The Research Behind Building Trust Faster, with Susan Baier and Hannah Roth

Today's episode of Sell With Authority marks an exciting milestone in our special series on trust and distrust in the agency sales process.

Over the last several episodes, you've heard from agency leaders who've generously shared how they work to build trust — through their content, through the relationships they nurture, and through the way they lead their teams.

For today's conversation, we're moving into the next evolution of the series. We're shifting from practice to proof.

Predictive ROI and our friends at Audience Audit are partnering on a five-year longitudinal research study on trust — more specifically — how agencies can build trust faster and more efficiently with a cold audience.

What makes this research unique is that we're not surveying agency professionals. Instead, we're going straight to the decision-makers — the CEOs, CMOs, and senior marketing leaders responsible for hiring, firing, and retaining agencies. We're digging into what actually drives or destroys trust inside their decision-making process.

This is the kind of research that helps every agency leader understand what builds confidence with the people who ultimately control whether you get hired — and how to shorten the time it takes to get to trust.

If you've been part of our community for a while, you know research has always been one of the cornerstones of how we build trust at scale — long before a first meeting ever happens.

That brings us to today's special guest expert: Susan Baier, CEO and Founder of Audience Audit. Susan has helped organizations and agencies uncover the motivations, beliefs, and behaviors that drive audience decisions for more than 30 years.

Her team specializes in attitudinal segmentation — the kind of research that reveals why people think the way they do, not just what they do. Her insights have helped countless agencies sharpen their positioning, elevate their thought leadership, and build deeper trust.

Hannah Roth — Predictive's Director of Strategy and our resident Mad Scientist — is joining me as co-host today. She works with our clients to build systems that earn trust at scale, and she leads the experiments and research inside our Predictive Lab. This five-year study is a collaboration between Hannah, Susan, and our teams.

What you will learn in this episode: 

• Why trust is the missing link in most biz dev strategies — and where it actually leaks out of your sales pipeline
• How attitudinal segmentation flips the script on research and moves you from "just data" to true thought leadership
• Why the majority of decision makers assume businesses are lying to them from the get-go
• Why a five-year longitudinal study gives you an unfair advantage — and what trends you should be watching
• How behavioral science plus data creates moments of "you just get me" with cold prospects
• What you can START doing today to build trust at scale and shorten the sales cycle with well-prepared, ready-to-buy clients

Resources:

• Website: audienceaudit.com
• LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanbaieraz/
• LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/audience-audit-inc./