Understand why potential buyers hesitate, ask for more proof, and default to safer options - even when you are the better choice. Join our free live webinar to learn more: https://founder-trust-webinar.scoreapp.com

Many B2B leaders invest heavily in marketing and messaging while overlooking the foundation that buyers actually need to trust them. This episode breaks down competence as the first cornerstone of trust and explains how buyers cognitively assess risk before buying.

📘 Recommended Resources

Lead With Trust by Hannah Eisenberg: https://www.trustleader.co/lead-with-trust-book

Dentsu – Superpowers Index 2024: https://www.dentsu.com/us/en/solutions/dentsu-b2b/superpowers-index

Take the assessment: https://trustleader.scoreapp.com/

⏰ Episode Timestamps

00:00 Understanding Competence in Business

03:43 The Importance of Buyer Perception

07:41 Bridging the Gap: Internal Competence vs. Buyer Belief

13:44 Why Competence Comes First

15:39 Teaching as a Tool for Demonstrating Competence

20:18 The Impact of Believable Competence on Sales

24:14 Summary and Next Steps

🧠 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

•Why competence is a buyer-held belief, not an internal reality

•How unclear competence increases perceived risk and price pressure

•Why brand, authenticity, and relationships cannot replace cognitive trust

•How teaching reduces buyer anxiety and demonstrates expertise

•What must come first to shorten sales cycles and scale trust

👤 About the Host

Hannah Eisenberg is the founder of TrustLeader and creator of the TrustLeader Framework. With 25+ years of B2B marketing and sales experience, including a decade at SAP Global Marketing and 10+ years as a HubSpot partner, she helps leaders worldwide achieve market leadership by making trust their most significant competitive advantage.

🔗 Connect With Me

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannaheisenberg/

🎧 Listen to the Podcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@trustleader-lead-with-trust

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/lead-with-trust/id1732848496?l=da

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2LYVbwkrkTuJKh3mHGNLBH

Captivate.fm: https://feeds.captivate.fm/leadwithtrustpodcast/

Learn why buyers do their own research instead of talking to sales—and how missing information creates distrust.

If you have noticed buyers avoiding sales conversations, doing their own research, or questioning everything you say, you are not imagining it. Buyer skepticism is at an all-time high, driven by misinformation, past experiences, and a growing lack of trust in business leaders. This conversation dives into the mindset shifts and practical strategies B2B leaders need to reduce uncertainty, overcome epistemic vigilance, and earn trust before a buyer ever speaks to sales.

📘 Recommended Resources

Lead with Trust: https://www.trustleader.co/lead-with-trust-book

Berg, Dickhaut & McCabe (1995) — the original Trust Game experiment.

Epistemic Vigilance research

⏰Episode Timestamps:

00:00 The Importance of Transparency in Trust Building

09:21 Understanding Complete Transparency

11:51 The Role of Epistemic Vigilance

14:00 Building Foundational Trust

18:21 Practical Steps for Transparency

🧠 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why trust cannot be built long-term without complete transparency
• How epistemic vigilance shapes modern buyer behavior
• What information buyers need to make independent, confident decisions
• How transparency signals competence, reliability, and integrity
• What practical transparency looks like in real B2B organizations

👤 About the Host

Hannah Eisenberg is the founder of TrustLeader and creator of the TrustLeader Framework. With 25+ years of B2B marketing and sales experience, including a decade at SAP Global Marketing and 10+ years as a HubSpot partner, she helps leaders worldwide achieve market leadership by making trust their most significant competitive advantage.

🔗 Connect With Me

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannaheisenberg/

🎧 Listen to the Podcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@trustleader-lead-with-trust

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/lead-with-trust/id1732848496?l=da

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2LYVbwkrkTuJKh3mHGNLBH

Captivate.fm: https://feeds.captivate.fm/leadwithtrustpodcast/

Summary

Most business leaders know trust matters—but very few know how to build it on purpose. Buyers are more cautious, more skeptical, and quicker to walk away, which makes relying on “good intentions” or old playbooks risky at best.

In this episode, Hannah Eisenberg shares the TrustLeader Framework, the result of 25 years working hands-on in B2B marketing and sales, from large software companies to founder-led businesses in the messy middle

You will learn how this framework will help you turn trust into something practical, measurable, and repeatable—so it can actually support growth instead of quietly holding it back.

What You’ll Learn:

• How the TrustLeader Framework turns trust into something you can operationalize
• What trust really means in a business context, and why buyers experience it as risk and vulnerability
• The three phases of trust and what must be true before you can move to the next one
• What the two trust maturity jumps are—and what changes when you reach them
• Why most companies unknowingly build or destroy trust by accident
• How to start building trust intentionally without overwhelming your organization