Building Customer Trust

An important truth I’ve learned as a BDR.. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building relationships. You can’t automate trust. You can’t cold-call your way into a genuine connection. And you definitely can’t fake care. In pre-sales, people don’t remember the sequence you used or the pitch deck you shared. They remember how you made them feel. The best conversations I’ve had weren’t about our product at all. They were discussing their challenges, goals, and even their frustrations with how things are done today. A few ways that helped me build trust are: 1. Respect “no” as much as “yes.” If someone isn’t ready, don’t push. Acknowledge it, ask when a better time might be, and leave the door open. That respect often brings them back later. 2. Stay consistent post-demo. Many BDRs disappear once the AE takes over. Staying engaged, even with a quick note, proves you care about the relationship. 3. Ask permission before diving in. “Do you mind if I share a quick observation about the industry/role?” This small gesture shows respect and makes the prospect more receptive. And over time, I’ve realized this: The real win in pre-sales isn’t getting someone to sign a demo. It’s getting someone to trust you enough to listen again. There are no shortcuts here, only consistency, patience, and empathy. I'm curious to hear from other BDRs and sales professionals. What’s your biggest lesson about building trust in pre-sales? 🤔

Introducing Data Renaissance – a new monthly release spotlighting the data transformation shaping the Middle East. From semantic search in Arabic to digital sovereignty, smart governance, and AI-ready infrastructure, we explore how countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar are building trusted, connected data ecosystems. In this first issue: 🔹 The rise of semantic infrastructure 🔹 Insights from UAE’s Chief Data Officer 🔹 Qatar’s national data fabric initiative 🔹 How SemantiQHub is bringing frameworks like the Data Trinity to life 💬 Got a story to share? Reach out to Masood Alam 💡 #DataRenaissance #MiddleEast #SmartGovernment #SemanticAI #DataGovernance #KnowledgeGraphs #SemantiQHub

Three months ago, my neighbor asked me something that stopped me cold: "Would you really let a random person into your house to fix your AC or give your wife a facial?" Fair question. Yet Urban Company has convinced millions of Indians to do exactly that—over 100 million service bookings and counting. I started digging into how they cracked the trust code for in-home services, and what I found isn't just smart business—it's a masterclass in engineering confidence at scale. Here's their playbook: 1) They made freelancers feel like employees While other platforms just connect you with random gig workers, Urban Company built 100+ training centers. Every beautician, plumber, and technician goes through their program first. You're not hiring a stranger—you're hiring someone they trained. 2) They control what touches your skin UC doesn't let service partners bring random products from home. They provide the equipment, the facial creams, the repair tools—everything. One less thing to worry about when someone's working in your bedroom. 3) They turned ratings into a tier system Instead of just showing 4.2 stars, they created "Classic," "Premium," and "Top-rated" tiers. Now you can actually choose: do I want the cheapest option or the best-reviewed one? The psychology is brilliant. 4) They eliminated the "where are they?" anxiety Real-time tracking with partner photos and ETAs. You know exactly who's coming and when. No more sitting by the window wondering if your AC repair guy forgot about you. 5) They took full ownership This is the big one. UC doesn't just facilitate—they control onboarding, training, tools, and even dispute resolution. You're not dealing with a marketplace; you're dealing with Urban Company. The insight: They didn't solve a technology problem. They solved a psychology problem. In-home services aren't about convenience—they're about trust. And trust can't be built with an app interface alone. What other companies have you seen that prioritize trust-building over feature-building in their GTM approach?

