Know First, Like & Trust Later

If you want people to do business with you, you have to get them to know you, like you, and trust you. It is hard to refute. The logic is clean. The problem is that the sales profession spent decades building entire methodologies around the last two words and treating the first one like a formality.

Know does not mean know your product. It means the buyer actually knows you, the person behind the pitch.

In an era where every seller has the same AI tools, the same scripts, and the same enablement stack, product differentiation is racing to zero. What is not racing to zero is the specific, non-replicable knowledge a buyer has of the human being on the other side. That knowledge, of your judgment, your history, your point of view on their industry, the way you handle a hard conversation, is the moat. Liking and trusting flow from it. They do not precede it.

How to invert the funnel

Put more of yourself into the top of the relationship, not the bottom. Show your work in public. Have a real point of view about the market you serve, and be willing to be wrong out loud. Send the note that only you could have sent, the one that references what they said, not what a template suggested. This is not a personal-branding play. It is the oldest form of selling there is: the buyer knows the seller before they need what the seller sells. That is where trust actually comes from.

In the AI era, the sellers who are already known, who buyers can call by name months before the RFP, are the ones who win the deal without a bake-off. Everyone else fights on price.