Want Stakeholder Trust? Start on a First Name Basis

Tactics and prompts to turn sales calls into real conversations — and build trust faster

Last week we talked about how important it is to follow the money within accounts. We also talked about how names and people are going to hold more weight than referencing business initiatives you can find in a public facing document.

This week, sharing some observations I’ve come across during conferences and sales conversations that hold true to the above. As well as yielding success during discovery calls and ongoing sales cycles.

Here’s what we’ll cover today:

• The power of “first-name” basis

• 3 Interesting observations using this technique

• How to prompt and apply the “first name basis”

The Power of “First Name Basis”

I was recently at a smaller conference and had the chance to meet with executives on my current and prospective accounts. When I started conversations, I’d introduce myself and drop a line about what I knew about some of the leaders (be it cross functional or stakeholder) of certain orgs within a company.

It sounded something like this:

“Hi, my name is Andrew, I’m with [org]. We work(ed) with [first name] on [org acronym] doing [abc initiative], not sure if you’ve heard of us but wanted to introduce myself after hearing your panel.”

I’ve been applying a flavor of this on discovery calls (in person context is different). The main construct:

• use org acronyms that customer uses (if you can find)

• relevant to where I can potentially help

• name drop first names of executive leaders

3 interesting observations using this technique:

1. Triggered an openness and willingness to share more. Ranging from confirmation of org structure, to validation of a my business hypothesis, their frustrations … sometimes even gossip.

2. Tilted the conversation to one that felt more organic and natural (especially in an event setting). Almost like meeting someone who knows a friend of a friend. I was no longer the “AE/sales guy”.

3. If they hadn’t heard of my org, they would jump to providing more context on what I had led with about them, naturally leading to, “what is it that your org does?”.

My hunch is that the subtle reference to their internal lingo, along with name dropping an executive, established the following:

• “Okay he knows my team and this account” (trust)

• “He knows or is familiar with executives and who I ladder up to/work with, and they’re familiar with him and his company” (social proof)

• “I can share more context on the org/team” - (intel on stakeholders)

You don’t need to overcomplicate this - asking directly doesn’t hurt. The approach I’m describing is just a subtle shift in the way that you’re asking the question. Important because you don’t want your discovery calls to fell like an interrogation (iykyk).

How to prompt for and apply the “first name basis”

Every time I’m prepping for initial discovery calls I’m looking for:

1. Have they done work with us before/do they know us (skip if you’ve gotten the meeting using this info to capture the initial call)
2. Can I draw a line onto where the fit in the org?
3. Do these stakeholders know my org?
4. Then, what other info can I find on that executive or stakeholder that might help me in the discovery call or even a sales engagement?

A couple of ways to go about this. Chat AE has a natural module built in to any contact you upload, negating the need for a prompt. You can check it out here, (no affiliate link).

Prompt

I use Perplexity Deep Research for this. It’s helped me to quickly have a couple of lines to get a convo going with anyone for the following scenarios:

• Events, synthesizing this info down to a couple of bullet points on what they’ve mentioned and tying any historical context I have on an account. Helping me to have an intro to key contacts as outlined above

• Messaging for outbound and multi threading

• Competitive positioning to outline where my org will have a superior advantage as it relates to those goals

Hope this helps.

I’ll expand on these more in the coming weeks, along with releasing a course to help you leverage these prompts and applications better in your day to day. More on that soon.

---

If you have any questions on this topic or thoughts, shoot me a DM or email to andrew@hackingsales.xyz.

As always, thanks for reading and see you all next week.

-Andrew K

PS - if you liked this article, feel free to give a “like”, “comment”, or “share” with your network