How do B2B service providers effectively build trust and demonstrate contextual understanding when they can’t rely on direct referrals?

B2B referrals work flawlessly for only 2 reasons:

1. Trust
2. Context

Before I expand on this, here’s the supplier angle. 📘

I don’t sell to agencies, yet I get asked about positioning, GTM, pricing plans, and service breakdowns multiple times a week.

And surprisingly, I get loads of connection requests from agencies, too.

👇 This clearly shows the misalignment in:

– market opportunities
– buyer demand
– vendor positioning

The B2B realm is in shambles this year – simple as that.

👩‍🚒 But have you stopped fighting fires for a second?

No.

Problems keep piling up and the pressure to resolve them quickly, effectively, and permanently isn’t going anywhere.

The B2B services space is not facing a Product-Market Fit problem. It’s a Service Packaging Discovery problem.

Trust and Context serve as a validation point and contextual awareness of execution abilities given a certain context.

Vendors who can’t laser focus on one specific problem (which is a de facto standard in service businesses) have to compensate with:

– Reviews
– Testimonials
– Case studies
– Pricing plans
– Packages
– SMART positioning
– Godfather/Grand Slam offers
– Recommendations from peers
– Event (facetime) positioning

Building a strong positioning portfolio is grueling work and 9-12 months of packaging. And great vendors often lack this.

So amidst a sea of email blasts, LinkedIn pitches, reddit threads, Clutch, cold calls, Upwork and Fiverr, Slack communities, and loads of organic social content:

🤔 What do you resort to when your internal recommendation pool fails, and you have to seek solutions to problems on your own?