How to Slay the Trust Terminator

Joe: Hello and welcome to B2B superpowers. The webinar series where we bring you the very best sales and marketing superheroes to share their superpowers and help you defeat a treacherous enemy from the world of B2B. Our superhero this week, who is on hand to show you How to Slay the Trust Terminator is none other than Christina Garnett, Principal Marketing Manager for HubSpot. 

Christina, how are you today? 

Christina: I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me. 

Joe: Of course, it’s my absolute pleasure. Christina, you have an absolute understanding of superheroes, comic books, pop culture in that sense, so that’s why I wanted to get you on, particularly to talk about trust.

So the Trust Terminator’s primary goal is to break down trust between you and your prospects or customers.  It uses tactics in deception, lack of transparency, betrayal, poor communication, lack of empathy and inconsistency to damage your relationship. Before we begin to do battle with the Trust Terminator, Christina, how important is trust in the sales process? And what are the consequences of a lack of trust? 

Christina: It’s everything.  At the end of the day someone can beat you on multiple pain points. They can beat you on convenience. They can beat you on money. They can beat you on just about anything.  But people like doing business with people they like and people they trust.

So, even if you sign a contract, you want to believe that you’re going to be sending all this money over and that they’re going to give you what they’ve promised. At the heart of business, especially B2B, it’s all about relationships. Trust is absolutely everything. It’s that foundation. 

Joe: Absolutely.  I joke about this quite a lot, but it is a keystone of all the webinars, all the podcasts that I do.  If I’ve learned one thing over my time in marketing, it absolutely is people buy from people. Hence, a case in point, as I mentioned, I knew you were aware of pop culture and superhero references, that sort of thing. I knew you’d be all over this because previously we’ve had conversations where it’s come up and I think we bonded quite well over that.

Christina: We did. Yeah, I’m an unabashed nerd, so I’m ready for all of it. 

Joe: Excellent stuff. So let’s get into it against the Trust Terminator.  For our first play, let’s expose the deception piece. What are the deceptive tactics which might undermine trust with a customer? 

Christina: Not listening to them, after you’ve made it clear that you’re trying to listen to them.  I think that there’s a lot of communication that you have for example, go into your LinkedIn inbox and they’re going to immediately try to associate themselves with you in some way. We’re in the same LinkedIn group, we’re on this, we’re on that. So they’re trying to build a bridge saying this is something that we have in common.

Then before you have any response to it, they usually give you a pitch without asking anything in depth, without trying to get to know you at all. So that deception, people are more and more clear on what that looks like. So Instead of it coming from a place of trust, we have an immediate distrust.

There are really good salespeople out there who do an amazing job and really take care of their customers but they’re going to have to battle the distrust that consumers have because of previous experiences with other people that they had nothing to do with.

We just generally are used to spam. Now we have ad blockers.  We don’t accept connections from LinkedIn for people that we don’t know or have connections similar to, because we know what the next tactic is. The next time you’re in my inbox, it’s a pitch. Whether you know me, don’t know me, know what I do, know what I need, all of those things. So that deception isn’t just from you, it’s from the past that you have to fight through. So that’s incredibly hurtful. 

The other thing is that it feels almost like a bait and switch, especially when money’s involved. The salesperson is going to say whatever it takes to get them to sign the deal and then as soon as the deal is signed the warm and fuzzies are gone. It starts feeling very cold.  Then it’s almost like you’re in a conveyor belt onboarding process. So the love, and connection that they tried to foster when they’re trying to sell you immediately evaporates as soon as you sign.  

So it’s like the little mermaid, once she signs everything changes once the contract is signed and so it’s just really, it’s really hurtful and you carry that.

A lot of people want to quit as soon as they sign because they’re like, this is immediately what I was afraid was going to happen and then they’re counting the days until the contract expires. 

Joe:  What tactics can we employ to ensure that doesn’t happen, to ensure that the first step is not, Hey, how are you doing? By the way, buy my thing. What can we do about that? 

Christina: I really like the inbound approach where you’re creating value for them so that there’s a reason for them to come to you versus you spamming them. The other thing that I think that should be a part of the process from sales all the way through their journey as a customer, is that you talk to them when you don’t need anything.

