds. You look on the walls, on their desk, you see what they have. What type of pictures do they have? Do they have music, art, a picture of their son, their grandson. And you take all of that in because I developed something called for, I didn't develop it.

I stole this, by the way, FORM, family, occupation, recreation, and a certain message. And take any one of the above and get them to talk about. What you, something about their family or occupation, recreation. You don't want to immediately walk in and start talking business, right? You want them to get easy.

That, that trust, that know you, like you, trust you, that they're gonna do business with you. And the only way to get to that trust, it's to start the conversation like that. I again completely agree with that approach. There, there's a tendency and a cognitive tendency that we all have is that we tend to like people who are like us, and you're more likely to buy from someone who you like and you feel some rapport with.

People buy from people, not companies. Exactly. Big misnomer, right? Like people buy from people. So it's really, even in the sales environment, it is almost the same as networking in a networking environment. Very similar. And that's really the, the key to, to, to being successful there.

Absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. How do biases and first impressions influence whether someone takes you seriously within the first few minutes? Yeah. I think we just talked about a really good example. If people buy from people who are like themselves, so doing things that can help you build rapport.

And you can't be inauthentic. You can't be someone who you're not. But showing an interest in them as a person. I think that, your form framework is great and that would be a good one to follow. But you know that, that is definitely, one of the clear cognitive biases.

We, we talked about loss aversion as well and this is another one that you really need to keep in mind as a salesperson. We as human beings, experience the pain of a loss at about two times greater than the pleasure from an equivalent gain, right? So if you lose a hundred dollars, it hurts twice as bad as if you found a hundred dollars on the street.

What that means for a salesperson is the your price, the value that you are providing has to exceed the cost of implementation by at least two to one. Okay? And the cost of implementation is not just the price of your product. It's also what other investments did they need to make to get the value out of your product?

How much effort and political capital does your champion have to expand to get the contract through procurement, legal, compliance, right? Finance, all of those steps, all of that is part of the cost. So you really need to keep in mind, hey, what are all of the costs that my buyer is going to incur and how do I demonstrate value that's at least twice as good as all of that cost?

Absolutely. And one thing that you're always trying to do as you connect with people is to bring value to the conversation. You're always trying to 'cause, 'cause you don't wanna just walk up to somebody or see somebody or meet with somebody, hand 'em your business card and say, this is what I do.

Because that will immediately turn you off. But if you go in and bring value to the conversation, you're bringing value, and he'll be much more receptive. She'll be more receptive to what you have to say. Absolutely. What language or framing immediately signals strategic thinking rather than tactical thinking.

Yeah. We've talked about this a bunch already, but it really is translating tactics into strategic outcomes. Very similar than what we talked about earlier about how would you go into your CEO's office and talk about your results last quarter, right? You wouldn't go in and talk about all of the things that you did.

You would talk about the outcomes of those things. So you know, if you wanted to be taken seriously at the executive level, you really have to talk in business terms. Not in the terms of your own function, translate what you're doing into how it affects the business, how it ties to the business's outcomes and the objectives that the company cares about.

Yeah. I, I remember a hundred years ago when I was younger when ever I was starting a job or position I was being interviewed, I would always say something like, he would always say what are you looking for? And I would say, I'm looking for your job. Or I'm looking above your job or something like that.

I, whenever I got in, I wouldn't look at my boss, but I would look at my boss's boss and that would be the level I would always try to achieve. And most of the time I achieved it. Once in a while I did, but that's all right. That's a story for another time. Okay. Where do professionals unintentionally create confusion when explaining what they do and how does that affect opportunity?

Yeah, so I, this is something that's a little bit counterintuitive, right? When someone asks you what you do, you're likely to answer very literally, right? I am a blank at blank company, right? This is my. Job title, right? This is my like functional title, and that doesn't really help who you're talking to understand anything about what you do, right?

Okay. It might give them a little inkling. Okay, he's a bank executive, or, she's a, healthcare professional. But that's not really, that's your title of your job. That's not what you do, right? So what you do is. Should be framed in terms of the value that you're creating in the world.

I help sick people get better if I'm a doctor, right? If I'm in the mortgage business, I help people get the home that they want at a cost that they can afford now and pay for it over time. Put your. Your occupation in terms of how it affects the rest of the world.

And that's gonna be one, it's gonna be a lot more memorable because everybody says the title, it goes in one ear and out the other. So it's gonna be a lot more memorable. So they're going to tie it to you and it's going to give them, an idea of the value. Why? Why would I want to?

Know this person. Okay. It's all about the value that you're creating in the world, not your title or the organization that you work for. Absolutely. And what I teach this. With all of my clients I tell them not to, don't tell me what you do. Don't gimme your title. Give me the results of what you do, and if once you gimme the results, we'll put it into some sort of a little two sentence story, and that'll make the person you're talking to feel much better rather than giving them some title.

Yeah. And you're employing another technique there. Storytelling is super powerful and I like that a lot actually. I might steal it from you but go ahead. But yeah, like telling stories. As human beings think about, recorded history writing has only been around for, what, five, 6,000 years, something like that.

