Most B2B leaders are right now frustrated by the lack of leads coming in. They blame marketing for being inefficient or sales for being lazy. But in reality, the root cause isn’t your marketing strategy or your sales tactics. In reality, you have a trust gap problem. Modern buyers behave in fundamentally new ways, and traditional go-to-market systems have not kept up.

You will learn why your GTM feels harder than it should, how low trust quietly slows every part of the buyer journey, and why solving this requires a mindset shift — not more tactics. If you are ready to understand what is actually driving your stalled deals, unpredictable inbound, and price pressure, this conversation will give you the clarity you have been missing.

What You’ll Learn

• Why most revenue challenges are not marketing or sales issues, but trust issues.
• How modern buyer behavior creates a wider trust gap than ever before.
• The three deficits (information, interest, power) that shape trust in every B2B decision.
• How low trust shows up operationally across marketing, sales, and customer experience.
• Why no amount of tactical optimization can compensate for a trust deficit.
• The mindset shift required to turn trust into a measurable driver of growth.

what happens when you don't prioritize trust.

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And that is that everything becomes harder.

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Think about what I just said.

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Think about all the payoffs that happen because you invest in trust.

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and then inverse that and think about what happens if you don't.

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So if you don't intentionally build trust, every marketing campaign has to

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start from scratch

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again.

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Welcome to another episode of Lead with Trust.

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Today we're actually starting a new season.

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We're starting season two and this season we are going to be focusing all around the

fundamentals of trust building if done intentionally and systematically to grow your

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business because of the things you believe, not despite of it.

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We're going to look at how we operationalize trust across your entire organization, across

your culture, your communication, your leadership.

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And we're going to make it measurable.

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We're going to make it impactful.

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And I'm going to show you how you can build trust intentionally and systematically in your

organization that you can make that the fundamental growth engine.

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to truly grow your business, make it resilient, make it future-proof.

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And the ultimate goal is to almost make you a category of one, meaning you don't have to

worry about your competitors.

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You don't have to worry about what the market says.

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The only thing you worry about is how you build trust with your...

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stakeholders with your customers, right, with your partners and driven by that mission you

will grow your business to what I call an unstoppable business.

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Today's episode is kicking us off and we're going to be talking about trust as a

fundamental lens that you make all business decisions through but

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I'm going to tackle a lot more than that, right?

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Because there is a reason why business leaders when asked totally acknowledged the fact

that they need to build trust and trust is fundamental to any business.

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But almost no business leader builds trust intentionally and systematically.

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And there's a good reason for that.

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And I'm here to show you today how that can.

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that misconception or that perception can be put away and we're going to clean house and

we're going to start with a fresh new mindset that puts trust at the center of everything

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that you do.

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Now for those who haven't met me yet, my name is Hannah Eisenberg.

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I wrote the book Lead with Trust and I built the Trust Leader Framework.

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based on 25 years in B2B marketing and sales.

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I spent a decade at SAP doing competitive intelligence and advising the office of the CEO

on competitive strategies and that set me on a path in my career to really

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built trust and it really honed my lens for how important trust is in everyday business

decisions, long-term growth, etc.

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But I think my obsession with trust started much, much earlier in my life.

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It started with

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my dad telling me stories about polar exploration.

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And I just want to share one of those stories with you today because it is so dear to my

heart that I actually started my book off of it.

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But the reason why I tell you the story is because it helps you understand the level of

trust that we need to build in order to make our company that unstoppable force in the

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market and to truly become

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that trust-based market leader that you could be.

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So it all starts off with a guy called Fridtjof Nansen leaving with his ship on the 24th

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He sailed from Oslo up the rugged coast of Norway and he reached the polar ice in late

September of that year.

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And if you have

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ever thought about polar exploration, maybe going when it gets colder might not be a great

plan.

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But he did that on purpose.

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His whole mission was to get frozen into the Arctic ice and be carried by the east-west

current of the Arctic Ocean towards the North Pole.

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super risky plan.

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No one had ever done that before.

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They constructed a ship specifically for that purpose.

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You can by the way see that ship in Oslo.

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It's called the Fromm.

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Absolutely stunning.

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I highly recommend it.

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It's such an amazing experience.

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But he was in that pack ice with his crew for more than three years.

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They had

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sled dogs, had massive amount of food, fuel, So they were in this pack ice for more than

three years being sort of almost swished around at the force of nature and at some point

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his crew feared that they're going to be stuck there forever and remember this was before

the time of cell phone there was no rescue coming.

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If you got stuck there, that was it.

