This week on The Digital Download, we welcome two of the most influential minds in B2B sales for a discussion that promises "productive disruption." If you think the future of sales is about knowing more about your product than your customer, you are about to be shocked.

We are honoured to host Brent Adamson, co-author of the industry-changing book The Challenger Sale, and Karl Schmidt, B2B strategist and research leader. As co-founders of A to B Insight, their latest research focuses on a bold thesis: traditional B2B sales and marketing are becoming obsolete.

We're diving straight into a radical concept: what if the salesperson's most important role is no longer to be an "expert," but a "connector"?

Join our panel (Adam Gray, Tim Hughes, and myself) to debate critical questions for all sales managers and directors:

* Why has the obsession with "product expertise" become a trap for salespeople?

* What does shifting from an "expert" to a "connector" role actually look like in practice?

* How does this "connector" approach help customers with "Sensemaking" (making sense of information)?

* How can this change in posture radically improve customer engagement?

* What is the new sales profile that businesses need to survive?

Brent is known for having the "biggest crystal ball in B2B sales," and Karl is an expert at translating complex insights into practical solutions. Get ready to fundamentally rethink what it means to "sell."

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is keenly encouraged!

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Our guest this week was -

• Brent Adamson, co-founder of A to B Insight, co-author of the Challenger Sale, and the Framemaking Sale.

• Karl Schmidt, co-founder of A to B Insight, co-author of the Framemaking Sales.

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, co-founder and CEO of DLA Ignite.

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Richard Jones, Richard Jones, Director of Qure 8 Ltd

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-10-17

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:01]:

Good afternoon, good morning and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on TuneIn radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today on the Digital Download, we're diving straight into a radical concept. What if the salesperson's most important role is no longer to be an expert, but a connector? We are honored to host Brent Adamson, co author of the industry changing book the Challenger Sale, and Karl Schmidt, B2B strategist and research leader as co founders of A2B Insight. Their latest research focuses on the world thesis. Traditional B2B sales and marketing are becoming obsolete. But before we bring them on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone because we've got a full house today.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:16]:

While we're doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation is highly encouraged. We're very happy to have Rob with us today. So Rob, would you like to kick us off please?

Rob Durant [00:01:34]:

Thank you very much. Bertrand. It's great to be back. Hi everybody. I am Rob Durant. I am CEO of US Operations for the Institute of Sales Professional. Excuse me, the Institute of Sales Professionals. And I am here to help elevate the profession of sales.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:53]:

Excellent. Sounds to be a good place for that today, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:01:58]:

Thank you. Yes, I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Ignite and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling Techniques to influence Buyers and Change Makers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:08]:

Excellent, Richard.

Richard Jones [00:02:10]:

Good afternoon. Richard Jones from Curate, a DLA partner and I can honestly say I don't think I've ever actually been the expert in a sale. I've usually been accompanied by some significantly more qualified individuals with regards to whatever it is I'm selling. But good to be here today anyway.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:29]:

Welcome Richard and thanks for being there, Adam.

Adam Gray [00:02:33]:

Hi everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm co founder of DLA Ignite and I'm famous for being his business partner.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:41]:

Welcome, madam, and thanks for joining. As I said, this week on the digital download, we'll speak with Brandt and Karl. We welcome two of the most influential minds in B2B sales for a discussion that promises productive disruption. If you think the future of sales is about knowing more about your product than your customer, you're about to be shocked. Let's bring them on. Gentlemen, good morning and welcome. Brent Karl, let's start by having you telling us a little bit more about you, your background and what led you where you are today.

Brent Adamson [00:03:32]:

Good to see you all. My name is Brent Adamson and I haven't done the show in a while, so I'm really excited to be back. So it's good to see everyone. Karl and I have got a new book out called the Frame Making Sale, which I would love to talk to you guys about today. But we go way back to a company called the Corporate executive board, or CEB, which is bought by Gartner. I don't know about 2018, I think 2017. But it was at CEB where we did a lot of the research that led to the Challenger sale, the Challenger customer. And we been writing and researching sales and marketing for decades.

Brent Adamson [00:04:06]:

Unlike Karl, however, he's. He's got a. Well, my. So we have. We have very interesting stories. Before that, very different. So I used to be a German professor. So I'm with you, Bertrand.

Brent Adamson [00:04:14]:

I can keep up. Rock and roll. Karl, on the other hand, was never. Was not a German professor, even though his name is Karl Schmidt.

Bertrand Godillot [00:04:24]:

Okay, Karl.

Karl Schmidt [00:04:26]:

My name is very misleading in terms of my language skills, which are limited at best. So. But yes, Ben's crack. My backgr background is very different. I was in strategy consulting for a number of years before coming to CEB to help run the. Some of the research practices. And so, so much of the research, both from the Challenger work, but especially what we're doing now, was based not necessarily on things Brendan and I did personally, but with this brilliant team of researchers and advisors and working with a group of heads of sales, marketing and communications at Span the globe numbered in the thousands. And so, you know, we.

Karl Schmidt [00:05:04]:

We get a lot of the. The FaceTime related to all this, but really the credit needs to go to a much broader group.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:10]:

All right, thank you, gentlemen. So let's start with a foundational question. Why has the obsession with product expertise become a trap for salespeople? Who wants to take that?

Brent Adamson [00:05:25]:

I'll give it. I think it's for the same reason. Let's say you're on a date and you're trying to win the admiration of the person you're on a date with. And for some reason, it doesn't seem to be going well. What's the first thing that we do, Rob? We say, oh, it must be. Is it my cologne? Is it my. Is it my deodorant? You know, it's like, let me. Let me wash my hair.

