Building Trust and Community Through Social Proof with Alex Montgomery

At the B2B Marketing Expo, Alex, who leads go-to-market at SlashExperts, explains the company’s focus on building trust through “social proof” by connecting existing customers directly with prospects to generate leads, speed sales cycles, and provide insights. He shares the founding story: founder Brayden Young (formerly of Sendoso) saw that prospects increasingly resist demos and trust customers more than salespeople. Alex discusses survey findings from 450+ GTM leaders (with Heinz Marketing) showing social proof as a top obstacle and notes deals convert over 3x higher when relevant social proof is delivered within 48 hours versus 3+ days. He describes an upcoming AI agent, Carly, to deliver social proof autonomously and cites customer results of ~25–30% sales-cycle reduction. His key advice: systematize customer references and social proof to avoid late-stage fire drills, while using community and in-person connections to build trust.

00:00 Meet Alex SlashExperts
00:34 Trust And Social Proof
02:02 Founding Story Sendoso
03:48 Expo Themes And Data
05:39 Speeding Up References
05:52 AI Agent Carly
08:16 Experts Network Badges
09:04 Community Builds Trust
10:25 Top Tip Systematize Proof
12:01 Wrap Up And Thanks

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Contact Meredith: info@compressionmarketing.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Super excited to see you and really looking forward to this conversation. So just to get us started, um, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience, tell them who you are, who you're here with, um, and maybe what you're sort of focused on here for the B2B Marketing Expo.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Absolutely. Uh yeah, my name's Alex. I lead go to market for a company called Slash Experts. I've been there now for about seven months, which in startup world is about seven years. Agreed. Uh it takes a long time. Uh I've worked now for a lot of early companies. That's my sweet spot, zero to one, leading sales and marketing. And what we do specifically as Slash Experts is that we power your social proof. We believe that trust is the most important thing out there right now with anything go to market. Used to be distribution, no longer the case, and we can all show up in everybody's email inbox or the cold email, so you'll 10x your business in two days. Uh it's like, okay, yeah. I'm like, sure. Uh so you have to trust that somehow. So what we do is we connect your existing customers directly to your prospects in order to drive new leads, speed up sales cycles, and give you data and insights that you don't currently have. Uh, and we also have a cool AI agent that's uh coming out soon. Her name's Carly.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Awesome, very cool. I'm gonna ask some more follow-up questions about that for sure. But I love what you said about the dog years for startups. Um a lot of a lot of our compression marketing friends will resonate with that. We've worked with a lot of startups, a lot of small businesses. Yeah, I myself have been in that environment. So I totally hear you on the the seven years versus seven months, Matt. That totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I did two months at a big company and I don't think I got out of training. It was like so. I'm like a startup guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Yes, I love it. That's awesome. Um, and very cool and very niche specialization that you guys are offering, which is I think very, very cool. Um there's a lot of demand right now for trust and what that means for connection and relationship building and ultimately customer relationships, right? Like those conversions. So love that you're focused on that that trust element because it's uh it's probably a bigger deal now than it has been for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Absolutely, completely agree. And you know, just to potentially share a little bit of our founding story, please do uh our founder Braden Young, he previously founded the company Sendozo, if you're familiar with them. They're the biggest gifting company in the space. And what he saw is less and less people were wanting to book a demo with a sales guy. Uh, and I'm a sales guy, but we tend to tell you all the positives. And even if we are honest and tell you about the things that need work on, hard to necessarily believe all of that. Again, talking about trust. And so Braden thought, okay, the the best alternative to just purely talking to a salesperson is also saying talk to somebody who's an actual customer of that product. And that was all his idea while working at Sendozo, and then spun that up because it was working so well there. Uh, and now here we are.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah, that's amazing because what it's it's it's that referral, right? It's that it's that um implied sense of I already trust this person, this person that I know that is doing this thing. Um, and we all know how valuable referrals are. Absolutely. And it sort of bakes that in to the conversation, which is amazing. And it's it's such a great idea. I think it's one of those things, you know, to your point, like nobody wants to book a demo anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Um those uh Which hurts hurts me because I I I I do demos.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

It hurts a lot of people. I mean, and not to say that a well-done demo can't actually be incredibly useful and insightful. And I think the the thing that's really interesting about that is 400 brothers. Wait, you you always want to have social proof. Yeah. You always want to know that it's working for somebody else before you risk it yourself.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

And more and more so, especially CFOs control budget more and more for for even small deals. Uh and so they the number one thing to ask is, okay, who who else has this worked for? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Yeah. Prove it.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Prove it. It's a yes. Yeah. Uh well, tell so tell me a little bit about what you are sort of spending the most time talking with folks about at the show this week. What is what's sort of like the common theme?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

You know, I I think it's real probably a lot in line with what we're already talking about. I was able to speak yesterday and really talking about trust being the biggest obstacle uh right now for go to market. Last year, uh or right after last year, we conducted a survey with over 450 different go-to-market leaders. Uh, we anonymized it so you didn't know it was us. Shout out to uh Heinz Marketing, who is our partner on that. And essentially we asked them what their biggest obstacles are, what their issues are, what where they're spending money, where they're gonna pull back on money. And a theme that came up over and over and over again is against social proof, which was a really good indicator that we're building the right thing. Uh and what we were able to find pretty quickly is that when you take your SLA of showing social proof to your customer down to under 48 hours, deals convert at over three times that of if it's three plus days. It's really impactful, not just for if you work with us, like we'll automate it, make it super easy for you. But even if you're just really on it and have your own systems on it, that tactic, that way of operating, and and really, I would say customer references have been around for a long time, but usually they happen at the very end of the deal cycle. Usually it's a fire drill of, oh, they need to speak with three people who are exactly like me. How do I find all this? Uh, and then you find those people because then you talk to your CS team or whoever owns that, and then it takes two weeks of scheduling because somebody was on PTO. So that really slows things down versus when you can right from the jump send over a bookable page saying, Here, talk to some of my existing customers, that converts really, really well.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yeah. And what you what you keyed into there on speed is so important. Nothing will close a deal faster than delays.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