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You're going to be freezing to death, starving, and it was miserable.

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But at some point after those three years, he realized that he wasn't going to get further

north than he was.

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And he and one of his trusted crewmates, Halma Johansson, set out on foot with their sled

dogs and they carried their stuff with them.

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trying to reach the North Pole by foot.

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Now as soon as they left the ship, the ship kept on drifting on so the two were on their

own, they did not reach the North Pole.

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But they both, the Fram and his crew and him and his crewmate made it safely back after

that expedition even though they didn't reach the North Pole.

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They contributed a massive amount of research to how we understand the Polar Lights, the

Arctic and Arctic oceanic wildlife and biology.

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They contributed to research in magnetism and so much more.

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But what fascinates me about this story is when you imagine being in that ship,

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and it's nighttime and it's cold and the ice is grinding on the ocean floor and against

the boat and it cracks and snaps and you're lying there and you're thinking why am I doing

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this?

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But that crew had this unwavering conviction that the unconditional trust in the mission

itself, in their leader, in their captain, in the shipbuilder, in the crew itself

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in their dogs, in nature, they trusted first and foremost that mission and they were

willing to do everything and give up everything to achieve that mission.

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Now thankfully we don't have to go out on polar explorations and put our life at stake,

but that sort of conviction and that

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uh unconditional belief in that mission.

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That's what's required in really truly changing your business from being one of many to

being that unstoppable business.

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And I'll walk you through over the next weeks and months of how you can achieve that

within your own organization.

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So why am I telling you all of this?

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I believe that at this point in time, trust is more important than it has ever been in

growing your business, in marketing your products and services, in selling your offering.

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Trust has always been absolutely crucial, right?

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If you think about going down to the donut shop,

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You trust them that they don't give you food poisoning.

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If you drop off your toddler at daycare, you trust that he comes home happy and safe.

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If you buy a piece of software for your company, you trust that it will actually do its

job and keep your data safe and executes the task that it promises it will.

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Trust is required everywhere.

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And it's the single most important emotion someone, a buyer,

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needs to feel in order to exchange their hard-earned money for your product and services.

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It always has been critical.

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But at this point and going forward, it's only going to become more and more important.

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Now, I'm not just saying this.

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There is facts.

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There's data.

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In 2010, 2011, Google came out with a zero momentum of truth study.

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That said that about 70 % of the buying journey that someone has to go through in order to

decide for product and go and buy it is being done by themselves before they contact

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sales.

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At this point in time in 2025, that number is somewhere between 80 to 90%.

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In a lot of cases, it's reaching almost 100 % because according to Gardner research,

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A lot of buyers, think it's 75 % of the buyers if I remember correctly, prefer a wrap free

purchase experience period.

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No sales involved.

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Now, if you think about what that means, let me walk you through a couple more numbers

here.

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I think it was 2012, Marcus Sheridan with his pool company did some digging in his

analytics and he found out that back then already if a buyer read about 30 pages of

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content they were 80 % likely to close.

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They were 80 % likely to buy from him.

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Now, if you think about 30 pages, it takes you maybe four minutes to read a page.

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That's 120 minutes.

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So that's about two hours.

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Maybe it's three with detailed buyer's guides or more technical information, but it's

about two to three hours that is required from the buyer to be engaged with your content

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to have a likelihood of closing 80 % of the time.

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Okay.

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Now, if you look at today's data though,

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There is research that is attributed to Google as well, but it's not really clear.

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There's not a single Google study I could find where they mentioned that rule

specifically, but I'll link to other sources that mention that in the show notes.

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There is a rule that is called the 7-11-4 rule, which means a buyer now has to spend seven

hours on average with your content.

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consuming either bias guides, reading articles, responding to a tweet, watching a video,

attending a webinar, having a sales conversation, seven hours across 11 different touch

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points on average.

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That can be much more if you are thinking about B2B or very high trust situations and

across four platforms.

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So if you primarily right now just market through one social channel and your website,

that's only two channels.

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You will need YouTube videos, podcasts, webinars, more social channels, newsletters,

different platforms that your buyer prefers to engage in content with you.

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But if you think about that, seven hours, 11 interactions and four different platforms,

what does that say about the trust gap that you have to overcome?

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That is huge.

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I'm going to record in a few weeks an episode on more depth of around these studies and

around these numbers and what that means and how you can repurpose content.

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So stay tuned for that.

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But I just mentioned this here because it's such a phenomenal way to quantify that trust

gap.

