Your buyers are being convinced by someone. The question is who.
Most of the B2B buying decision now happens in rooms you’re not in, shaped by voices you don’t control. I’ve spent fifteen years learning how those rooms work — and how to earn a company its standing inside them.
I’m Tom Augenthaler, founder of 551 Media. I help B2B software companies earn standing with the independent analysts, operators, and creators their buyers already trust — so they’re on the shortlist before the first sales call.
I’ve been doing this since 2010 — before “B2B influencer marketing” was a phrase anyone used, and long before it became a discipline serious companies build around. What I do now, I call Trust-Led Growth. But the through-line has never changed: buyers trust other people more than they trust brands, and the companies that understand that win.
I built this before it had a name.
In 2010, working with a consultancy, I was brought in to build and lead an influencer program for Hewlett Packard Enterprise — at a time when most of the industry still thought “influencer” meant someone on Instagram. Over six years, that program grew into a stable of 75+ active independent voices and 30+ deep-dive events around the world, opening enterprise niches where HPE had little presence. One event alone drove more than $250,000 in equipment sales. It taught me the lesson everything since has been built on: trusted third parties open doors that advertising can’t.
Then I did it across industries you know.
Since then I’ve designed and led influence programs for companies like SAP Ariba, Verint, PROS, Recurly, and iSolved — across pricing, CX, cybersecurity, HR tech, cloud, and enterprise IT. Different industries, same discipline: identify the voices a specific buying committee actually trusts, earn their genuine advocacy, and let it do what a brand’s own channels never can.
My job starts before I know a single name.
Here’s what I don’t claim: a Rolodex of contacts in every niche. Nobody honest has that. What I have is a repeatable way of working — I identify the independent analysts, operators, and creators who genuinely move a specific market, get acquainted with them, learn how each one works, and earn the kind of trust where they’ll take my call and consider my clients on the merits. Building those relationships from a cold start, in whatever niche a client sells into, is the craft. It’s the part fifteen years teaches you — and the part no software or PR retainer replaces.
And I wrote it down.
Everything I’ve learned about how B2B buyers really get influenced is becoming a book — the doctrine behind Trust-Led Growth, in one place. Because the strongest proof that a discipline is real is being the person who defined it, not just the person who practices it.
Building B2B influence before it had a name
Years designing and leading programs
Independent voices cultivated in one program alone
In sales from a single influence-driven event
Beyond the work
Most of my favorite hours aren’t spent in front of a dashboard or in a conference room. When I’m not working with CMOs on influencer programs, I’m usually practicing renaissance fencing — studying the old manuals, working with a sword or rapier in hand, and treating it as both a martial art and a way to stay connected to history.
I read a lot of history and archaeology, too. I’m drawn to how people lived, decided, and left traces of themselves behind — the same questions that show up in my work, just without the quarterly targets. And underneath all of it is my family. They’re the center of gravity: the people I want my best energy and attention to go to, not just whatever’s left after work.
What hasn’t changed in fifteen years is what I believe: the most valuable thing a company can have isn’t attention — it’s standing. The trust of the people your buyers already listen to. That’s the whole of the work, and it’s worth doing well.
Where does my company stand?
Start with an Influence Intelligence Brief — a map of the voices shaping your buyers’ decisions, and where you stand with them today.
Get my Influence Intelligence Brief