This is true, not just for business, but for all walks of life.  If you’re only reaching out to your friends when you need a favour, you’re not really their friend and they are going to figure that out at some point. You can tell when someone only pings your inbox when it’s time to renew or when they need something, or when they want you to do something for them. 

Plant seeds.  Yes, it’s going to take longer but those relationships are actually going to be relationships. So, if you’re doing cold calls, have a list of people I’m starting to seed. I’m not immediately going to pitch to them. I’m going to try to connect with them in a deeper way instead, knowing that they’re not going to do anything in the next three to six months.  Because let’s be honest, the sales cycle for a lot of businesses right now has slowed down anyway.  So it’s not like you’re hurting yourself because it was already going to take a while. Just be more thoughtful and think about the kind of interaction that you would want if you were a consumer. I think that we kind of get lost in that lack of empathy. We’re so busy chasing a quota that we forget that there’s someone on the other end who is just feeling used. 

Joe: It’s particularly easy when we’re leveraging emails or social media, something that’s impersonal, a cold call. It’s not the most personal interaction you can have, but it is way more personal than just receiving an email into your inbox, I suppose. 

So, I just want to pick up on that. You mentioned empathy in that one. A lot of, as you know, a lot of superhero origins stories begin with an event of tragedy, meaning that we empathize with our hero right away. 

Christina: The K9 event from across the Spider-verse.

Joe: Exactly. Do you know what? I haven’t seen it yet. So please no spoilers.

Christina: No spoilers, but go see it, go see it, go see it. It’s so good. 

Joe: We’ll get around to it. Don’t you worry about it.

Christina: It’s the best superhero movie ever made. Quote me, period. 

Joe: That’s a, that’s a bold claim. I like that.

Christina: Quote me, quote me. It’s beautiful. Go see it. You have homework. 

Joe: So, how important is it to empathize with prospects and what sort of techniques can we leverage for that?

Christina: Empathy makes us deeply human. Honestly, if you want to differentiate yourself from ChatGPT,  empathy will be that.  Empathy is that core differentiator between you and AI that could replace your job. You need to be thinking about how you would like to be treated, what the process is like, what friction looks like to them.  Because it’s one thing to listen to somebody and be like, alright, this is their pain point.  It’s another to be able to empathize with them.  Because then you’ll get context and nuance that they aren’t necessarily providing you. Because you’re able to put yourself in their shoes.  So it’s going to give you more opportunities to talk to them. It’s going to give you more opportunities to share, to figure out what’s going to work for them.

But you absolutely have to have empathy. Honestly, if you want to prevent yourself from losing your job to AI….empathy! 

Joe: That’s a conversation I’ve had quite a lot recently about AI because, well for one thing it fascinates me and actually I think the Terminator is a piece of AI come to life, isn’t he?  So it is relevant to this discussion, particularly with the Trust Terminator.  The focus of that conversation is AI, at this point in time is used to augment human function rather than replace it. As a webinar host, that is quite encouraging. It’s not going to be a robot version of me doing all of this.  I still have a job at the end of the day, which is very nice. 

So when we’re talking about building relationships and you said previously, it may take you slightly longer to get to the end of the line with a prospect. How do you go about getting that balance right, ensuring that you’re building trust and you’re building a relationship with your prospects, but you’re not compromising your quota.

Christina: You need to prioritize your time. So you need to think about what’s going to take…….,] what is it like 90% to get 10% or 10% to get 90% of impact. So figure out what part of your day is going to get you closer to your quota and then block time off for that to prioritize that time because I don’t want you to miss your quota because you’re like kissing babies and passing out lollipops.  We want you to still have quota, but you need to prioritize and really kind of dig down to see what’s actually working. 

All right. Well, we cold called and we sprayed and prayed and it worked. Well, did it work? And if so, what parts of that worked, is it because you cast such a wide net that just based on statistics, you were bound to catch some fish?  Or was there something that actually works?

You caught some fish. What are the patterns that aligned with that?. Was it a leadership title that you specifically reached out to? Was it a specific vertical? Was it a specific type of collateral that you gave? So, like, figure out what’s working beyond the spray and pray. Where are the patterns between the people that are converting so that you can see how you can rinse and repeat that.