I I talk about velocity of social proof all the time. It's you know, TM or whatever, but it's yeah, it really matters. Uh, and the ability to, you know, and this is uh not to you know jump into it, but this is what our AI agent is gonna do is be able to provide social proof autonomously based off of who you specifically are at any point in the buying journey that is relevant. And learning from all the conversations that were being recorded of these customer reference calls and being able to deliver that social proof, whether it's a G2 review, a case study, or even hey, talk to this person, they went through that exact same situation, not having to rely on the salesperson to manually send that over, it can happen at the speed of AI, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yeah, well, and in B2B, historically things always move a little slower, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Or a lot slower is Yeah, my background's in retail, so I I very much know that.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

So anytime that we have an opportunity to make a meaningful jump in that time frame to consolidate those timelines, yeah, it's better for the organization. It's better for the customer. Absolutely. The customer doesn't want to wait either. Um, and I think that's something that we get that gets missed a lot in in GD in GTM, right? Like go to market planning often is so focused on what's the value prop, what's the core audience, right? I think um that term at this point kind of gets thrown around with a lot of different definitions, right? A GTM can mean 75 different things.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

I think I get asked at least once a week what what what do you do? What does GTM mean?

SPEAKER_02 7:18

That alphabet soup mean this week.

unknown 7:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

And it's really interesting to understand the importance of shifting social proof from the end to the beginning and the time frame from six months to six days potentially, the the dramatic effects that that has.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Absolutely. Our customers who work with us and have an expert attached to their deal see an average of around 30% reduction in their sales cycle. We have some that are even higher than that that are outliers. Um, and uh, we I think the low end is like 25%. So it's it's really a massive impact. And uh to be frank, like yes, it is because we built the infrastructure to make it happen, but it's also just the importance of showing that social proof in in a real way. Because honestly, people can fake case studies, but saying, Here, talk to somebody, talk to lots of people, I don't care. Uh, and then also those experts get paid for their time too. That's the the other side to it. Yeah. Uh which you can sign up to be an expert at slash experts.com for that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

I think and it's such an interesting concept too, because everybody wants an opportunity to be an expert. And so it gives it gives the everyday business owner or the everyday person an opportunity to say, yeah, actually, I have a lot of credibility when it comes to talking about fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah, absolutely. We see people all the time now start posting on their LinkedIn under under job title that's an expert with XYZ company or or things like that. It's cool to sort of see that movement. And as we've started to expand our network of experts and just get all this this whole like bench of these great people or experts, and then have companies come and verify them, say, yes, they are a customer, uh, which then they say, I'm a verified expert.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

You've got badges, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Exactly. It's it's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Yeah. And the subtext that I'm hearing in it is also sort of this resurgence of a theme of community.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Right. And we like we're we're wired as humans to thrive in community.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah, absolutely. Creates that. And that's actually where I spend uh the majority of my time is really uh community, being in person. I'm all around. I've I've I've been to I I can't I think eight states this month so far. Uh I guess we're the end of the month, so that'll keep the end of it. Uh just to uh to to show up and and a lot of that's talking with our existing customers, that's that's meeting with prospects or or just meeting with other people who are in network. Yeah. Uh and I think community is more important now than ever. And I I think we're we're trying to carve out a little slice of adding to that.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Yeah, community is I think that's a great part of these events like this, right? You do you get another version of that that sense of community and what's happening in the space and what matters and what's working, what's not working in some cases.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

I mean, again, it kind of comes back to that whole trust thing. And one of the best ways to solve for trust is community and being in person. Uh, we're we're not in person so often now, which is great. And and that's fine. I'm not one of those like every day in the office people. Yeah. But at the same time, being able to show up, shake somebody's hand, get to know them, sit across from them and have a conversation is such an additive to trust and the impact that you can make.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah, absolutely. Given the one, the clear passion that you have for what you're doing and the expertise level that you have with it. Yeah. What is maybe your like, what's your number one tip or your best advice that you would give some of the small business owners that are walking around this floor today? Like if they haven't come by to visit you, what's what's your best advice to give them?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Absolutely. I I think systematize your social proof uh with and with your customers. Uh, that's the the number one thing you can do to be able to do it faster. Obviously, to plug us, we can do that for you. But if you don't work with us, that's fine. If you have that bench that you know of the people who could be a good customer reference for you, and that's somewhere in some centralized database that everybody knows. Uh it's not a fire drill, and you can just make that go faster, you'll see a huge massive impact on your go-to-market and the rest of 2026.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

That is a really good suggestion. Anytime you can put a system in place. So if you have, I feel what is it? If you have to do it three times, it should be a system, it should be a process.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah, that's a good phrase. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

So that's that is actually that's I mean it's excellent advice because I think a lot of small businesses just sort of do everything on the fly.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

And which is great.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

That's your as a small business, as a startup, that that's that's your edge, is that you can be on the fly. Yeah. But at the same time, when when you're on the fly too much, and then you're you're just it it it's yeah, that's not helping you. And so find the ways where being scrappy makes you win and then systemize every time everything else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Oh, that's that's the sound bite right there. That's the sound bite right there. Um such a cool conversation. Thank you for joining us out. Thank you so much for asking. And I hope that the uh the rest of the show goes amazing for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Thanks so much. Appreciate it.