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐔𝐒 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬: Convenience sounds like a win… But in reality—control builds the trust that scales. 𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 👇 We were working on improving product adoption for a US-based platform. Most founders would instinctively look at cutting down clicks and removing steps in the onboarding journey. Faster = Better, right? That’s what we thought too—until real usage patterns showed us something very different. Instead of shortening the journey, we tried something counterintuitive: -We added more decision points -Let the user customize their flow -Gave options to manually choose settings instead of setting defaults And guess what? Conversion rates went up. Engagement improved. And most importantly—user trust deepened. 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝: You can design a sleek 2-click journey…  …but if the user doesn’t feel in control, they hesitate. Especially in the US market, where data privacy and digital autonomy are hot-button issues—transparency and control win. 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞: → People often disable auto-fill just to manually type things in.  → They skip quick recommendations to do their own comparisons.  → Features that auto-execute without explicit confirmation? Often uninstalled. 💡 Why? It’s not inefficiency. It’s digital self-preservation. It’s a mindset of: “Don’t decide for me. Let me drive.” And I’ve seen this mistake firsthand: One client rolled out a smart automation feature that quietly activated behind the scenes. Instead of delighting users, it alienated 15–20% of their base. Because the perception was: "You took control without asking." On the other hand, platforms that use clear confirmation prompts (“Are you sure?”, “Review before submitting”, toggles, etc.)—those build long-term trust. That’s the real game. Here’s what I now recommend to every tech founder building for the US market: -Don’t just optimize for frictionless onboarding. -Optimize for visible control. -Add micro-trust signals like “No hidden fees,” “You can edit this later,” and clear toggles. -Let the user feel in charge at every key point. Because trust isn’t built by speed. It’s built by respecting the user’s right to decide. If you’re a tech founder or product owner: Stop assuming speed is everything. Start building systems that say, “You’re in control.” That’s what creates adoption that sticks. What’s your experience with this? Would love to hear in the comments. 👇 #ProductDesign #UserExperience #TrustByDesign #TechForUSMarket #DigitalAutonomy #businesscoach #coachishleenkaur Linkedin News LinkedIn News India LinkedIN for small businesses

Trust Is the New Currency in Digital Wallets As US fintechs chase scale, digital wallets face a crossroads familiar to players in India, Brazil, and Kenya: adoption without TRUST is a leaky bucket ! This playbook from Consumer Reports offers a framework to fix the hole. 📍 Focus U.S with global echoes 👇 Key takeaways from the report, along with my own thoughts: •💡 Trust gap is real: only 37% of Americans trust fintechs vs. 65% for banks. Echoes India’s early UPI days- scale surged, but consumer faith lagged. •📈 Spending blindness is widespread: 67% of users lose track of spending. Much like Brazil’s Pix surge, real-time convenience outpaced controls. •🔍 Onboarding ≠ fine print dump: clear, visual disclosures on costs and data use are now a competitive differentiator—see M-Pesa’s simplicity playbook. •🔒 Safety is a selling point: 52% of U.S. consumers want fraud protections -yet most don’t know if they’re covered. A wake-up call for wallet providers. •🧠 Build for financial wellbeing: tools to track, project, and alert spending aren’t just features - they’re trust builders in disguise. Much like global wallet leaders learned, trust isn’t won through features alone. It’s built through frictionless clarity and consumer-first design. 📣 Are you building for scale or for trust (or both )? Credits and references : Consumer Reports, Forbes, Morning Consult, Banking Dive #DigitalWallets #FintechTrust #GlobalFintech #UserCentricDesign #FinancialInclusion

81% of Saudi consumers now rely on mobile apps for their banking needs. Digital-only players like stc pay have gained significant ground, with 56% of users trusting these platforms, nearly matching the trust in traditional banks like Al Rajhi. In other regions, especially Europe, trust in digital-first banks still lags behind. Personalization is a key driver - a significant majority (84%) yearn for personalized financial insights. 84% of Saudi consumers want apps that provide a comprehensive view of all their financial products—bank accounts, insurance, investments—all in one place. Nearly half (44%) are likely to switch banks for better services! This demand is more advanced than what we see in markets like the US, where many banking apps are still focused on individual services. The thing that will probably get them there is AI, since they aren’t afraid to embrace it. 68% of consumers in Saudi Arabia are comfortable with AI helping them make financial decisions. That’s higher than in Europe, where AI is met with more caution. However, despite this openness, consumers still expect human support in complex or sensitive areas of banking. Saudi Arabia’s leapfrogging effect is clear. While other markets gradually adopt digital and AI-driven banking, Saudi consumers have already moved past these initial phases. The demand for personalization and trust in digital solutions shows how quickly the region is setting new standards compared to more established banking markets.