Brent Adamson [00:05:46]:

Let me change my clothes. Let Me be. Try to be funnier. Let me try to. We assume that when things aren't going well, it must be me, let me see if I can fix me, right? Or the other thing is we want to impress them. So we say enough about me. Now you talk about me. And it's really interesting.

Brent Adamson [00:05:58]:

This is very human, this strong human instinct in human relations that the way to win someone over is to get them to think great thoughts about you. To win their admiration, to win their love, to win their trust, to win their respect. Funny enough and maybe not surprising and maybe not funny at all. That same dynamic ports right over to B2B selling. In other words, we think if we want someone to buy our product, they've got to love our product. If we want someone to call us first, we need to win their trust. And so there's this natural inclination in both human relations and in B2B business to focus on customer. At least in this case in B2B business, customers perceptions of us.

Brent Adamson [00:06:32]:

And we think if they, if they just understand us, if they understand our product, our brand, our history, our other customers and how happy they are, they're. They're more likely to buy. And what we're finding in the book, and really the book is all about this idea that, that is arguably 180 degrees opposite of where we need to be if we want to increase the likelihood of a sale happening. Because if we think about it not as a sale but as a purchase, then the whole thing gets stood on its head. I haven't led with that Karl before. Karl's like, oh God, he left the dating thing. That's, that's a new one. But the, but that's that it's, it's a really interesting way to look at it, isn't it, Karl?

Karl Schmidt [00:07:05]:

Yeah, and I, I would just add that especially today with, you know, so much disruption coming from or whether disruptions here yet are expected related to what's happening with AI and this question of what it is, what's the role of sales in all this? Especially in light of the data that we've seen with regard to the percentage of B2B buyers that would prefer if they could, to have an entirely rep. Free experience as part of their purchase process. And so again, the implications for sales, both with the ongoing changes coming from AI, but just the nature of the buyers, the people we're trying to work with who just are saying that, hey, if I could, I'd rather not talk to anyone in sales at all. And that's a very dangerous combination with Emerging new technology that is changing the dynamics, combined with a very strong preference by customers to try and not have to deal with sellers. But the key here is it's not that they want a human free experience. They want what they've learned from their experience with prior sales reps has taught them that these people all talk about themselves. As Brent mentioned in his dating analogy, they're not actually helping me. And so this idea of whether or not there's a need for entirely removing sales from the equation isn't what we believe at all.

Karl Schmidt [00:08:29]:

We see this as an enormous opportunity, but it's an opportunity that requires sales to really take a hard look in the mirror and think about why they actually are earning that time from the person in the first place.

Bertrand Godillot [00:08:43]:

I'm sure you're going to have some thoughts about.

Adam Gray [00:08:46]:

Yeah, absolutely. So. So I guess the question is, you have to strike a balance, don't you, between knowing everything possible about your product and leading with your product brilliance and expertise and knowing nothing about your product and being kind of pretty much ignorant of your product.

Brent Adamson [00:09:06]:

So at what level that would be bad, too.

Rob Durant [00:09:08]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:09:09]:

Yeah, exactly. So. So. So how much of a grounding in your product do you need? And I guess that my experience of working with sales teams is that they kind of polarize, don't they? There are some people that are very customer focused, very insistent on understanding the customer's pain points and how their product or their service solves those problems for the customer. And there are some salespeople that have no interest in that at all. They're literally interested in doing a product demo and hoping that you're going to buy something. Now, clearly one of those is potentially adding value to the customer. And it's a big ask, asking for the customer's time, and one of them is adding no value to the customer.

Adam Gray [00:09:58]:

So how do we balance these things? What's an appropriate amount of knowledge to have and how do we take that to the customer to look as, to quote your dating analogy, Brent, as attractive and gorgeous to the customer as we can.

Brent Adamson [00:10:10]:

I am gorgeous. Well, let's do this, Adam. We kind of started kind of in the middle of things in media space. So let's step back and let's kind of take a running start of where we're going with this work, because it'll be helpful. Before I do that, though, I just got to say hi to Sarah. I don't know Sarah, but she's from Omaha, Nebraska, and I grew up in Omaha Central High grad. So anytime my people show up, I got to say hi to them and shout them out. By the way, as Karl's note, the joke's about to come.

Brent Adamson [00:10:33]:

The Nebraska football team has a big in on the Nebraska football team football helmet. Do you guys know what the N stands for? It stands for knowledge. There you go. We're very proud of that. But the all right. I thought I was gonna get a laugh from that, but never mind. The all right. So the okay, so let's go back to sort of the starting point.

Brent Adamson [00:10:53]:

This book isn't founded on dating analogies. The book is founded on research and a huge amount of research that helps us understand how we need to go to market to today to increase the likelihood of what we call a high quality, low regret purchase. So that's just a purchase where customers are more likely to buy they're more likely to buy a bigger solution rather than a small solution. They're going to buy the with a broader scope, the higher price point and feel better about it too. So this question has been the sort of the core of a huge amount of research that we've been conducting both at CB and Gartner and then beyond for years now, trying to understand what needs to happen inside a purchase to increase the likelihood of high quality, lower grip purchase. Lo and behold, there's a long and a short and a medium version. I'll try my best to give you the shorter version just for time, but the punchline is the single biggest driver of a high quality, low regret deal is the degree to which customers report a high level of confidence in the decision that they're making on behalf of their company. If they don't feel confident in the decision, they're going to choose not to choose.

