EP #475 - Manuel Hartmann: Why Trust is Broken in Sales – And How to Restore It

Timestamps:

4:48 - What is ‘speed of trust’?

7:40 - Why AI is a trust-breaker

12:35 - Cultivating customer trust

23:15 - Hubspot taking market share

33:43 - Learning from other people’s mistakes

This episode was co-produced by the SalesPlaybook, DACHs' leading B2B Sales & HubSpot agency for fast-growing 7-8 figure entrepreneurs to increase pipeline, revenue & sales efficiency. 

About Manuel Hartmann:

Manuel Hartmann is the founder and CEO of SalesPlaybook, a sales agency with 7-figure annual revenue helping clients like bexio, Beekeeper, Skribble, Brame & Urban Connect. He holds an MA in Business Innovation from HSG and worked for companies such as Tesla, Accenture and Onedot before founding SalesPlaybook in 2019.

During his chat with us, Manuel discussed “speed of trust”, a concept first developed by Stephen M.R. Covey in his book of the same name. Speed of trust is the speed at which trust is established with clients, employees, and all stakeholders. Manuel applies this concept specifically to sales, where, according to him, trust is currently rather broken, due to practices like sending mass AI-written cold emails and email-bombing prospects who have not opened a salesperson’s previous emails. 

It’s easy for us to understand and recognize trust in our personal lives: we do not need a 17 page contract to move in with our best friend — we simply trust that it will work out fine. But how can we scale this, especially in a field where trust needs to be restored? Manuel recommends doing things that don’t scale: send postcards, meet people in person. He is also a fan of the 4/7/11 framework, according to which salespeople need to meet a prospect in 4 different locations, spend 7h with the prospect in total (not necessarily consecutively) and have 11 touchpoints with them (email, whatsapp, etc). This framework has been proven to work at a neurobiological level when it comes to creating trust. Finally, Manuel urges salespeople to ask for referrals. Only 10% of salespeople do so, when 90% of happy customers would gladly give a referral — so there’s an 80% gap that is ours for the taking.

The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠
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