This team is building B2C fintech in Iraq. It's processed around $12M in total transaction value. There's some granularity to understand here. Simma and its founder (Samer I. Tarazi) understood that building fintech in Iraq wasn't actually a tech problem. It was a trust problem. Iraqis had trust issues with bestowing their money to banks and preferred keeping their money safely in cash, under a mattress, at home. Samer reasoned that building fintech in Iraq meant, before anything, getting Iraqi consumers to trust depositing their cash in exchange for a digital equivalent. As a result, here's the tiered-approach Simma went through, as explained by Samer: "We designed three phases. The first phase was acquiring and understanding users. We launched a mobile app, which acted as an e-commerce site replete with foreign brands. We productized our MVP, essentially. We were still buying for users manually on the back-end. For the first 12 months, all orders were paid via cash-on-delivery (COD). That phase was necessary: if we entered the market from day 1 with a digital payment solution, no one would’ve trusted us and we would’ve flopped. This positioning is powerful in another way: we’re not coming in as a “financial institution”, but rather as a useful, reliable purveyor of digital services that happens to offer more and more digital services, including financial ones. The second phase was moving people away from cash and introducing digital payment. We built a Simma wallet, which users could top up by buying a physical voucher online. They’d have it physically delivered, pay the delivery driver in cash, and the wallet was topped up once the driver collected the cash. The voucher system fits into one of my theses about Iraqi society: if people give you cash, they expect something physical in return. The voucher plays that role. Today, around 25% of Simma’s transactions are done via the wallet. The third phase, which we are about to enter, is the introduction of digital financial services, such as a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) option. These new financial services won’t be launched in the void. They have to serve Simma’s value proposition, which is helping Iraqis buy stuff from abroad. If the new financial product doesn’t power that value proposition, users have no incentive to adopt it." Going back to that initial $12M transaction value: most of it is actually cash-on-delivery, but Simma is set on growing the share of it happening digitally. Step by step. This week, The Realistic Optimist interviewed Samer I. Tarazi at length. Link to the interview in the comments. 📝 The Realistic Optimist publishes in-depth, written interviews with founders and VCs around the world. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/d4p9N_wB

AI fatigue. Trust in tech is down. In Real Life is back. Trust in tech is collapsing. But foot traffic? Packed. Cafés? Upgraded. In-person events? Booked out. Turns out — we don’t just want faster. We want real. AI promised convenience. But it also brought spammy chatbots, fake reviews, and trust that’s falling off a cliff. We stopped believing: • That reviews are real • That websites protect our data • That the internet is telling the truth So we’re going back to what’s real. Face-to-face, IRL, human connection. And it’s happening everywhere. 📉 Online trust is tanking • 82% dropped a brand over privacy concerns • Only 42% trust online reviews • Gen Z? Just 34% trust e‑commerce sites 👩💻 AI at work = anxiety, not productivity • 31% of employees have actively sabotaged their company’s GenAI rollout • Amazon staff publicly slammed AI-led job cuts • Only 16% of non-managers even use workplace AI 🏢 The office is back (if it’s worth it) • 67% of companies now mandate 1–4 days in • Asda revamped its HQ with cafés + perks • Hybrid sweet spot = 3 days/week with purpose 🧑🤝🧑 Events are IRL again • In-person business events up 40% • 70% of corporate events are now fully physical • 78% of organisers say F2F is still most impactful 🛍️ Retail foot traffic is rising • 70% of Dublin shoppers prefer brick-and-mortar • 69% of Brits still buy groceries in-store • Experiential retail is booming People are done being spammed by soulless bots. They want connection. Not convenience at all costs. The brands, teams, and leaders who lean into real — Will win. Have you noticed the shift too? Where are you seeing face-to-face winning again? 👇 Drop your favourite IRL experience lately This summer I’m working from home 🏠 a lot. Anyone fancy a coffee ☕️ or lunch. Let me know. 👍🏻 Like ♻️Share 📌 Follow Charlie Fiander

