The LinkedIn Trust Curve

Speaker A: Many people think LinkedIn lead generation is about messages. Better copy, better follow ups, better tools, better automations. However, there is one thing a lot of people are missing. P2P buyers don't book calls with you because of a single dm. They book calls with you because of trust. And trust on LinkedIn is not built overnight. It's built invisibly over time through dozens of touch points, many of which you'll never know about. This invisible journey is what I call the LinkedIn Trust Curve. And once you understand it, your outreach results will change dramatically. Silencing your inbox doesn't necessarily mean not interested. Sometimes it means not safe yet. But before we Even talk about LinkedIn, let's understand how morromB2b buying works. Research from Gartner suggests that up to 70 to 90% of buying Journey is already in place before a buyer ever talks to a sales representative. So this means by the time you get a reply in your inbox, email or wherever, uh, this means they already have assumptions, opinions and shortlists, and the buying process is longer than ever. In complex B2B deals, buyers interact with 60, 70, in some cases, 80 plus touch points before a decision is made. Not just sales calls or sales messages, emails, but also profile views, PDF, recommendations, content, and of course, most importantly, repeated exposure. So if you are waiting until you get a message from your potential buyer, there is a big opportunity that you have already lost. Another thing most people underestimate in B2B, you are not selling just to one person. Most B2B decisions involve six to 10 stakeholders, each with individual fears and expectations. One person might care about the roi, the other one might care about execution, the other one about risk. So in reality, you are building trust with all the stakeholders before anyone books a call with you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually is the perfect place to build that trust. Let's say at least some layers of trust before you proceed to other channels of communication. No one wakes up early and is ready to buy from you. They arrive there slowly. So the LinkedIn trust curve is the psychological journey a buyer takes before they are ready to engage with you. And this, uh, journey usually looks like this. Passive exposure, profile validation, content engagement, social interactions, direct conversations, and only after that, booked conversations or booked calls. Right. So every step increases familiarity and every step lowers resistance. And if you skip one of these steps and jump right to the pitching aspect, buyers usually feel it immediately. Uh, in the next section, let's break down what actually these stages look like in real life. Most LinkedIn journeys start passively. Someone Sees your face in their feed. Next time they see your name, maybe your headline, and if you are lucky, first two lines of your content. They may not like or comment or share, repost, whatever at this stage, but this creates familiarity and psychology is very clear here. We trust familiar people more than strangers. Then comes profile validation. Your potential buyers will have a look at your profile to have an answer to one simple question. Is this person legit? And this is the part where your headline, your about section, your recommendations, maybe your featured media section, whatever you have on your profile will act as trust signals. Research from LinkedIn and Edelman suggests that over half of decision makers, uh, use thought leadership to vet vendors. So for you, actually this means that your profile should not be looked at as a resume. It should be looked at as a reputation engine. Once trust is formed, your buyers will engage with your content more intentionally. But this is where a lot of people are getting wrong. They think posting every day, just posting whatever will make things better. But this is not the case. Uh, high quality thought leadership content should do three things. It should educate, it should humanize, and it should solve a problem. Then come micro commitments, likes, comments, reposts, shares, poll participation, maybe video view, whatever. Uh, but these small actions are very important because they lower the psychological resistance. And here it's very important to understand that a lot of founders and CEOs, high level executives, will never engage with your post publicly. They may read your article and not a single like or comment, whatever, and then send you a DM with their opinion or their take on, on the specific topic. So in many cases, silence does not necessarily mean disinterest. So moving forward, a DM sent too early feels like an interruption. However, DM send when trust is already formed feels like a logical or natural continuation. There is no or like, say, close to zero resistance. Uh, when someone has seen your face, has read your name, is your actually they do recognize your name. Maybe they have engaged previously with your content, they think you are familiar, your face is familiar and they are eager to talk to you. So familiarity creates reciprocity. At this point, you are no longer cold, you are contextually relevant. And this is why consistency should be something you need to keep in mind. So how many touch points it takes to book a call on LinkedIn? It's not three, it's not five, and definitely not one. Um, before a buyer books a call, dozens of touchpoints have already happened. And research shows that complex B2B deals, in complex B2B deals usually take 60 plus touch points across people, across channels and across content. If you treat LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator as an outreach tool, most likely you will struggle. But if you treat it as a trust engine, or, let's say, a system where you can build your trust with your potential clients, uh, you will see great changes. And you are not just generating leads, but you are helping your clients to be educated, to be ready, and, uh, to engage with you. That's the LinkedIn curve. And once again, uh, if you start understanding the LinkedIn trust curve and start using it in the proper way, your outreach results will change dramatically. Thank you.