Then you can figure out what can I really lean in on and double down on that isn’t going to take a lot of time but it’s going to be able to convert, Then whatever time is left over, then you can really use that time to foster and think about what’s going to be helpful for people. So, for example, let’s say that there’s a big account that you really want and there’s someone that you know of there that’s your go to person.  And let’s say they’re a thought leader or they want to be a thought leader, you should be doing a talkwalker alert for them.  If they win an award, you need to congratulate them. If they do something, you need to be reading it. There’s a thing about showcasing, just doing those tiny micro moments, those core memories. People remember the people who are cheering for them. They pay attention. You should do it continually.

Let’s say that you have someone who is speaking at an event. You should congratulate them. You should say oh, that’s a really cool topic or whatever. But you need to do it more than once and you need to make sure that you’re doing that before you jump into their account into their inbox or something like that.  Because you’re fostering these tiny touch points and then when you go to try to connect with them or you try to go into their comments or go into their in mail, they’re going to recognize your name. Oh, this person’s always really positive or this person’s really nice, or whatever. Still don’t pitch but open the door for that relationship to begin because you’ve already essentially knocked by celebrating them.

But people remember, people pay attention to who’s rooting for them. Call it narcissism, call it awareness, call it whatever you want. But we pay attention and that’s a really great way to get on someone’s radar and then you can stay on their radar. I make a point to find people and pay very close attention to people who love HubSpot and I make sure that I’m celebrating them.

Now, I care about them too, which makes it significantly easier for me. But I want them to win and they know I want them to win. So that makes the relationship work. It takes two seconds for me but it makes their day. They’re like, Oh, that’s really nice. 

So figure out how many times a day you’re making someone that you want to connect with, how many times are you able to make them feel special?

Joe: Absolutely. Just on the time management piece, I suppose what you’re really saying is be like Dr. Strange, use the time stone effectively. 

Christina: Time blocking, honestly though, is such a lifesaver. Time blocking completely changed my workload because there are certain times where I’m like, I’m going to have to just set aside this block.  This hour, this 30 minutes, this15 minutes and I’m just going to do X and I’m going to be hyper focused. If you’re like me and you’re just scatterbrained sometimes you can’t do it. Make it 10 minutes. You’d be surprised what you can do for 10 minutes if you’re hyper focused.   But time blocking and really being thoughtful because I think that we’re all doing so much that there’s also just a lot of stuff that we don’t really have to do, or we’re doing stuff because it’s on a to do list, but it’s not really serving us.  It’s not really getting you to the finish line.  So having that kind of self audit of what am I doing that’s actually driving impact? If you can figure out what you’re doing that’s creating the most impact for you and then you hyper focus on that, then that’s one way to accelerate without burning out, losing your mind, all that stuff. 

Joe:  Another piece on what you’ve mentioned there in your messaging to people saying, oh, you’ve done a talk, congratulate them, you’ve excelled at this particular thing.  You’re saying, Hey, nice job, how’s it all going? I hope it’s all going well, all that sort of thing. Then in the Trust Terminators arsenal is a tactic of inconsistency. So why is that consistency crucial when you’re establishing trust and building that relationship and how do you maintain the consistency?  You mentioned, was it a tool that it tracks whenever someone posts something? Is that correct? 

Christina: Talkwalker. So it wouldn’t do anytime they post, I’m not stalking people. Um, But it’s a social listening thing. So it works like a Google alert. So if someone has something happen to them,or someone’s listed on an award or something like that, it’s a really easy way for them to pop up, so that you can see what’s happening.

Also, just following people on LinkedIn and being really thoughtful about …. I’m very much a believer in half consumption, half creation. I think the best creators are also consuming and I know that we’re in this world where everyone wants to be a thought leader, but you have to consume too.  You have to be actually in there seeing what people are saying, taking time to just scroll, consciously scroll to figure out okay, what are people talking about?  Or, is this someone that I’m that I’m interested in learning more about? What’s their POV on something? Just taking that time and honestly, it doesn’t take that long, 5 to 10 minutes a day to just sit down and thoughtfully scroll on LinkedIn, like a couple comments, whatever.

It makes a difference and just setting aside that time daily or even like every other day to do that. I think it’s a really good practice because as business owners, whether you like it or not, there are conversations happening on social about you, about your brand, whether you like it or not.