Most customers want to hear what they already believe And that doesn’t just apply to customers… It applies to how pre-sales professionals present their solutions 🚨 The problem? Most sales teams enter conversations looking for validation instead of listening to learn 🔴 They push features instead of asking questions 🔴 They assume pain points instead of uncovering them 🔴 They focus on what they want to say, not what buyers need 💡 The result? More lost deals, lower trust, and slower sales cycles 🔎 The research is clear: ✅ 74% of B2B buyers choose vendors who help them define a problem (Gartner) ✅ Pre-sales teams that ask insight-driven questions increase deal conversion rates by 33% (Salesforce) ✅ Trust-building reps drive 57% larger deals because they prioritise deep listening (Forrester) 🛠️ How do elite pre-sales professionals flip the script? 1. The Pre-Sales Pause 🚫 Old: Reacting instantly & over-explaining ✅ New: Pause, breathe, reframe objections 🎯 Why? Well-timed pauses create authority & control 2. Listen Like a Trusted Advisor 🚫 Old: Half-listening while thinking ahead ✅ New: Put the product aside, focus on pain points 🎯 Why? Deep listening builds trust 3. Turn Curiosity into Influence 🚫 Old: Pushing solutions too early ✅ New: Ask strategic, open-ended questions 🎯 Why? Shifting to curiosity makes you a deal strategist 4. Single-Task for Maximum Impact 🚫 Old: Splitting focus across emails, meetings, slides ✅ New: Be fully present in every demo & call 🎯 Why? Full attention = executive presence 5. Cultivate Deal Resilience 🚫 Old: Treating objections as deal-killers ✅ New: Normalise pivots & encourage problem-solving 🎯 Why? Resilient pre-sales pros keep deals alive 6. The Daily Pre-Sales Check-In 🚫 Old: Rushing through the day without reflecting ✅ New: Review, refine, and improve messaging daily 🎯 Why? Self-reflection accelerates career growth 7. Turn Pressure into Presence 🚫 Old: Letting stress overwhelm you ✅ New: Slow down, breathe, reframe stress as excitement 🎯 Why? Your composure builds trust with executives Sales isn’t about proving yourself It’s about understanding the buyer Which shift has made the biggest difference in your sales success? ♻️ Share this to help more pre-sales pros master the art of influence ➕ Follow me (Stephen Baines) for insights on leadership, sales, and growth!

Why #Trust Is the Currency of the #DigitalAge? “In the digital world, trust is earned not by what you say, but by what you deliver—consistently, effortlessly, and with empathy.” In a world where we swipe, tap, and click through life, trust is no longer a soft sentiment—it’s the hard currency of the digital economy...it’s infrastructure! It defines whether customers engage, transact, return, or advocate. When people interact with digital platforms, they aren’t just looking for functionality; they’re looking for signs that they can rely on the experience. That’s why trust has become the most valuable currency in the digital economy—more than brand loyalty, more than price competitiveness. And it’s fragile. One glitch, one broken promise, and trust evaporates. Over the next 60 episodes, we’ll explore how organizations can architect trust—not just in branding and communication, but in design, governance, and technology. We’ll dive into: * Designing trust-based architectures * Role of zero-trust security and privacy by design * How UX and conversational AI shape trust perception * Impacts of algorithmic decisions and explainability * Building empathy and consistency across omnichannel journeys * Aligning customer centricity with tech scalability This is not just a marketing or CX challenge. It’s a strategic imperative that spans leadership, engineering, product, and customer success. It needs to be driven by #boardrooms directly. Because in the digital world, customers may never meet you—but they sense your intent in every click. Let’s decode trust—one post at a time. 👇 Follow the series and feel free to share your perspective in the comments. #DigitalTrust #CustomerCentricity #CXStrategy #TrustArchitecture #UXDesign #AIethics #PrivacyByDesign #ZeroTrust #TechForGood #CustomerExperience #DigitalLeadership #TrustInTech #LinkedInSeries #DigitalEconomy Board Stewardship Datamatics