Brent Adamson [00:11:44]:

What's interesting though is then this goes back Bertrand, to your first question. It's not confidence in you, your product, your brand, your people, whether they trust you. That matters. Because when you unpack this data, the dimensions of confidence that matter most are from the customer's perspective, things like how confident are we that we even ask the right questions in the first place? How confident are we that we've done sufficient research that we thoroughly explored alternatives? In other words, what customers are really concerned about is actually not supplier centric, but supplier agnostic. While we're so focused on what they think about us, they're worried about their own decisions, whether or not they're confident in themselves and making the right decision on behalf of their customers company. So the the whole book is focused on this 180 degree flip of how can we go to market. How do we engage customers in such a way that we help them not feel more confident in us, but to help them feel more confident in themselves and the decisions they're making on behalf of their company. So now, Adam, bring that full circle.

Brent Adamson [00:12:36]:

Your product knowledge is going to be critical to that, but you're, but it's not what you lead with, what you need to understand the knowledge. That's really, I think sort of the opportunity to build more knowledge is not the knowledge, the deeper knowledge of your own product, it's the deeper knowledge. It's the empathetic knowledge of understanding from a customer's perspective. Where are they going to get stuck? Where are they going to be confused? Where are they going to feel overwhelmed? Where do they look inside their own company, think, I love your product? We're just up to me, I buy it today. But I don't want to deal with all that garbage working with my colleagues because it's so freaking complicated and frustrating. I don't want to deal with that. It's like, how can I understand and know that such that I can take on the role of a coach or a guide or Sherpa and guide them through their own internal complexity? That's that they're making them more confident in navigating that decision on their own.

Adam Gray [00:13:16]:

Yeah, I, I, I absolutely get that now. Now you guys have got a unique product offering. You know, your, your IP and your knowledge is unique in the marketplace. Our knowledge and IP is unique in the marketplace. If I were to work for a large US Tech company not to, to single any one of them out for special treatment, they do not have a unique product offering in the marketplace. They have a, a completely homogeneous, homogenized, commoditized product.

Brent Adamson [00:13:53]:

Yes.

Adam Gray [00:13:53]:

And the skill of the salesperson is often to convince you, the buyer, that the red button on my software is better than the blue button on Tim's software and that's, that's what the sale for me hinges on. So if I'm in that situation and I'm in a high pressured environment, do I actually want to be upskilling and educating the buyer and making sure they've asked the right questions, or do I want to make sure they ask the right questions that reflect on me in a good light?

Brent Adamson [00:14:26]:

Karl, I will go on a full on rant. Karl, so maybe you jump in.

Adam Gray [00:14:31]:

I know that's really cynical, but actually that's the dynamic, isn't it?

Karl Schmidt [00:14:36]:

No. But then this, this goes all the way back to the challenge at work from, you know, a decade ago. We've been facing this exact question. And when, when the challenger work first came out, at that time, I was leading the marketing practice. And so, as you know, as the world learned, it was so important to be teachers as sellers and teaching people about these commercial insights and what they might be missing about their own business and the value that they were, they were losing as a result of that. Then, then you had a whole ton of, you know, sales leaders turning to their heads of marketing, say, hey, I of these commercial insights, how do we get one? And so one of the projects I was led very early in those days was specifically for heads of marketing, how to help create that differentiator, that basis of preference, right? What is the thing that we can say that actually makes our enormous software package different and then the best option for a given customer? And that was a shockingly hard question for the vast majority of commercial teams out there. Right? And so you're absolutely right. The perception of sameness across all of these established industries is so high because through competition over the years, if someone had an advantage, it gets competed away relatively efficiently.

Karl Schmidt [00:15:54]:

And so the question is, what's left? What is the thing that makes our happiest customers the ones that are our most raving fans? What is it about their experience with our products, with our people, with all the aspects of working with us that makes them. Makes us the best answer for them and makes them so satisfied and really reaches them at such a deep level? And this is the question that all suppliers need to be asking themselves right now. What is the thing that really causes. What is the question that a customer needs to be asking themselves to say, hey, is company A the best solution for me, or is it company B? Or maybe my status quo is really the best answer? And that's an exercise we do in some of our workshops. We describe it as a negative brainstorm, which is if we're truly going to help the customer make the best decision they can, then we need to make sure we're taking that a hard look at what really is the differentiated value of our solution. Because if it is as commoditized as the situation you presented, well, then really all you're left to compete on is price. Right? And none of us want to be in that game now. Some of us are forced into that game because it truly is a commodity that is entirely undifferentiated.

Karl Schmidt [00:17:05]:

But we love to tell the story of a company work with back in the day that literally sold salt, not fancy salt. And I'll turn this to Brett Brent. Does such A great job describing this, but even in that scenario, we were able to help figure out what is that differentiator. Brent, you want to. Would it be a good place to share the salt story?

Brent Adamson [00:17:22]:

Well, no, maybe. But the. It was actually Dean Grossman, who's now retired, he was a Cargill. And he said like, you know, we were talking about Challenger and he said, you know, we sell salt. At least part of our business is like, what's the differentiator in salt? And I said, it's probably not the product that can't be, but it's probably something else. It's. There's all, I guess, you know, it's maybe like shorter supply lines that lead to just in time delivery assault. Maybe it's your financial instruments that allow hedging against the variability in price itself.

Brent Adamson [00:17:45]:

But there's something there. But, but Adam, I think in many ways what we're solving for here is a different problem, right? So there's no question that the sliver of differentiation between you and your top three competitors may be small, but that's just it. So we all freak out about that. It's like, my button is a slightly different shade of red than your red button. So let me tell you more about my button. And meanwhile your customer's like, I don't even know if I need a button. Maybe actually I should go over and do something else, right? And maybe it's like, and who else do I have to get on board to buy? Me?

Karl Schmidt [00:18:15]:

Oh, God.

