Trust Economy SOP: Win the Buyer and the AI That Recommends You

This is a Small Business SOP: a free, do-this-today standard operating procedure pulled from a real operator on the Unscripted Small Business podcast. This one comes from Bruce Ashford of The Ashford Agency, a certified Small Business Flight Plan coach who spent 19 years in the nonprofit sector before advising founder-led businesses.

People trust very little right now, and more of your buyers arrive through an AI recommendation. Bruce’s fix is a short list of things most owners can do without a big budget. Run it this week.

Bruce Ashford quote on winning the trust of humans and AI models

The Play: One Line

Run a three-lane trust audit, fix the middle lane first, then re-score.

Why this matters

In Bruce’s words: “We have to win over the trust not only of the humans who are gonna buy from us, but the AI models that recommend the humans to us.” He splits that trust into three lanes. One mostly wins humans: rich content and industry recognition. One mostly wins AI models: schema, consistent name, address and phone, and fresh content. The middle lane wins both, and Bruce calls it the biggest and most important. That is where this SOP starts.

His warning about the AI lane: “If it can’t read it and scrape it easily, it’s moving on to a different business.”

The 8 Steps

Get a baseline score

Run an AI visibility assessment before you change anything. Bruce used AI Trust Signals, which has a free and a paid version and scores you across five AI models. Write the number down.

Ask for public reviews

Ask happy and satisfied customers for Google reviews, Yelp reviews and LinkedIn recommendations. Bruce puts reviews in the middle lane: humans read them and AI models read them.

Show your pricing

Publish at least some pricing. Bruce's warning to coaches and consultants who hide it: you will lose customers and leave money on the table.

Publish one case study

Show an example of how you helped somebody like your buyer. Humans and AI models both use it as proof.

Rewrite the about page about the customer

Cut the founding legend. Show that you understand the customer's situation and that you are a credible guide for them.

Build an author page for everyone who publishes

Every person whose name is on your articles or FAQs gets a page that says who they are and ties them to the business, so AI models can connect the dots.

Publish a free FAQ

Answer the questions customers actually ask. Bruce nearly left it off his list, then called it really important: AI models love it, and so do humans.

Hand the back end to your IT person, then re-score

Ask for semantic structure and the right schema, identical name, address and phone everywhere you are listed, and fresh content. Then run the assessment again and compare.

The numbers behind the play

Bruce ran this on his own business. After asking for Google reviews and LinkedIn recommendations, publishing a free FAQ and building an author page, his score rose about 20% on average across the five models his assessment checks. That is his own report, not a controlled study, and it makes a useful benchmark for yours.

trust lanes: humans, AI, and both

AI models in Bruce's assessment

~20%

average lift Bruce reported for his own business

Take the whole SOP with you

One printable page: the play, the steps, and a fill-in checklist. No email required.

📥 Download the Trust Economy SOP (PDF)

Listen & watch

This SOP is distilled from Bruce Ashford’s episode on the Unscripted Small Business podcast:

More operator SOPs, every week.

Real operators, real playbooks: free SOPs you can run this week. Browse the rest at Small Business SOPs and subscribe to Unscripted Small Business so you never miss one.