The most skilled one rarely wins the opportunity
If you’re a professional
The most trusted one wins.
You’d think that’s the same person, but it almost never is.
Being good at your job and being known for it aren’t the same thing, and it’s the second one that brings the opportunities in.
People can’t pick someone they can’t see, so it goes to the name they already know.
If they don’t know what you’re good at, you were never even an option.
If you run a company
You hit the same wall from the other side.
The usual move, when you want more opportunities, is to push harder. More company posts, more ads, more money on events.
The problem is, your competitors are doing exactly the same, and people have learned to scroll straight past all of it.
Pushing harder won’t fix that.
What works is giving your own people something they actually want to say themselves.
Being known is about trust, not reach
It 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 no one else comes to mind.
Where do you start?
It depends on whether you’re putting one person forward or a whole company.
Reputation
You’re really good at what you do. But when people read your profile, you sound like everyone else. Same tips, same words, nothing that’s only yours. I help you find the one point of view that’s yours alone, and say it in plain words, so you become the first name people think of.
Culture
Most advocacy programs go wrong the same way: they call it taking part, but it’s really control, plus scripts nobody wants their name on. I do it the other way round. Give people ownership of their own name, and the company gets ambassadors it never had to push.
Revenue
If you pitch before people trust you, not much comes back. I work with the salespeople and consultants who have a target to hit, and teach them to build the relationship first, so a conversation turns into a client without sounding like a script.
I’ve helped close to a thousand companies and a quarter of a million professionals. From solopreneurs to famous names like ABN AMRO, Capgemini and Siemens and everything in between.
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
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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 fields 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 if LinkedIn changes the rules tomorrow, your reputation doesn’t reset to zero if you take a broader approach.
Let’s talk
If this sounds like where you’re stuck, the next step is a conversation.
You tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you straight if I can help, and how.
No form, no gatekeeper, no pitch you didn’t ask for.