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Now, if you're in the B2B space, you're looking at this spread out probably about six to

12 weeks on average.

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But a lot of companies will also have a sales cycle of 12 months, 18 months, somebody in

two years.

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if government agencies are involved.

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And they will have buying committees of sometimes three to four people, sometimes even

more, depending on what they're buying.

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So now you have to multiply these numbers by three to four people, because a lot of them

will use different pieces of content, will engage in different things because they prefer

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video over reading content, et cetera.

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Now that is a tremendous amount of trust that you have to build.

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And I'm not only talking about that you have to become better in content creation or

content repurposing or retargeting campaigns.

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All of these are important, but you have to approach them with a lens of how do I build

more trust?

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Because ultimately those seven hours,

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They don't really need to spend seven hours to learn X, Y, and Z.

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What those seven hours are spent on is really for them to be comfortable enough that they

trust you.

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Right?

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So that's what I'm talking about.

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I want you to keep that in mind.

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Now, I think all of this generally makes sense to you, right?

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As a common sense business leader, we all know that

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we have to do that.

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But why is it that we as business leaders say, absolutely trust is essential.

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But then we go off and we worry about marketing campaigns or sales tactics.

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I actually encounter three types of companies in my coaching, right?

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The first one is they continue marketing like it's 2020, 2022, they still use their...

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proven playbook, they will do inbound campaigns, they will do lead nurturing, and they're

wondering why their lead generation is drying off.

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A lot of times they work with marketing agencies, they outsource their marketing, and it's

just not working anymore.

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And I'm not saying inbound isn't working anymore, but my 14-year-old said to me the other

day, people stop digging.

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before they find the gold.

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Most people will give up digging before they find the gold.

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And that is so genius because that's exactly what happens, right?

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Way back when, 30 pages, two hours was enough to buy from you 80 % of the time, now you

need to spend seven hours, a lot times even more.

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And not just the amount of time, but the quality of time is entirely different.

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So you need to get much, much better in building those engaging experiences, content that

has them coming back.

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But why is that?

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Because you're focusing on trust building.

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Okay?

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All right, I've beat the dead horse enough.

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It's never good to beat any horse.

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So let's just move on.

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Now, before I show you how to do that over the next coming weeks, it's important to me to

address why we sort of shy away from that.

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Why do we not prioritize it?

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And a lot of times this is anchored in that trust is a soft skill.

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It's intangible.

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It is highly subjective.

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It's emotional.

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We can't measure it.

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And while all of those are true,

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you can quantify trust.

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You can quantify it in a way that you can measure it and you can manage it and you can

improve it and you can build it over time.

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So I want you to change your mindset of trust is just something that happens as part of a

good customer experience or because we do such great marketing to something that you have

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to prioritize as the main objective.

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And we're going to explore how we can do that in a systematic fashion that becomes

tangible, that you can measure it, that you could put metrics around it, and that you can

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actually measure the business impact that trust has on your business.

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Now let's have a look at what exactly happens when you do prioritize trust, right?

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Because I talked about the negative.

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Now let's focus on what actually happens if you do focus on it.

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Well, there is a study by Watson Wyatt, Human Capital, that says that consistently high

trust organizations outperform low trust organizations two to three times in

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total return to shareholders.

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That is enormous if you think about it.

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Two to three times high trust organizations versus low trust organizations.

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But there's a lot more than just the return to shareholders.

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For example, I just want to give you a sneak peek what can happen when you prioritize

trust, right?

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You exit the race to the bottom, meaning you don't compete on price anymore.

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Once your customers trust the quality and reliability of your organization, they're

absolutely happy and willing to pay you a fair premium.

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That means you get to charge what you should charge, the value that you, and you don't

compete with low value alternatives anymore because now you stand out from them, right?

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People recognize and trust the value that you provide.

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your brand becomes the obvious choice.

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When you're trusted in your marketplace, you educate your buyers, they believe the

information you put out there because they trust you.

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They are attracted to you.

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And because of that recognition happening organically without heavy advertisement, your

brand becomes

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not only a brand that stands above the others and can distinguish themselves, but you

become the obvious choice.

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Now,

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When that happens, when you become the obvious choice, you attract all these companies or

all these buyers to you, and now you become what Daniel Priestly calls oversubscribed.

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Now, when you become oversubscribed, what happens is you control that tension of demand

and supply.

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Meaning, you get to choose the clients that you want to work with.

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You don't have that energy of,

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desperation around you, my god, yes, of course, please do work with us.

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But it changes into that energy of what Daniel Priestley calls, with or without you.

