By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 30, 2026.
To build trust with customers who have been burned before, you earn it back on their terms. Show you can do the work, show you're on their side, and keep your word when it costs you something. Oil and gas buyers have been burned plenty, and this year some of the biggest voices in oil and gas sales said so out loud. The research on trust explains why that wariness runs so deep, and what it takes to win a skeptical buyer back.
What the Field Voices Said
The most honest post on this came from Chuck Yates in June. After more than twenty years in oil and gas private equity, Yates started selling software to operators, and he wrote that the skepticism was intense. Longtime friends, including companies Yates once invested in, asked Yates straight out whether he planned to run the usual vendor games on them. His company's answer was a written Customer Bill of Rights with eight commitments. The company's own summary on X lists a few: your data stays yours and exportable, you get a direct line to a real person, and there's no “AI fairy dust.” In return, the buyer agrees to act as a real design partner.
Yates also told one on himself. At year end, the company's meeting-recorder AI named him “Most likely to sell functionality we don't actually have.” So they built it.
Collin McLelland, CEO of Collide, wrote in July about winning a contract with a large E&P that had already tried two land and title AI vendors that failed. McLelland's team built the app first, to prove it could be done, and called it putting “skin in the game.” Daniel Purvis, who leads technical sales at C3 Oilfield Services, endorsed a peer's view that the best oilfield sales leadership looks more like listening than selling. And one Permian account on X put the buyer's side plainly: it had been scammed enough in oil and gas to spot a grifty pitch.
What a Cognitive Scientist Sees in a Burned Buyer
I studied cognitive science, with an emphasis in neuroscience, at Occidental College, along with a second degree in diplomacy and world affairs, from 2009 to 2013. Both fields spend a lot of time on the same question: why people trust who they trust, and what it takes to win trust back after a breach. A burned buyer's caution is memory doing its job. You don't argue with it. You give it new evidence.
Trust Is Slow to Build and Fast to Break
The risk researcher Paul Slovic laid out the asymmetry in 1993: trust is much easier to destroy than to create. Events that break trust are more visible and carry more weight than events that build it. That's why one bad vendor can poison the next five. In the Permian, everyone knows everyone, so mistakes are public, and the bad story travels with your name on it.
Morgan and Hunt's commitment-trust theory says what breaks it most in business relationships: opportunistic behavior, the sense that the other side will take advantage when it can. Shared values and real communication build it back. The usual vendor games Yates's friends asked about are opportunism, by name.
What Buyers Are Really Checking
Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's 1995 model breaks trust into three questions. Can you do it? That's ability. Are you on my side? That's benevolence. Will you keep your word? That's integrity. McLelland's built-first app answers the first question before the buyer asks it. Yates's bill of rights answers the second and third in writing.
When Doney and Cannon surveyed more than 200 purchasing managers, they found buyers build trust in a supplier and in its salesperson through several separate mental routes, and trust in the rep mostly works through trust in the company. Then came the honest part. Trust drove whether buyers expected to keep doing business, but once past experience and supplier performance were counted, it didn't decide the current pick. Trust earns you the next order. The work wins this one.
The payoff is real, though. A 2006 meta-analysis by Palmatier and colleagues found that investing in the relationship has a large, direct effect on seller performance, and that it works best where the relationship matters most to the customer, as in services and business markets. Oilfield services sits squarely in that zone.
Promises That Cost You Something
Buyers believe signals that would be expensive to fake. Kirmani and Rao's review of the signaling research, titled No Pain, No Gain, lays out how sellers signal quality a buyer can't see yet. Rao, Qu, and Ruekert showed the principle underneath it: a quality claim is believable when a false claim would bring the seller real losses. In their studies, a brand's quality looked more credible when it partnered with a second brand that customers could punish. A written bill of rights works the same way. So does building the product before the contract. Each one costs the seller something if the promise turns out false, and buyers can tell.
Cheap signals work less and less. Friestad and Wright's persuasion knowledge model describes how people develop knowledge of how sales tactics work, and use it to cope with them. A buyer who has been scammed enough to spot a grifty pitch is persuasion knowledge in action. The more seasoned the buyer, the less any tactic does, and the more plain truth stands out.
When You Miss, Say So
Kim, Ferrin, Cooper, and Dirks tested what repairs trust after a violation. An apology repaired more trust when the miss was about competence, and a denial repaired more when the charge was about integrity. Later evidence mattered too: apologies came out ahead when it showed guilt, and denials when it showed innocence. In the field: if you missed on the job, own it fast. If someone questions your honesty and you were honest, say so plainly and bring the proof. Yates's year-end roast is a good model. He told it on himself, then the company closed the gap.
Listening Is Where Trust Starts
A guest on the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast cited a stat that more than 80% of buyers say sellers don't listen. We couldn't trace that number to a primary source, so I won't repeat it as fact. The research does say listening matters. A 2019 meta-analysis by Itani, Goad, and Jaramillo pulled together about twenty years of studies on salesperson listening and found it drives both relationship results and sales results. Customer-focused reps show they care by listening, and listening is how they adjust the pitch to fit the buyer.