So having that chance to kind of go in there and be consistent. It’s really helpful and also when you’re thoughtfully scrolling and you’re connecting with certain people, the algorithm is going to see that and it’s going to reward you for that. So, it’s going to take less and less time for you to curate in the future because you’re signaling this is the kind of content that I want to engage with. Please give me more of this. 

Just really kind of having that habit loop of I’m going to consciously consume and just start with LinkedIn, especially for B2B, just start with LinkedIn. You don’t have to be everywhere. You absolutely do not have to be everywhere, but just take that time 5 to 10 minutes a day.  It can be after lunch and you’re just trying to ramp back into meetings or something like that and you’re just not there yet, mentally. 5 to 10 minutes, block some time out, you’re just going to scroll LinkedIn and see what people are talking about. Reach out to a couple of people. It can make a difference.

Joe: I suppose it’s the ‘consciously’ part of that though, is the key part of it, isn’t it? Because otherwise, as you said, you can get into doom scrolling very, very quickly. So having that focus time, that’s the key for that one. The kryptonite of the Trust Terminator is discovering your prospect’s pain points early on and working to resolve them.  How can this be achieved quickly and efficiently? 

Christina: Listen more than you talk and ask deeper questions. Don’t think that saying, alright well, what are you struggling with? and then that answer encapsulates all of it because you can dig deeper.  Ask really insightful, thoughtful questions that show that you care and that you want to learn more about what’s working with them.  What’s not working with them and showcasing that you generally want to be helpful for them. That’s huge for them. But you also have to remember to, I forget who it was. I think it was Ogilvy that said it, but he said something like even the consumer doesn’t know what they want. So you could be talking to somebody about their pain point and they might have one idea of it, but the way that they’re explaining that pain point might be 3 or 4 pain points linked, but they’re only giving you that one perspective.  Or they could be giving you one specific, let’s say that they’re not the CEO, but they’re a top level decision maker, their version of what a pain point could be could be very different from the person who needs that tool in the trenches.

Leadership is going to be thinking it’s too expensive. But someone in the trenches might be thinking it doesn’t even have the features we need. So, you need to make sure that depending on who you’re talking to, are you getting everything from the leadership’s POV of pain point all the way down to the actual user?

Because if the leadership is happy and you answer that pain point great, but if the person who actually has to use the tool in the trenches isn’t happy, then you’re only going to have that contract until it’s done. Then you’re going to have to have this completely different relationship or different interaction when it’s time to renew.  Then the leadership’s going to be mad because they didn’t get what they thought they were going to get and they’re not going to blame themselves. They’re going to blame you because you didn’t tell them that they didn’t have this bell or whistle, this specific feature, all of these things.

So you need to make sure that you’re digging deep into that and don’t take their original answer as the golden nugget.  It’s not the golden ticket necessarily, it can be but not always.  Then make sure that you’re keeping that data somewhere so that anyone that’s interacting with that person sees it. 

So if you’re using a CRM, obviously I love HubSpot, but just whatever you want to use.  But use a CRM so anyone that eventually talks to that person that they have data to support them, all right, when we talked about this, this was the pain point that they said, has anything changed? Because those pain points, especially with everything that’s happened since 2020 pain point shift. 

The company that was flushed with cash last year is laying people off this year. So that pain point, if it was anything other than money, it’s probably money now. So those pain points shift too and you also have to be aware of that. It’s that whole, being customer obsessed and staying up to date with them and seeing how things are different for them. Is this going to impact the way they’re using us? Are they going to want to downgrade? Are they going to want to change? How can we help them retain? If the pain point they have now is completely different from the pain point that they had when they signed with us, you have to be thoughtful about that.

You have to just be mindful and that could be anything from checking in every 3 months. It could be, if you know that there’s a certain vertical that is associated with them and something happened in that vertical, just checking in with them. Like when the bank stuff happened in San Francisco a couple months ago.  You’ve got to wonder how many of our customers were impacted by that and how can we reach out to them to say you may or may not have been impacted by this but I just wanted to check on you. That goes a really long way. To be like, our name was not even mentioned, but you were thoughtful enough and empathetic enough to think that it could and so you wanted to check in. The check in is incredibly powerful. 