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Look, I'm gonna be fine, I'm going to the moon, you come with me or you don't, that's up

to you.

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The whole dynamic changes and people want to work with you even more because of that, but

you get to choose and that's really something phenomenal.

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What also happens when people trust you, especially your existing customers already, is

they will be much, much more loyal.

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And we all know that a small, tiny increase in customer loyalty has a massive impact on

your company's profits and revenues.

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But they will also go out and advocate for you.

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They will recommend you brand to friends and family.

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and your business becomes much, much stronger because of that customer loyalty.

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Your power in negotiations raises as well.

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Because you are the trusted partner of choice, you can now negotiate more with suppliers

or partners.

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So you have more power, but on the other hand, it's balanced with that knowledge that

you're not going to be misusing your power.

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because they trust you.

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You also become much, much more resilient in a crisis.

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If your customers are loyal to you, if they recommend you, if they are willing to stand up

for you, you are more future-proof and resilient, not only in global economic change like

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we've been going through in the last few years, but you also become more resilient as a

company itself because

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your customers are more willing to forgive you if you make a mistake.

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And a really powerful trust builder here, I'm going off a little bit on a tangent here, is

that because when you make a mistake, you go and you openly admit to it and make a right,

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customers will trust you even more.

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Last but not least, and that's probably one of my favorite payoffs of building trust, is

you become the market leader in your space.

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You become not only the most known and trusted brand in your industry, but you become that

trust-based market leader, that category of one almost, that sets you apart from everyone

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else in your competition because people trust you.

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And when people trust you, you don't have to worry so much about what your competition

says.

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You don't have to worry about what the market really says.

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You are the driver for good.

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You go out there and you change your industry.

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You set new industry standards.

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You change outdated and unfair industry practices.

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You are the driver of change and people will flock to you because you now get to write the

rules.

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You don't have to follow the other rules anymore.

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You just write the rules and force everyone else to follow them.

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And that's where I really get excited.

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So now that I've told you what the payoffs of investing in systematically and

intentionally building trust are, I just want to come back one more time to the what

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happens when you don't prioritize trust.

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And that is that everything becomes harder.

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Think about what I just said.

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Think about all the payoffs that happen because you invest in trust.

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and then inverse that and think about what happens if you don't.

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So if you don't intentionally build trust, every marketing campaign sort of has to start

from scratch again.

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And it becomes harder to every single time reinvent the wheel, trying to get them again to

understand who you are, why they should believe you, why they should believe your

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marketing message.

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Sales.

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If they have to build trust from zero again and again and again, it just becomes longer.

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People will ghost you.

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All right, so now that we talked about all the exciting things that can happen when you

systematically and intentionally build trust, I want to leave you with one thought here.

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And that is that trust can become your ultimate lens for making business decisions.

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It's not just a tactic or a marketing layer, it's a mindset shift.

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Right, trust is the foundation of every relationship and outcome.

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success, loyalty, referrals, pricing power, it all depends on how much trust someone has

in you.

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And that's why implementing the TrustLeader Framework, which we will get to in the next

weeks and months, isn't just a marketing tactic or it's not just sales, it's a holistic

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change of the business, bringing out their true DNA, bringing out their true soul.

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changing their culture and processes to infuse trust in everything that you do.

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Now, the thing I want to leave you now with today is that if you just simply ask yourself

one question, is it going to induce more trust?

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If the answer is yes, it's probably a good idea.

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If the answer is no, it's probably a waste of time, energy, money, probably not worth

doing.

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So you can use that lens for every single business decision.

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Is this campaign a good thing to do?

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Does it induce more trust?

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Yes, go for it.

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Should we do this new sales tactic?

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Let's have a look.

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You can use that lens for every single business decision you have to make.

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And it most of the time will really guide you towards that North Star.

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I have never found that having trust as your North Star has led me to a wrong decision or

I have never seen a business that made a decision to build more trust and that led them

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down the wrong path and it wasn't worth it.

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So I hope that changes your mindset a bit and helps you understand the importance of

systematically and intentionally building trust.

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Now in the next episode, we will unpack what trust actually is and why it's often

misunderstood.

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And I'll give you a tool that you can use as we examine the qualities and the different

layers of trust that you can use to do exactly that, to have trust as your North Star and

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as your path to becoming an unstoppable business.

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Now until next time.

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If you like this content, please subscribe and like this so more people can benefit from

this.

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And hopefully we can build a world where more people invest in trust, making for better

business relationships and all around a much more trustworthy environment to do business

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in.

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Until next time.