Vallourec taught me that the humbling way. I came from a world where I had only studied neuroscience and international relations, and I walked into a world where I didn't know much of anything. It reminded me that it's more important to listen and learn than to speak. Put your student hat on, and sometimes forget what you know.
I've Been the Burned Buyer
As Head of Marketing at Wetzel's Pretzels, I managed more than eight outside agencies across 300-plus stores. We also worked with a really big agency that also worked on the McDonald's account. I watched at least $150,000 go out the door and asked, “Great. So where are our metrics? What are we really getting from this?”
That's the buyer Chuck Yates is selling to. Once you've paid for a promise that didn't show up, every new vendor pays for the last one. If you want that buyer back, show the numbers before they have to ask.
The same rule holds in consumer services. For more than seven years I've helped criminal defense lawyers in California win clients. People come to a defense lawyer scared, and no honest lawyer can promise them an outcome. So what a client buys first is trust: a lawyer who explains plainly what can happen and what can't.
Where the Science Has Limits
Trust doesn't replace performance. Doney and Cannon's buyers chose this job's supplier on experience and performance. Trust kept the door open for the next one.
The repair studies were controlled experiments. Kim and colleagues tested how people judged a mistrusted person, not a frac vendor on a 30-day job. The direction is useful. The details will vary.
Most of this research is about relationships in general. Little of it was run in oil and gas. Palmatier's finding that relationships matter most in services and business markets is the closest fit.
The asymmetry depends on the buyer. Slovic's evidence came from people rating news about a nearby nuclear plant, and later studies found the effect depends on what people already believe. A buyer who already trusts you reads a miss differently from one who doesn't.
The 80% figure is unsourced. Listening research supports the spirit of it. The number is the guest's.
How to Earn Back a Burned Buyer
Ask about the burn. Find out what went wrong with the last vendor, then listen all the way through.
Put your promises in writing. Yates's bill of rights is the template: short, specific, and something you can be held to.
Pay something up front. A pilot, a trial, or proof built before the contract, the way McLelland did it.
Don't sell what you don't have. If it isn't built yet, say so, and say when.
Own a miss fast. Apologize for competence misses. Defend your integrity only when the facts are on your side.
Drop the tactics. Seasoned buyers know them. Plain answers stand out.
Let people they trust vouch for you. A buyer who has heard your name from a peer starts you with borrowed trust. That's the idea behind The Warm Walk-In™, and our answers on being seen as a peer, not a vendor, your first operator meeting, and referrals go further.
Follow Along
Want the short version in your inbox? The Tailgate is one letter a month from the patch. Sign up at the bottom of any page. If you'd rather see what a buyer sees when they look you up, get your Bison Walk-Around.
Sources and As-Of Dates
Peer-reviewed studies (each DOI checked on Crossref, October 30, 2026):
Slovic, P. (1993). Perceived Risk, Trust, and Democracy. Risk Analysis, 13(6), 675-682. Supports: trust is easier to destroy than to build.
Morgan, R. M., and Hunt, S. D. (1994). The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 20-38. Supports: commitment and trust are the core of lasting relationships; opportunism erodes trust.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., and Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734. Supports: trust rests on ability, benevolence, and integrity.
Doney, P. M., and Cannon, J. P. (1997). An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer-Seller Relationships. Journal of Marketing, 61(2), 35-51. Supports: how purchasing managers build trust, and its limit on the current supplier choice (200+ managers).
Palmatier, R. W., Dant, R. P., Grewal, D., and Evans, K. R. (2006). Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Relationship Marketing: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 136-153. Supports: relationship investment pays most in services and business markets.
Kirmani, A., and Rao, A. R. (2000). No Pain, No Gain: A Critical Review of the Literature on Signaling Unobservable Product Quality. Journal of Marketing, 64(2), 66-79. Supports: how sellers signal quality buyers can't see yet.
Rao, A. R., Qu, L., and Ruekert, R. W. (1999). Signaling Unobservable Product Quality through a Brand Ally. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(2), 258-268. Supports: quality claims are credible when false claims would bring real losses.
Friestad, M., and Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1-31. Supports: buyers learn sales tactics and use that knowledge to cope with them.
Kim, P. H., Ferrin, D. L., Cooper, C. D., and Dirks, K. T. (2004). Removing the Shadow of Suspicion: The Effects of Apology Versus Denial for Repairing Competence- Versus Integrity-Based Trust Violations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(1), 104-118. Supports: apology repairs competence misses; denial repairs false integrity charges.
Itani, O. S., Goad, E. A., and Jaramillo, F. (2019). Building customer relationships while achieving sales performance results: Is listening the holy grail of sales?. Journal of Business Research, 102, 120-130. Supports: listening drives relationship and sales outcomes (meta-analysis).
Field voices:
Chuck Yates, LinkedIn post of June 1, 2026, and his July 7, 2026 post on X.
Collide, post on X of June 2, 2026, summarizing its Customer Bill of Rights.
Collin McLelland, LinkedIn post of July 9, 2026.
Daniel Purvis, LinkedIn post of July 30, 2026.
A Permian account's post on X of November 13, 2025, read October 30, 2026. Details on request.
Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast, From CRM Chaos to Closed Deals (December 17, 2025), for the 80% figure, which the guest gave without a source.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
