Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Writing a Sponsorship Portfolio
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a concept in venture capital that I think maps surprisingly well onto getting promoted. It's the idea of portfolio diversification. Luna: You're going to tell me I should treat my career like a VC portfolio? Lucas: Not your whole career, just your sponsorship strategy. Because here's the thing — most people chase one executive sponsor. One senior person who they believe will advocate for them. And if that person leaves the company, or their influence wanes, or they just get distracted by their own priorities — you're stuck. Luna: Right, all your eggs in one basket. Lucas: Exactly. So today I want to walk through the story of a product marketing manager — let's call her Priya — who got promoted to director at a mid-sized SaaS company by building what she called a 'sponsorship portfolio.' She identified five potential sponsors, tracked her interactions with each, and made sure she was visible in the areas they cared about most. And she did it without feeling like she was using people. Luna: That's a really concrete frame. How did she pick the five? Lucas: She started by listing everyone two levels above her who had a seat at the table during promotion discussions — so VPs and directors in product, sales, marketing, and even engineering. Then she narrowed it to five based on three criteria: do they have budget authority, do they have a track record of promoting people internally, and is there a natural way for her to add value to their work. Luna: So she's thinking about what she can give, not just what she can get. That's key. Lucas: That's exactly the mindset. She wasn't walking up to executives and saying 'Please sponsor me.' She was looking for intersections where her work could solve a problem they cared about. One VP was obsessed with customer retention — Priya volunteered to lead a customer feedback analysis project. Another was trying to improve cross-functional communication — she started sending a weekly one-pager summarizing marketing's priorities. Luna: And she tracked all of this in a spreadsheet? Lucas: Yes. Simple thing — columns for sponsor name, their top priority, the last interaction she had, the next action she planned, and a column for 'ask made' or 'ask pending.' And here's the part I love: she color-coded it. Green meant the relationship was active and she'd had a substantive conversation in the last two weeks. Yellow meant it had been a month. Red meant more than six weeks without contact. Luna: That's almost like a CRM for your career. Did she share this with anyone? Lucas: Not the spreadsheet itself — that would be weird. But she did create a one-page summary titled 'Key Cross-Functional Contributions This Quarter' and shared it with her boss during their one-on-one. It listed the projects she'd led, the executives she'd collaborated with, and the outcomes. So it wasn't 'look at my sponsors' — it was 'look at the impact I'm having across the organization.' Luna: That's smart. It makes the case for promotion without explicitly asking for it. Lucas: Right. And the beauty of having multiple sponsors is that if one leaves — which happened to Priya. Her main champion in marketing took a job at another company. But because she had four other relationships, she didn't lose all her momentum. One of them, the VP of product, actually became her strongest advocate. Luna: That's the diversification benefit in action. So what's the concrete takeaway for someone listening right now? Lucas: I'd say start by identifying three to five potential sponsors this week. Use Priya's criteria — budget authority, track record of promoting others, and a natural way to add value. Then schedule one coffee chat or brief meeting with each. The goal isn't to ask for sponsorship directly. It's to understand what they care about and how you can help. Luna: And if someone feels awkward about this — like it's too calculated or transactional — how do you reframe it? Lucas: I'd say the most effective people I've seen get promoted aren't the ones who play politics. They're the ones who do great work and make sure the right people know about it. That's not manipulation — that's communication. And honestly, if you're adding value to a senior leader's priorities, they're grateful. It's a two-way street. Luna: Yeah. I think a lot of people underestimate how much executives wish more employees would proactively connect with them. They're busy, they don't always know who's doing what. Lucas: Exactly. And look — we talk about this kind of career strategy on the show because we genuinely think it helps people make better moves. If you've gotten something useful out of episodes like this, one way to keep the show ad-free and sustainable is to support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, but every bit helps us keep doing what we do. Luna: And we mean that — no ads, no sponsors, just the content. So if that model works for you, great. If not, no worries. Let's get back to Priya's story. Lucas: So after she built her portfolio, the next step was activating it. She didn't just wait for sponsors to advocate for her — she gave them specific, easy to champion narratives. Luna: What do you mean by 'easy to champion narratives'? Lucas: She prepared what I'd call 'sponsorship soundbites.' For each sponsor, she would casually mention one or two of her achievements in a way that aligned with that sponsor's goals. So to the VP of sales, she'd say something like 'I've been digging into the churn data and I think I've found a pattern that could help us reduce it by ten percent.' Now the VP has a concrete story he can repeat to others. Luna: So she's essentially giving them talking points about her. That's clever. Lucas: It is. And it's not manipulative because the work is real. She actually did find that pattern. She just made sure the right people knew about it in the right language. Over the course of six months, she had at least three of her five sponsors independently mention her name during the promotion review. Her boss later told her that the decision was unanimous. Luna: That's the goal, right? You want multiple people in the room saying 'We need to promote Priya' before anyone even asks. Lucas: Exactly. And the interesting coda is that after she got promoted, she didn't stop. She transitioned her portfolio to include directors at the next level up. Because the game doesn't end at director. Luna: So it becomes a career-long practice. That's a great framework. Lucas: I think so. One thing I'd add — if you're early in your career and don't have access to VPs yet, start with your manager's peers. Same logic, just one level closer. Luna: And track it. Even if it's just a simple note in your phone. Lucas: Yeah. The act of writing it down forces you to be intentional. That's the real secret — not the spreadsheet itself, but the mindset of treating sponsorship as something you build systematically rather than hoping it happens by accident. Luna: Alright, I'm going to start my list this afternoon. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Good luck. And if you try it, let us know how it goes.