Brent Adamson [00:18:15]:

Buying buttons is a big pain in the butt. Maybe I just won't buy a button at all. What if your number one competitor wasn't the other button seller? But what if your number one competitor was status quo, no decision and overwhelmed customers, right? So the, the question becomes, how do I help them if I show up? And specifically in a way that helps customers feel better about the decisions they're making while everyone else is self. They're freaking talking about their buttons. You're going to be the seller I want to talk to, right? You're gonna be like, well, I actually like talking to Adam because Adam actually helps me feel good about the decisions I'm making while these other yahoos are out button size. That's. I can get that off of AI, right? So, you know, there's a point we make in Challenger which is still absolutely true today, which is the single biggest point of or opportunity for differentiation day is not what you sell. It's how you sell.

Brent Adamson [00:18:57]:

It's how you show up. And the way that you show up differently today is not with better buttons. It's with a better approach to help customers feel better about themselves. The decisions they're making, their ability to make that decision. Decision in the first place.

Adam Gray [00:19:08]:

Certainly.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:09]:

Up to now, Adam. Sorry, Brent and Karl. Up to now, the focus on sales training has been very much on the sales process.

Brent Adamson [00:19:19]:

Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:20]:

And I'm trying to. What I, I'm getting out of the conversation is that maybe we're flipping things around and that's, you know, actually maybe we should have started this way, is that the main focus should be the purchasing process and not the sales process. There's been countless discussions about this, including in the chat, by the way. So that's what I'm raising, that you.

Brent Adamson [00:19:44]:

Guys have an amazing chat, but this is a really robust discussion going on. I keep getting distracted by someone to, like, hang out in the chat, but the, the. So, you know, if we go back to like, we need to 10, 15 years in the history of sales, so we all talked about we need to have a sales process. We need to map the sales process. You know, IBM signature selling methodology, kind of got to start. The work Milt Hearn did there back in the early 2000s was amazing. And then at some point we began to realize we need. We need to not just have a sales process, but we need to map the sales process to the way the customers actually buy.

Brent Adamson [00:20:14]:

So now we need to map the customer's buying process so that we all marketers got involved at that point, said, well, we need to map the customer's buying process. And then we need to figure out, align them. Kind of where we are today is what if your customers don't know. What if your customers don't know how to buy? What if they actually don't know what that buying process looks like? And it shows up all the time in the sales calls that we get where your customer says, it turns out procurement got involved and we're stuck. Or it turns out we need to run this by the capital Review Board. And they're really frustrated because they just ran into an obstacle they didn't see coming. And you're thinking, well, let me guess, it's the Capital View board, isn't it? And what we find is there's this real asymmetry of knowledge between how customers think they need to buy versus how they actually should buy. And you actually, as a seller, probably have better insight and perspective into how customers can and should buy than the customers do themselves, because they're doing it for the first time in the first time in a long time.

Brent Adamson [00:21:00]:

Whereas you're helping companies do this all the time. And so that actually that, that, that moment, that asymmetry puts you in this really powerful or at least valuable position to show up not as a product pusher, but as a, as a, as a decision coach, as a buying guide, as a Sherpa, to help them move through these decision complexities that they themselves hadn't fully anticipated, even though it's their company. So Bertrand is absolutely mapping your sales process of the buying process, but it's actually, it's more than that. It's proactively guiding that buying process in ways that customers haven't anticipated.

Bertrand Godillot [00:21:32]:

So we have a comment in the audience from Greg.

Karl Schmidt [00:21:36]:

And.

Bertrand Godillot [00:21:38]:

I just want to go through this. Is this the end of marketing? The end of push? The end of the Trusted Advisor? This is what we as sales professionals are facing, the end of enterprise thing.

Brent Adamson [00:21:53]:

It's a lot of ends, Greg, these days. It feels like the end of, to be totally honest with you. Right. The, the.

Karl Schmidt [00:22:01]:

The.

Brent Adamson [00:22:02]:

I think so. I. So Karl knows because I've talked about a lot because it was so interesting at a really fascinating conversation with Charlie Green a couple weeks ago. And Charlie Green is the author of co author of Trusted Advisor. And we were talking about this idea of trust. And I think the thing that's really interesting to me and Charlie, and I think we agree on this, he's just, he has a more subtle take on it because he's really smart and just a great dude. We are all shooting for customer trust as our. As the objective in itself.

Brent Adamson [00:22:30]:

Like, let me engage with you such that you trust me more. I think we actually need to think of customers trust in us not as the object, but as the byproduct. It's not the thing we're trying to win, but it's what we're trying to help them trust themselves. And if you're the one person that shows up as helping, giving them the agency to help such that they trust themselves, they will learn they'll come to trust you more as a byproduct of that. Because otherwise it becomes all, all this talk about being customer centric just winds up being supplier centric. Because it's like, enough about me now. You talk about me. Do you trust me yet? Do you trust me yet? How now? How about now? Do you trust me now? And that's.

Brent Adamson [00:23:02]:

It's just a, it's just a. It's a really bad way to do business. Right.

Rob Durant [00:23:05]:

Frankly, Brent, I want to pick up on what you said regarding the salesperson acting as The Sherpa. Because, Karl, as you mentioned, buyers would prefer a rep free experience. As Greg Walters mentions early in the comments, AI has digested every report ever now his says about how to sell. But in general, and Brent, I heard you say buyers are looking for a high level of confidence in the decision they've made. Well, in my experience with AI, AI loves to reinforce whatever I've told it, good, bad, or other. So how am I, as the salesperson going to step in between my prospective buyer and their AI and say, oh, no, you might think they're leading you down the right path. What do you think of that.