Most of our evolution, the way information and learning and knowledge was passed on from one person, one generation to the next was by telling stories. So we are hardwired to love stories. And if you can give somebody a story about what they're doing and really, I like to try to tie that to the purpose of the organization, right?

Purpose or mission, vision. Different companies use different terms for that, but like, how is what you're doing tell a story about how is what you're doing is driving the purpose of the organization? Absolutely. And I employ that whenever I speak, whether I'm doing a workshop or I go across the country and I speak about this exactly, and I always bring humor into my stories because once you have a story, you bring humor into it, but they won't forget it.

They'll forget my name, they'll forget what I look like, but they won't forget the story with the humor. And I start with that and I usually end up with that. So it's a very good mix, but that's a great way to have the person remember who you are, right? And if you can make it rhyme even better. There is actually a cognitive bias called rhyme as a reason.

So we tend to believe that things that rhyme are true. Even if they're not right. And just think about all the, I'm mean, sure. My grandmother told them to me. You're, everybody's probably did phrases like, I'm from Philadelphia, and so Ben Franklin, it's widely attributed to be said early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and rich, pro prosperous.

No. We all know how to finish it. And it sounds true because it rhymes. So if you can tell a story and make it rhyme you're like, masterclass one step above. And I'm gonna have to use, try to put that into my talks. So I'm gonna use that. What role does clarity play in becoming referable and memorable in a crowded, professional environment?

Yeah, look, it is everything. And I think it's not just from a personal perspective, but it's also a corporate or company perspective. It's, we all want to work with specialists, not generalists. So if you're trying to be something for everybody, you're gonna end up being nothing for anyone, right?

People need to understand that what you do is for them, and you're the specialist at solving the problem that they need to solve. If you need knee surgery. You are not in, what are you gonna do? Okay you could start to look at some, call the local hospital, right? Start to look at some surgeon in your area.

You're probably also likely to talk to your golf buddy and, or friends that you have, someone that you know who had similar surgery recently. Who did they go to, right? You're looking for. Not the doctor that does shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees. You're looking for the doctor that does knees.

You want knee guy in your city, right? Or the knee lady in your city. You're, you don't want to just go to, you might find a great doctor who does lots of things, but you're still looking for a specialist. And the same is true when you're promoting yourself trying to, grow your career or land a job with a new organization or.

You're trying to build and launch a company or launch a product it really comes down to be really specific and the more specific you can be about who it's for and what you're doing right. It just makes it, it makes it consumable to your buyer. It's a lot easier for them to understand whether what you do is for them or not for them.

I often say, look I'm not trying to be everybody's cup of tea. I want to be a few people's glass of champagne. Very good, very, I tell my clients all the time, clarity is key. You need to clar, you need to be clear. But here's the big thing, especially with my clients enunciate, you have to be able to enunciate where the other person understands you and then become clear.

Because if you're clear your message, but you're not enunciating you're mixing everything up and really they'll just turn you right off. They'll say, okay, thank you very much. And they'll go on to the next person. So those are two very important things. Okay, let's bring this podcast full circle.

If a listener wanted to elevate how they are perceived in conversations over the next 90 days, what's one communication habit would you tell them to start immediately? Yeah. I'd say immediately stop talking about exactly what you do and start translating what you do into the value that it creates, and talk about the value that you create.

Because again, that's what people care about. And when I say people, friends, family, employer, everybody around you, that's what they care about, right? They don't care about your activity. They care about the value that activity generates. So as you want to think about being more effective in communicating, if it's about yourself, it's about the value that you're creating.

If it's about your organization, it's about the value that the organization is creating. That's gonna be much more effective in, capturing the attention and reaching and getting, people to remember who you are and know you know what you do and care about what you do.

Absolutely ri rich. This was absolutely spectacular and I can see why you went from the engineer, the chemical engineering to marketing because you, you know your stuff. If somebody wanted to get hold of you and they wanted either to hire you to say hi to you or whatever, what's the best way for them to get hold of you?

The easiest way to find me is on my website, it's rich m smith.com. You can also, you can book time with me there. You can learn more about what we do with our growth studio. We work with organizations to help them get unstuck and scale and get to the, successful outcomes that that many CEOs and founders want.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and, I have a podcast as well. It's on all the channels. So I'm out there. Okay great. This conversation is a reminder that strong networking isn't about saying more. It's about saying what matters. When you communicate with clarity and understand how people think and make decisions, your conversations naturally carry more weight.

Take one step this week, simplify how you can explain what you do to somebody. How, I'm sorry. Simplify how you can explain what you do so someone can immediately understand the value. Clarity is what makes you memorable, and being memorable is what leads to opportunity. If you find, if you found value in today's episode, please make sure you like, follow and subscribe to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, so you keep getting the best insights on networking and communication.

And share this episode with someone ready to move from casual conversations to strategic connections if you'd like. To help strengthen your, how you communicate and position yourself in conversations. Visit michaelaforman.com to learn how I work with professionals, teams, and organizations. So until next time, think strategically, communicate clearly and build connections that move business forward.

Rich, you are a great guest and I can't wait. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Michael. I really enjoyed the conversation this morning. Appreciate you having me on.

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  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. Share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.

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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.

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