Joe: Just the idea that someone is thinking of you. 

Christina: I just want to make sure you’re okay

Joe: So you’ve got to ask good questions. You’ve got to be like Batman, be the world’s greatest detective. You see, I’m tying it all back to superheroes. Let’s say that things have gone a bit sour. The Trust Terminator has worked its evil magic on us and let’s say there’s been a breakdown of trust with a customer, just like Iron Man and Captain America in Civil War.   How do we go about regaining the trust of a customer who may have had a negative experience in the past?

Christina: You have to own that negative experience. You have to own it. There’s so many people who are like, Nah. Didn’t happen. We’ll just act like Mulligan. You have to own that experience. You have to own what you did wrong, how it could have been different and that you acknowledge that and that you want to move forward and here are the steps that you’re going to take to move forward.  

But it all starts with having that ownership of it.  You have to say my bad. You have to do a mea culpa, you have to.  Now, you can have the legal team look at your mea culpa before you send it out to anybody to make sure that you’re protecting yourself, but you have to mea culpa.  So that’s, that’s number one. You absolutely have to do that. 

Joe: I think accountability also will go a huge way of just saying, do you know what? You know, whatever the negative experience was, that’s on us. Let’s try and make things better. I think that accountability will really go a long way to help foster that trust, even when it has been negative.  

Christina: Oh, absolutely. So a great example of this is not B2B, but it’s in the sphere. So there’s a Youuber who has had some allegations recently.  Those allegations are past too. But her apology YouTube video was her singing a song on a ukulele. It got a lot of awareness but everyone was just like, ‘what is this?’  What are you doing with this? What is this? But it’s true, accountability is huge. 

The thing is if you own the mistake or you own whatever you did, it’s not going to save you from everybody. There’s going to be some people who are like, nope, we’re done. There’s nothing you could do or say, I’m out. 

But for the people that are willing to have that salvaged relationship, if you can’t even acknowledge and take accountability of your part of it, how can I trust you to do better if you can’t acknowledge when you’ve done something poorly?

The accountability is priceless. You have to absolutely just fall on your sword a bit. 

Joe: 100% but it will go a long way.

Christina: It will and people will remember that. Then your job is to not repeat that pattern because once you start repeating the same pattern, then the accountability doesn’t count anymore, because you didn’t do anything to really change that behavior pattern.

Joe: Absolutely. Excellently put Christina. I am going to start to wrap up our conversation here today, Christina.  The Trust terminator is now weakened. It’s almost ready to give up the fight. What’s the one key takeaway, which can finish it off and that you would like everybody watching this to go away with today? 

Christina: Be as close to your customers and your prospects as humanly possible. If they have a problem with your products or they have a pain point that you don’t answer, potentially have them talk to product, have them talk to your team, let them know what the road map looks like.  Getting them closer is going to not only make them feel heard and seen, but it’s going to have them feel like they have a sense of ownership in the overall process. 

So imagine if someone would love your product but it doesn’t have one specific key feature.  If you know that other people are asking for that exact same feature and you put it to the product team, the product team builds it, creates it and all of these things.  That person will eventually come to you, but then they’ll also feel like they were a part of the reason that feature even exists.  Which means when you do launch it, they’re going to not only be a customer, but they’re going to be a fan.  They’re going to be an advocate. They’re going to spread the word like anything else.  

Anything you can do to make a prospect or a customer feel like they almost have VIP behind the scenes access, do it!  It costs you absolutely nothing and makes them feel just a whole different level of special. That’s really hard to replicate and that’s a huge differentiator. If you’re looking for a mote for your business, think about how you can make your customers and your prospects feel special. What can you offer them that literally no other company can offer them? Is it to talk to product? Is it to go to a conference? Is it to talk to the C suite?  Whatever that looks like. Figure out what that looks like for your brand. Get them as close as humanly possible. That’s not a pain point. That’s a bond. Bonds are incredibly hard to break. 

Joe: Excellent stuff. Thank you so much, Christina for sharing your B2B superpowers with us today. 

Remember to keep an eye on Lead Forensic Socials for news of more B2B superpowers webinars and we’ll see you again very, very soon.

Christina, thank you so much. 

Christina: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.