Brent Adamson [00:24:10]:

Karl? Go ahead. I'm happy to take it. I'm in rant mode this morning, guys. I'm sorry.

Karl Schmidt [00:24:20]:

It's a real important question in terms of the role of. And this all has to be from the buyer's perspective. Right. And so just pulling apart your question and putting yourself in the shoes of that buyer, who is. Even if they're just doing a Google search now, they're getting a Gemini response. Right. And so regardless of whether through intent or just the nature of how the technology is evolving, AI is going to be part of the equation in terms of the answers they're getting back to whatever question they're trying to get an answer to. And as you indicate then, that'll often get into these reinforcement loops.

Karl Schmidt [00:24:57]:

But what also is fascinating is how often that response doesn't necessarily increase that buyer's confidence that they're making the right decision or even asking the right question. Because often anything you put in as a prompt will almost inevitably lead to, oh, and here's three other questions I can help you with. Right? Would you like me to do X, Y or Z? And so in terms of one of the big challenges all of our buyers are struggling with is what we talk about in chapter four, which is this whole challenge of information overload, which some early days may have people thought. I saw a lot of people speculating that AI was going to be the solve for this. Well, AI, it turns out, is really more exacerbating it than addressing it. And so this aspect of how we actually have the empathy as sellers to appreciate, appreciate where a buyer is in their journey, what they're struggling with, and what the nature of the help is, not just to help them, to Brent's point, see us as the best option, but help them with the struggle of just what it means to navigate what are the right questions in the first place. Excuse me. And.

Karl Schmidt [00:26:06]:

And that's the piece that we really focus on. In terms of the whole approach in frame making is again, really understanding what those customer needs are as the jumping off point for everything.

Tim Hughes [00:26:18]:

One of the things that you cover, Brent and Karl, in the book is you talk about how salespeople don't often recognize that there is a buying process going on. So, you know, we turn up, we have our bag of stuff and we put it on the table and say, isn't this great? Then we're about. We then forecast it for the next three days, and then the client says, yeah, but we've got to go through purchasing. We've got to do a business case.

Brent Adamson [00:26:49]:

And.

Tim Hughes [00:26:49]:

And then, and. And what was a. A we thought was going to close in 30 days is actually 12 months. The other thing that you. The other example that you give is that the tech supplier that lost to a car park.

Brent Adamson [00:27:06]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:27:08]:

Because ultimately any organization has to look at a cost benefit, and they're not just looking at a screen with a blue button or a red button. It could be that a car park is actually more important for the organization. So how is it that we as sellers can actually start maybe thinking about those things and being a little bit more mature in the way that we actually think about this isn't as a sale, but actually a. We're working with a client and the client may be going through gates or something like that to actually go through the buying process.

Brent Adamson [00:27:43]:

So I think, Tim, one way to think about it is. So in the book, we lay out sort of the three steps of frame making, which you start with the letter E, establish, engage, and execute. And there's one in particular, this first of the three is established, which is like, how do I figure out what to coach my customers in the first place? If I'm going to be a buying guide or a decision guide, a Sherpa, how do I know what to guide them on? And I think this, Tim, feels to me like this huge opportunity. By the way, there's discussion going on in the chat about is this the end of marketing or death marketing? Absolutely not. Whether you call it marketing or something else, I think there's a huge role, both organizationally and individually, for us to become just students of customer struggle. That's an interesting way to think about. We don't actually use that language in the book, but it's. But it's a really interesting way to think.

Brent Adamson [00:28:25]:

What if we became students of customer struggle and to understand where are. Where are our customers likely to get stuck? And you can do this by looking at past deals. In fact, one things we do Talk about. And I think it's a really cool technique. So let's. It's been kind of high level. So here's a super tactical, you know, practical thing you could do, whether you're an individual seller or a marketing team or a company. As you think about, traditionally, we do a lot of customer testimonials and we look for raving fans and have them document the stories, how much they love us.

Brent Adamson [00:28:52]:

And enough about me. Now here's someone else talking about me, right? But the. But what if we were actually as we. As we do those interviews with customers who have successfully bought our solution and rather than talking about how much they love us, ask them, ask them about the journey itself. About, you know, if you had to do it all over again. You think about the last 12 to 16 months it took you to make this decision to get to that finish line. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently to make your life easier? Would you have involved certain people sooner? Would you have asked different questions? What were the obstacles you ran into inside your own company that you didn't anticipate? And again, you can do this individually or institutionally do that through surveys or interviews or focus groups or just kind of conversations. But as you begin to aggregate that knowledge, that what that does is it you build a bank of knowledge and of advice.

Brent Adamson [00:29:35]:

And then, Tim, you can deliver. That's the second of the three E's of engage. You can begin to deliver that advice back to your customers. Say, in working with other customers like you. One of the things we were surprised to learn is that procurement, when they get involved, there's this one question that they always ask that seems to throw everyone off and get really frustrating. One of the things we'd suggest based on what we've seen from other companies is not only you get them involved a little earlier, but make sure that this question gets on the table sooner because that's going to make your life so much easier when you do it that way. That's what it sounds like when you engage in framemaking.

Richard Jones [00:30:04]:

Well, it is a point for me about we always look at our successes, but do we analyze our failures enough? There's a sort of story about planes returning from battle in World War II where they looked at where all the bullets had hit the aircraft and decided that that's where the armor needed to go. But in reality, the ones that weren't returning would have told them a lot more. And I kind of feel that we focus too much on the couple of deals we might win at the expense of the 10 or so we might lose.

