Reputation built on people, not platforms.
I help B2B professionals, and the companies they work for, get known and trusted for what they’re good at. Through ambassadorship: Employee Advocacy, Social Selling and Thought Leadership.
AKD
Capgemini
ABN AMRO
TNO
Siemens
Teva
KNVB
Choose to be vital, not functional.
The functional gets replaced.
The vital gets asked for by name.
Most professionals stay unknown, and lose out to louder, less competent ones.
You have the expertise, but you never built the relationships or the reputation. So when the opportunity comes up, someone else takes it.
Being good at your job and being known for it aren’t the same thing, and it’s the second one that brings opportunities.
People can’t pick someone they can’t see, so opportunities go to the name they already know.
If no one knows what you’re good at, you were never even an option.
Companies broadcast rather than build trust.
Most companies push one corporate voice, script their employees, or mandate advocacy.
So everyone, including your buyers, tunes out, and the trust never gets built.
The usual move, when you want more opportunities, is to push harder. More posts, more ads, more money on events.
The problem is that everyone is doing the same, and we all learned to scroll straight past it.
What works is your people saying what they think, in their own words. That’s the version buyers still believe.
Opportunities run on trust, not reach
Employee Advocacy, Social Selling or Thought Leadership has almost nothing to do with how many strangers saw your post.
What matters is whether the handful of people who hand out the opportunities trust you.
That trust doesn’t come from a feed.
It builds up slowly, person by person, through people who know you well enough to say your name when you’re not there.
Those people are your ambassadors, and building your reputation through them, instead of through platforms and follower counts, is what I call ambassadorship.
- For a person, your ambassadors are the ones who vouch for you.
- For a company, they’re the employees and partners the market believes, real people, not a company broadcasting channel.
Build that, and you stop chasing attention.
A supplier gets swapped out the second someone cheaper turns up.
That doesn’t happen to a partner people trust, they ask for you by name, because nobody else sees the problem the way you do.
Real relationships and real reputation are what make a person or a company vital.
Where do you start?
It depends on whether you’re putting yourself forward or a whole company.
Reputation
You’re good at what you do, but when people read your profile, you sound like everyone else.
I help you find the one point of view only you have, and say it in your own words, so you become the first name people think of.
Culture
The experts in your company know their stuff, but the company does all the talking.
I help companies build the conditions where employees want to become ambassadors, instead of being forced into it.
Revenue
If you pitch before there is trust, nothing happens.
I work with sales, business developers and consultants to make them the trusted choice for their buyers.
Since 2011, I’ve worked with 950+ companies and 250,000+ professionals.
Solopreneurs, teams at ABN AMRO, Capgemini and Siemens, and hundreds of companies you’ve never heard of.
Want to know if I can help you too? Ask me.
What made it work was the structure.
We started with personal branding, moved into content, then network growth.
For a group of busy senior leaders, that combination was perfect.
Virginie Marco · Marketing & Communications Director, Capgemini
Latest articles
Practical pieces on reputation, ambassadorship, and winning trust in B2B.
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Social selling is being useful before you’re needed
Most people hear “social selling” and think “how do I squeeze the most leads out of my LinkedIn network.” That’s…
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Your follower count says nothing. That’s the whole problem.
At a networking event last month someone told me his follower count before he told me what he does for…
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You know a lot. Nobody can tell.
You read something, nod along, think “I should use that”, and then close the tab. By Friday it’s gone, buried…
Questions I get a lot
What is ambassadorship in B2B?
Ambassadorship is building a reputation through real relationships and real people, not reach or corporate broadcasting. Instead of one company account posting to people who scroll straight past it, your reputation gets built and vouched for by actual people.
How is this different from personal branding or social media marketing?
Personal branding and social media marketing are ways to get seen. Ambassadorship is about how opportunities reach you. Instead of chasing them with cold calls, ads, or another campaign, you let the people who trust you, clients, contacts, your own employees, bring those opportunities to you.
Reputation is the foundation underneath it, being the name people already trust before there’s anything to sell, and a sale is one of the opportunities that show up when real people vouch for you.
Who do you work with?
B2B professionals and companies that run on expertise and trust. Think consulting and other knowledge-heavy industries where clients buy the person before the service. On the individual side that’s people who want to become the ambassador for their company or the thought leader on their topic, and people in client-facing roles like sales and business development. On the company side it’s firms that want their people to be the reason buyers and talent choose them.
Is LinkedIn still the best platform for B2B?
For building a B2B reputation and network, yes. That’s where the buyers are, and it’s where I built my own name, most people know me from my LinkedIn strategy and tactics. But the platform is the means, not the goal.
LinkedIn is where you apply it today, and when the platform changes the rules tomorrow, your reputation doesn’t reset to zero, because it was never built on the platform alone.
Let’s talk
You’ve seen where you might start. The next step is a conversation.
Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you straight if I can help, and where to begin.