Early in my career, I was taught that trust is built through rapport. Find common ground. Mirror their body language. Remember their kids’ names. Make small talk before getting to business.
This advice isn’t wrong, exactly. But it’s incomplete — and sometimes it’s counterproductive. I’ve watched sellers spend 15 minutes of a 30-minute call talking about college football because someone told them that’s how you ‘build rapport.’
Here’s what I’ve unlearned: trust in B2B isn’t primarily about personal connection. It’s about professional respect. Your buyer trusts you when they believe three things: you understand their problem, you have the competence to help, and you’re being honest about what you can and can’t do.
The fastest way to build trust is to say something true that the buyer wasn’t expecting. Not a flattering truth — a useful one. ‘Based on what you’ve described, I think your real bottleneck isn’t the tool. It’s the handoff between your pre-sales and implementation teams.’ That kind of observation, delivered with genuine care, builds more trust than a hundred personal anecdotes.
I’ve also unlearned the idea that trust is built before the sale and maintained after. In enterprise, trust is being continuously evaluated. Every interaction — every email response time, every deliverable, every honest admission of a limitation — is a trust signal.
Stop trying to be liked. Start trying to be useful. That’s the foundation of trust that actually holds.