Karl Schmidt [00:30:39]:

And that's absolutely critical, especially when we think about those that kind of final mile of the sale when. And one of the four challenges that we highlight in the book that really undermine customers decision confidence. Because all this research is based on that perspective of where's the buyer coming from, what's the challenge they're facing? And it's that question of realizing the value they may buy into the ROI calculator you provided in the abstract, but there's something unique about our company. There's something we're going to do to mess this up. Because as we like to talk about so often, I think we all often feel we work for the most dysfunctional company in the world. And you know what, we're probably all right in some ways. Right. But the thing we'll all struggle with as we're trying to finalize that decision is how we can think about whether or not we're truly going to realize that promised value.

Karl Schmidt [00:31:32]:

Is it going to happen? And we all tell about the absolute, the best cases as you highlight. Right. But what we steer away from, what we run away from in fear, at least as Sellers is talking about that, well, where could things go wrong? But that's really all our customer cares about. Because if this goes wrong, you know, again for them, this could be career altering. If they're the ones who put their neck on the line to make the deal happen, they're the one who disproportionately are going to suffer. And it may even end up, you know, leaving them out of a job. And so what they want from us maybe more than anything else is where are those potholes, right? Where have other customers gone down this journey and struggled? And then attached to that isn't what can we do about it? And that's where we in sales and marketing have such a huge advantage in terms of asymmetry of information. Because we know where those deals went wrong.

Karl Schmidt [00:32:24]:

Right. We know where we sold into someone who might not have been ready for our solution yet. Right. Or had some other challenge that they weren't quite the right, we weren't quite the right fit at this time or things that could be avoided if they just know in advance. And that's where there's such a critical role for the combined roles of sales and marketing. We talk about this a lot in chapters six and nine about how to exactly look at those lessons learned from the planes that didn't come home. And that's just got to be so much More of our emphasis to help customers avoid those things. Because not only does that increase their confidence, that, oh yeah, I know what I'm heading into, but also it creates that aspect of.

Karl Schmidt [00:33:02]:

Again, we talk about it from the work of Cialdini and in his wonderful book Influence, and had such a pleasure interviewing him a few years ago about this whole question of what is it that creates that sense of reciprocity where we're giving, we're making something of value, we're helping that customer in a unique way that ultimately, even if this deal isn't right for them now, it ultimately creates that relationship that will end up being us as the first people they call when they're thinking about a similar problem in the future.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:32]:

There is one comment. There's one comment in the audience that I'd like to bring up because very unfortunately, Tracy is not with us today, but Carrie is finding that there's quite a. A lot of old gentlemen around the set. So what I want to do is to extend an invite to Carrie to come up and share her specific perspective on that in any future episode.

Tim Hughes [00:33:57]:

She can join now if she wants to.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:59]:

And she can join now. Yeah, I can send you the link, but I'd like to have at least questions maybe. So I'd like to bring that back to what is the sales profile that businesses actually need to perform in today's environment? How would you describe this?

Brent Adamson [00:34:28]:

Say it again, Bertrand. I was reading the comments.

Bertrand Godillot [00:34:31]:

What is the new sales profile that businesses need nowadays?

Brent Adamson [00:34:38]:

It's interesting. So the word profile is a huge part of the Challenger sale, right? So we introduce these five profiles and when we talk about Challenger, hard worker and so on, lone wolf. And we talk about the profile, most likely wins Challenger. And so in some ways, Les Karl, perhaps, but certainly I've become kind of known as like the profile guy. So I get this question a lot. To me, this is less about a profile, in fact. And the other thing it's really not about is a methodology. Karl and I are no interest in introducing yet another sales methodology into the marketplace, partly because the word methodology over promises and under delivers.

Brent Adamson [00:35:12]:

I think it's just promises too much and people get confused about how should I stop doing all this other stuff, start doing this other thing. So the word we use is mindset. And this goes back to a post I put on LinkedIn yesterday about frame maker versus frame making. So, Bertrand, your question about what's the profile of a seller? Kind of feel like the implication and you didn't do this, but I would imagine someone might Say, yeah, so I need to be a frame maker, right? And the way we look at it isn't so much about who you need to be, it's what you need to do. So it's less about a profile and more about a set of behaviors. And if it feels like I'm being really pedantic here, I don't mean to be, but I think it's actually really an interesting question because this can apply to anyone, which is as you think about who you are and whatever profile of whatever dimensions you might feel like you fit in, here's a set of tools for your toolbox to engage customers in a different way. When you adopt this mindset of how can I help my customers make the best decision they can in as little time as possible? That's my goal. That's where this.

Brent Adamson [00:36:12]:

If it's more like a Simon Sinek sort of why thing, what's your why? If you want to be the one seller that customers actually do want to talk to be the seller that shows up that help customers feel like they're making a good decision not by buying your stuff, but because. Because they feel confident that they're doing right by their company and that, I don't know, that we need to call that a profile. And again, I'm not trying to correct you. I just think that that's a no. No, but that's fine. It's a different dimension to think about, which is, irrespective of who I think I am, here is something really powerful that I could do. And that's. That's, I think, just a better way to think about it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:36:46]:

Okay, we've got a comment in the audience from James. James says from a marketing supporting sales perspective, we're thinking we need to work on teaching AI LLMs, that we simply need to ensure we're showing up as a recommended and suggested solution to posed question when prompted.

Brent Adamson [00:37:08]:

This is the new SEO, isn't it? Right. We're all after this, just like the new SEO, right? So it's like, how do we make sure that we're the top of the list? And Karl and I have got complimentary but different riffs on this. But the, the thing I find about AI is we. It's kind of going back, Rob, to your question earlier about AI. Right? So just the other day I was driving to Chipotle, as I tend to do two or three times a day to get lunch. And the, And Karl, Karl's not laughing because he knows I'm serious. But the, the. I was, you know, I Was asking, I was talking to co pilot as I drive because sometimes I have a parasocial relationship with my AI, Bottom right.

