It’s easy to feel weird name-dropping.

But in customer onboarding you’re not name-dropping for your ego.

It’s a tactical move that leads to successful outcomes for your customer.

When deployed at the right moments, the right name or relatable scenario can transform sceptical stakeholders into enthusiastic advocates.

The opportunity is to turn your professional network into an onboarding acceleration engine that provides peer credibility when vendor expertise feels pushy.

Thousands of people read this newsletter each week, I wish I could name drop you all. ↓

🧪 The Project: 5 Strategic Moments to Leverage Connections

Transform your network into an onboarding asset that builds trust, overcomes resistance, and accelerates customer success.

Moment 1: Stakeholder scepticism

We often deal with multiple personas during onboarding.

It’s common for one or more of them to be unsure if this new purchase was worth it.

Even if the sales process was impeccable, if a stakeholder wasn’t involved in it, it’s possible you will need to “win them over”.

There are many ways to do this. One way is to use peer validation.

It can carry more weight than vendor promises when convincing internal sceptics.

If you can find mutual contacts to highlight your point, that’s ideal.

If you don’t have an obvious mutual contact, talk about a very similar customer in a very similar situation and industry. The closer the better.