We’re living through the weirdest moment in human history.

For the first time since, well, ever, the cost of creating content has dropped to essentially zero. Not “cheaper than before”, but like actually free.

It’s so easy to generate a thousand blog posts or ten thousand “””personalized””” emails and it barely costs you anything (for now).

In theory this sounds great, infinite content. Giving words to those who struggled before.

So many opportunities.

But if you’re trying to sell, trust is collapsing faster than content is proliferating.

And I don’t mean “trust” in some abstract sense, but the real – who’s real, who’s credible, and what should I be paying attention to?

We’re not moving forward. We’re definitely moving backwards.

A tale of a B2B SaaS company

I know someone who runs a B2B SaaS company’s sales – he’s very smart. He spent many many years building his network and being a “relationship builder” type of seller – earning trust the old-fashioned way.

When we spoke last Sunday, he told me “I ignore all email outreach, and I barely even pick up the phone if I don’t know who it is”

“I can’t tell if it’s a real person or someone who’s scraped my details. I used to be able to tell. Now I can’t. So I just… don’t engage. Not worth my time.”

To dumb it down for you if you’re doing this outbound – he’s not asking “do I need this product?” that you’re selling, but he’s asking “why should I trust you specifically to deliver it?” – and you’re not getting through with that.

Marketing funnel? Nah. Meet the trust funnel

If being in marketing has taught me something, is that the “rules” and “playbooks” optimize for the wrong question – we craft positioning that explains what we do and why it matters.

In many cases, your prospect already knows they need what you’re selling.

They don’t need another pitch deck explaining why AI coding assistants increase developer productivity or why they can send more e-mails with an AI SDR.

They’ve seen forty of those this month (can we talk about how many AI SDRs there are????)

Honestly, this hurts saying too, but they don’t need proof that outcome-based pricing aligns incentives better than seat licenses. They read one of my 40 articles on the topic already.

What they actually want to know is “why the hell would I buy it from you instead of the other hundred companies spamming my inbox with identical claims?”

And because everything is AI slop now, answering that question became harder for them.

If you haven’t heard already, here are the differences between a marketing funnel and a trust funnel:

Aspect	Marketing funnel	Trust funnel
Main Focus	Lead generation and conversions	Relationship building and customer loyalty
End Point	Purchase or conversion	Ongoing customer advocacy and retention
Content Strategy	Promotional, sales-focused	Helpful, customer-focused, value-driven
Success Metrics	Conversion rates, sales numbers	Satisfaction, repeat business, advocacy
Timeline	Short to medium-term	Long-term, compounding trust

It’s clear that you need to be on that trust side!

With normal marketing funnels, lead generation sucks now

It’s simply too boring.

When a Claude license is like, $10 a month – content creation costs are effectively zero. Now everyone can afford to look credible. Perfect grammar. Personalized outreach that references your LinkedIn posts (albeit badly).

All of it can be generated in minutes, with no human intervention.

Which means all of it is now suspect.

I now send all e-mail AND LinkedIn messages to the trash.

Why? Because I can actually tell they didn’t come from humans who care about me or my problem.

They’re all “vaguely” personalized, and they’re all “curious” about how I do something. Why? Because “I’m curious about…” is in a playbook that supposedly gets good responses.

This is the trust collapse for me: it’s not that I don’t believe your product works. I don’t believe you’re a real human who will still care after you sign the contract.

Rates are down, I’ll just send more messages

God, no. Stop.

That’s not the issue.

Old World (…-2024):

• Cost to produce credible, personalized outreach: $50/hour (human labor)
• Volume of credible outreach a prospect receives: ~10/week
• Prospect’s ability to evaluate authenticity: Pattern recognition works ~80% of time

New World (2025-…):

• Cost to produce credible, personalized outreach: effectively 0
• Volume of credible outreach a prospect receives: ~200/week
• Prospect’s ability to evaluate authenticity: Pattern recognition works ~20% of time

The signal-to-noise ratio has hit a breaking point where the cost of verification exceeds the expected value of engagement.

So prospects don’t verify. They just assume everything is noise. This is why I (and my friend) ignore all outreach, and I’m far from alone.

The cognitive cost of determining “is this real?” for 200 messages exceeds the expected benefit of the 2-3 that might actually be valuable.

Back to trust…

You have to understand – your prospects aren’t asking:

• “Does your AI coding assistant work?” (They probably assume it does)
• “Will it actually improve {some metric}?” (They assume it will)
• “Is the pricing competitive?” (They can compare that in a spreadsheet)

They’re asking:

• “Will you still be here in 12 months when I’ve integrated your tool into my workflow?”
• “Why are you actually better or different from the 5 others I know of?”
• “Are you burning VC cash on unsustainable unit economics?”
• “When the music stops, will I be left holding a broken integration?”
• “Have you actually figured out how to make money, or are you just another vibe-revenue vibe-coded startup hoping to flip before the math catches up to your credit usage?”

And here’s the problem: they can’t tell if you don’t tell them.

Not to be cynical, but…

I’m not writing this to be cynical, but because I want to make sure you play the right game.

Sure, you have to answer “why should I buy this product category?” but also “why should I buy it from you?” and your content and marketing has to match that.

Your opportunity is huge. Here is what we all must do:

Trust is still a human job: At least for now – AI may help you along the way but at least in 2025 only humans can build genuine emotional connection and credibility. You need that lasting loyalty and advocacy. Don’t rely on the so-called “personalized outbound” alone.

Yes, relevance and customization are critical: AI should help you segment prospects meticulously and flag when human follow-up is likely to deepen trust, not just automate at scale. Use the outbound engine to be real.​

Again, keep a human involved: Too much automation can undermine trust. I expect at least some human engagement, especially in complex or high-value sales contexts.​​

Is this actually different now that we have AI?

Yes.

You’re representing a brand. And your brand must continuously earn that trust, even if you blend of AI-powered relevance. We still want that unmistakable human leadership.