Brent Adamson [00:37:42]:

So we're, we're hanging out, talking in the car, and I wanted to get the revenue of it. This is a true story, is I wanted to get the revenue of a privately held company that we actually talk about in the book. And so I asked, I said, so I asked, Chet, you say, what is the annual revenue of this company? And copilot came back, so it's about $10 million. I said, $10 million. It's like, are you sure it's $10 million? It seems really low. And then he came back, said, oh, I'm sorry, no, it's $100 million. It's like, wait a minute, told me it's $10 million. Like, what? So, you know, it's like, did I actually, for the next 20 minutes, got in an argument with my co pilot about, like, how come you said it was this when you really meant it was that? It's like, well, you know, sometimes mistakes happen.

Brent Adamson [00:38:16]:

And it's like I said, writing the book, I was asking for a citation for the Challenger Sale to put in the footnote. And it turns out it was written by Neil Rackham. And the other day I was talking to Alice Hyman, daughter of Stephen Hyman. I could remember Stephen's first name. So I asked a co pilot, you know, who wrote, who founded Miller Hyman, and it was Neil Rackham. Again, it's like, so it's like Neil Rackham is real. So talk about someone who skewed AI to their favor. It is absolutely, absolutely.

Brent Adamson [00:38:39]:

Neil Rackham has gotten after this thing and no more power to him. But the. He wrote the Challenger Sale and founded Miller Hyman. But the. But nonetheless, I think the point of this rant is simply I. I think customers are learning pretty quickly. I need to take everything I get from AI at least in current state, with a huge grain of salt. Because he just changed the prompt just a little bit.

Brent Adamson [00:38:59]:

And all of a sudden the answer changes. So now what AI is doing is not making me feel more confident in me. It's actually making me feel less confident me. It's actually soul draining, not soul enriching. And so then at some point you think to yourself, I wish I could just talk to somebody, but I don't want to talk to a salesperson because that's going to make it even worse. But if I could talk to a human being who's actually been down this road and had similar experiences that would be really helpful. And imagine now if you as a seller showed up and said, I can give you access to that. That's your true value as a seller is not your expertise.

Brent Adamson [00:39:27]:

It's your access to other people like them to provide the social proof from a human perspective that your customers actually want.

Rob Durant [00:39:34]:

I think I'm going to blow your mind.

Brent Adamson [00:39:36]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:39:37]:

It's only your AI that thinks it's Neil Rackham. My AI is going to somebody completely different.

Karl Schmidt [00:39:45]:

Right.

Rob Durant [00:39:46]:

While we joke about it.

Brent Adamson [00:39:48]:

Right.

Rob Durant [00:39:48]:

That's the problem. We think that AI is an absolute answer and it's customized to the user, giving us what it believes we want to hear.

Brent Adamson [00:40:02]:

Greg says it's a prompting issue. It's like, yeah, I wouldn't even disagree that. But like, but that's kind of the problem is like, well, you got your prompt wrong. Well, great. Now I got to worry about that too. You know what I mean? It's like, I just want a fricking answer. And now it's like, oh, so it's my fault for asking, like, who wrote the book? Yeah, I don't, you know, I'm sorry. But it's.

Brent Adamson [00:40:20]:

Nonetheless. But point being, in a time where customers confidence is arguably an all time low because they're overwhelmed with too much information, too many decisions, too much complexity, too much uncertainty, AI doesn't seem to be helping right now. It actually seems to be exacerbating the problem rather than overcoming it. And what that does is opens up this massive opportunity going all the way back to Adam. Your question. If you want to differentiate, let's not do it on button color or button size. Let's do it on the basis of I actually can provide you help and I can help you provide confidence, I can help you feel better about the decisions. But if you're looking for a window to stand out today in the eyes of your customer, that's your window because it allows you to not only stand out against other sellers, but against other technologies.

Brent Adamson [00:40:57]:

Technology at the same time.

Tim Hughes [00:40:58]:

We had a discussion last week about where knowledge was held. And Tracy, who couldn't make it today, was pointing out that a lot of data, especially in marketing, is data. What it, what, what, what marketing isn't doing is actually accessing the data. You know, when someone makes a decision, they don't actually make a decision based on data that the, the, the marketing is held. So we're in this situation where we can say all, all the information that's in books are in LMMs. Yes, but there is information in my head. Rob's head, Adam's head, Brent's head, Karl's head, Richard's head. That isn't in AI.

Tim Hughes [00:41:41]:

So you're not. So, so this, this thing. We're accessing all the information in the world. We're not accessing all the information in the world because IP still sits in our head.

Brent Adamson [00:41:49]:

Head.

Tim Hughes [00:41:50]:

And that.

Brent Adamson [00:41:51]:

And there's certain, there's certain things in my head that can never be released, that just can never. Exactly, exactly. We'd all agree that's. Yeah, that, that would be bad.

Tim Hughes [00:41:58]:

There would be a lot creeping up.

Brent Adamson [00:42:01]:

Karl, what are your thoughts? I, I kind of steamrolled that one, man. I'm sorry.

Karl Schmidt [00:42:04]:

Oh, no, it's important. But there's sort of, there's two dimensions. Well, there's many dimensions. This AI question, obviously we're touching on a few, but one, and you know, I think it came up, somebody already commented on this that, you know, often if we're a seller, you know, our main interest from an AI perspective is, hey, if someone puts in the question, you know, what's the best solution to this problem? I want to see my solution come up as number one. Right. But obviously that's an incredibly supplier centric perspective and the potential to use AI to again put yourself in the shoes of a customer. And the questions they're going to ask across the entire buying journey. Right.

