If you watch broadcast TV, I am sure you are happy the election is over and all we have to watch now are pharmaceutical and Christmas commercials.
One of the interesting things I heard in post-election analysis was that a billion dollars was spent on TV ads. At the same time, the most decisive information was distributed via free-to-access websites and apps. This was described as paywall and non-paywall media. I never really thought about that but it makes sense.
Paywall media is where the user pays to access it. Newspapers, streaming video, and even some online podcasts charge users a fee to access them. Non-paywall media includes social media sites like YouTube and TikTok, and many websites are free to the user but make their money through advertisements.
I assume that most voters don't have or want access to paywall media beyond cellular data. You may or may not agree or like it, but most paywall media is regulated and subject to various laws. Non-paywall data can go unchecked, unregulated, and even unnoticed in the scope of delivering information.
It becomes a matter of trust. Voters trusted without needing journalistic and regulatory confirmation that the information was accurate or even true. That works for elections, but you cannot take trust that lightly in business.
The Anatomy of Trust
Like a human body, trust is a complex system with some essential parts, needs, and truths. It has a brain, digestive system, lungs, and a heart.
The Brain
Fight or flight is real. Understanding the neuroscience of trust can help leaders create work environments that foster trust, leading to increased engagement, productivity, and collaboration.
Trust is associated with decreased activity in the amygdala, the brain’s fear center. When people feel trusted, their brains produce oxytocin, the “trust molecule” or “bonding hormone.”
Trust is built over time and through positive interactions. It's a cumulative process that improves slowly over time but can easily be broken through one negative interaction.
It takes repetition and active participation from both parties to build and reinforce that bond. So we just can't take trust for granted, and we can't buy it, persuade it, or advertise to it in business the ways that consumer advertising tries to. Ads may get you to try something, but experience and interactions are where trust is built in business.
So, use your brain to continue checking in on how trust is earned and maintained with your clients.
Digestion
The digestive system takes food and water and converts it to fuel distributed through the organs, feeding the body with nutrients. The body uses absorbed nutrients for energy, which is crucial for all bodily functions.
With trust, you need the building blocks of fuel built from content and personal interactions. Just like our bodies, better quality food will yield stronger bodies. The more personalized and targeted the content, the more it can add nutrition to relationships and trust.
Solid food is content that educates and informs your customers. It nurtures their knowledge, and when you transfer thought leadership, you help them improve their businesses and their ability to increase or optimize their business.
Liquid is the flow that helps keep them in the loop. It's a flow of consistency and fluidity that adapts to their needs.
So, fuel your business by helping others build trust by providing quality information that fuels their businesses.
The Lungs
We cannot live without air—specifically oxygen. Oxygen is carried through the lungs into the bloodstream and then fuels the body on a cellular level. The intake of oxygen and the expulsion of CO2 (carbon dioxide) ebb and flow. It's a constant process of instilling the good and expelling the bad.
As oxygen fuels the body, trust fuels relationships. Inevitably, you will have to expel issues that can and will erode trust. These can be as simple as a misunderstanding or as complex as circumstances outside your control, such as a missed or delayed shipment.
Like the lungs, which are active 24/7, relationships are best with constant communication, affirmation, and engagement. You don't want to force the issue. Too much or too little breathing can cause a person to faint, and too much or too little interaction can strain relationships. The key is to strike a balance that creates an equilibrium that works for both you and your clients.
So take a deep breath and use it to contact your clients to maintain balance in trust.
The Heart
The heart is often associated with love, but in anatomy, its purpose is to deliver blood to the body. By delivering the energy created by food and oxygen, it keeps the body alive. Trust needs to be treated like the blood of business. It should be actively rejuvenated and delivered with regularity.
The heart is also associated with empathy. That is like the healing power that delivers more blood or parts of the body that are under stress or need healing. The brain has a subconscious part that monitors and responds to imbalances.
It helps to subconsciously stay tuned to emails, phone calls, and other communication signals, proactively trying to build and reinforce trust where stress is chipping away at stability.
So use your heart to pay attention and deliver whatever your clients need to maintain or grow their level of trust with you and your business.
Closing Thought
The body is a system, and the brain, the stomach, the lungs, and the heart all need each other for the body to function and survive.
Trust in business is the same thing. It takes thinking, seeing, and feeling to ensure your business relationships are built on respect and trust. They need to be fed with consistent quality information, thought leadership, and a dash of advice. You must constantly breathe new life into relationships while expelling the negative. It also takes heart to feel and empathize with how a relationship is mutually beneficial and not merely transactional.
Putting your information behind a paywall will not foster the kind of relationship that it takes to keep trust thriving and growing. Now, take a deep breath… and trust your gut!!
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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?
To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.