Building a successful business is about one simple thing.
It’s not about your market, it’s not about your product, it’s not even about how creative your idea is, nor about how much funds you’ve raised...
A successful business is all about whether or not you know how to build trust.
Why do you need trust to build a successful company?
You see, for a business to be successful, it must generate revenue.
And to generate revenue, you need to make sales.
When you sell in B2B, you either help people save time or make more money.
To do so, you need to convince them that your product or service is the right solution for their problem.
Even money in itself is a storage of trust.
You trust a piece of paper to be worth a certain value.
And your hope is that this can be traded against something of value like food, a house, a car, or whatever you want to buy.
Our entire system is based on trust.
And the most successful businesses have been building trust for decades.
The 5 levels of trust
Before I give you the secret framework to building more trust so you can grow a successful business, you have to understand the 5 different levels of trust.
1- Distrust
Distrust is essentially when people have active skepticism and doubts.
If you see a billboard with my face that states that I’m gonna help you become a millionaire in 4 days by using the Internet.
Just like that… 😂👇
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You’ll probably think that I’m a fraud.
2- Suspicion
The suspicion stage is when you have limited trust with reservations.
For example, if you don’t know who I am and see an ad where I give you a framework to make millions, you might be suspicious about what I promise.
3- Operational trust
Then comes the operational trust.
If I offer you something for free to download and after reading it, you see that it brought you value; or if you see me interviewing or talking with someone you know and admire, this is when you establish working and operational trust.
4- Personal trust
Then you have the personal trust.
For example, if you know that I sold one SaaS business and grew another one past a $150M valuation and that my goal is to share all my learnings along the way because I wish someone would have done it before me... you understand my personal intentions, and therefore you trust me personally.
5- Unconditional trust
Finally, you have what we call unconditional trust.
This is basically total trust without reservations.
To reach that level, you need to understand a concept called the trust triangle.
How to build trust with the trust triangle?
It represents the 3 necessary components for building trust.
Credibility, reliability, and emotional connection.
Let me explain 👇
1- Credibility
The credibility aspect is all about whether or not you have the necessary qualifications, skills, and expertise.
For example, if I try to sell you a program on how to be an exceptional fisherman in Norway, and I’ve never fished in my entire life - that would probably not work…
However, if I talk about how to grow a successful SaaS, I clearly have all the necessary skills, qualifications, and expertise because I’ve done it multiple times.
So how do you build credibility when you’re just getting started?
The easiest way, in my opinion, is to document everything you learn.
Because the more you teach what you learn, the more you’ll master a specific topic, and, therefore, the more credibility you’ll get.
That’s exactly what I did in the early days of lemlist.
2- Reliability
Which leads me to the second part, reliability.
Meaning: are you consistent in your actions and promises?
Typically if I tell you at the beginning of the article that you’re gonna learn how to build trust to grow your business faster and I deliver on my promise - I build reliability.
3- Emotional connection
And finally, you have the emotional connection part.
How well do you connect emotionally and understand the other person’s needs?
This is where your story matters a lot as a founder.
You see, before launching lemlist, I had run 100s of cold emailing campaigns. I knew how hard it was to book a meeting with potential prospects.
And that’s why I created lemlist… Because I knew that I could create a better platform to help solve a problem I personally had.
By understanding the problem people had, it was a lot easier to build an emotional connection.
That’s why when you launch a business, it’s super important to tell your story.
The more transparent and honest, the better.
To sum up
1- Trust is the essence of a successful B2B business since people pay you to solve a specific problem they have.
2- You have 3 key components to trust: credibility, reliability, and emotional connection.
3- The more you’re gonna share your story, document what you learn, and deliver on your promises - the more trust you’ll build and the faster you’ll grow.
More trust means more word of mouth, a faster sales cycle, and overall more growth.
I hope it helped!
Peace, love, and profit 💰
G.
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