Karl Schmidt [00:42:44]:

Maybe it's a, you know, when should I get procurement involved again to reference back the story in the book about, you know, that Brent referenced earlier. But regardless of what is the question they're going to struggle with, we can now kind of test these in terms of a light marketing research almost exercise, you know, as if we were a customer asking AI as our customers will. And this is one of the exercises we do in the workshops that we've, we've created to help sellers, you know, take advantage of some of these, these techniques. And it's fascinating. No matter what guidance we give them, the first thing everyone cares about is, oh, wait, where do, where does my solution fit in the rank order of what AI tells is the best answer. And I'm like, yes, I appreciate that. We all are so used to trying to be preferred. We all want to be that number one.

Karl Schmidt [00:43:30]:

That's hard for us to think about any of the rest of this. Again, getting back to the mindset of helping the customer make the best decision. And it's not just a decision about preference, it's all the decisions, all those micro decisions all the way across the buying journey, which I would say, absolutely, this is not the end of marketing. This is a really a rallying cry for what marketing has to do differently in terms of that core understanding of where customers are going to struggle. What is the information and misinformation they're going to receive from AI in terms of trying to answer those questions and helping overcome those, not just with the information, but with the social proof from customers like me, like someone like me who's tried to answer this. What did they experience? Where did they struggle? What ended up working for them? And that's again where the humanity of this is so critical. And the information, to your point, that isn't. Tim, you hit it so well.

Karl Schmidt [00:44:25]:

What isn't in the books, right? What have we seen having had a conversation with dozens of customers like this person and how can we share as a connector to pass that along to help increase their confidence? Because again, so much of confidence isn't just making it easy and having the right information, it's having the sense of agency that I can do this. And a lot of what reinforces that agency is that social proof of hey, here's someone like me, did it, succeeded, overcame the challenges. And those are the aspects that we see this being such a human story and that the AI solution, again, this is why the phrase AI, I think it appears exactly in the book twice because there is a perspective that AI is going to solve all this. And we see so much of the core of this is being the humanity of it, not the technology of it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:45:15]:

So assuming as a sales leader, I want to coach my team into these. The correct behavior. Let's put it this way, where should I start?

Brent Adamson [00:45:27]:

It's interesting. There's a conversation going on the chat. But your chat rocks by the way. I just said. And Mark Crosby, like every Mark, you're everywhere, man. I just like I just talked to him yesterday and every time I do a show, he shows up. So it's amazing. So the.

Brent Adamson [00:45:41]:

But here's the thing that Tove and LinkedIn user have gotten all over this, that they talk about emotion and I want to talk about that for some second because it's going to get to an answer be to your question, which is let's again, let's go back to the data again. We haven't maybe stressed it, I don't know enough. But this book is founded based on research and data. And when you, when you dig into the data, you find the single biggest driver of a high quality, low regret deal is the degree to which customers feel confident in the decision they're making. And when you then Strip apart that. That, that finding into its aggregate or it's. It's a. It's its components.

Brent Adamson [00:46:14]:

What you find again is things like, how confident are we that we asked the right questions? How confident are we that we did sufficient research that we thoroughly explored alternatives? All right, here's where it gets interesting. So that list, which we lay out in the book and we lay out in keynotes and workshops and things, and we talk a lot about it. That list of attributes that. That list represents your engine for growth. Those are the things that we need to solve for in order to drive outsized returns. And there's nothing else in the data that shows up even close, even challenger attributes attributes. Nothing else shows up as even close to that and driving high, high quality returns or likelihood of growth. All right, but when you strip that apart, you think, okay, great, so that you're selling Brent, I gotta solve for helping customers feel confident that they ask the right questions.

Brent Adamson [00:46:56]:

Cool. Okay. Which questions are the right questions? What does right mean? Are these the right questions or those the right questions? What if, Tim, you think those are the right questions, but Rob, you think those are the right questions? Adam, you think these are the right questions? Well, who's right about being right? That's really hard. So let's put that aside. Let's move on to the next one that'll be easier. So let's be feel confident we did sufficient research. Great. What's sufficient mean? Is it a week? Is it a month? Is it a year? Is it.

Brent Adamson [00:47:22]:

Is it three people? Is it four people? I don't know how to answer that one. Let's go on. Well, at least we thoroughly explored all. Oh, wait a minute. What does thorough mean? And what's interesting is that you could do this on every one of these attributes. So here I've got this list that shows this is the. This is the engine for growth for your company. And not a freaking one of these attributes has an objective finish line to them.

Brent Adamson [00:47:41]:

You can't know any of these things. You can't know which questions are the right ones. You have to believe that they're the right ones. You can't know that that research was sufficient. You have to believe it was sufficient. And what you find is, at the end of the day, this core element of B2B buying that's going to drive growth for all of us isn't based on something customers know. It's based on something customers feel. And specifically, do they feel confident that these things are true? And I think that becomes in this really interesting and we compare that to what we're doing.

Brent Adamson [00:48:07]:

Everything that we do in sales and marketing, or at least most things that we do in sales and marketing, are all focused on helping our customers know something. We want you to know about our product all the way back onto the beginning of our conversation. Know about our features, know about our benefits, know about our red button. It's this color red. Not that color red. No, it's not blue. See, it's red. Right.

Brent Adamson [00:48:23]:

We want them to know about the value, know about the total cost of ownership. We want them to know about the raving fans. But we don't focus nearly so much on specifically engineering. How do we help our customers not just know something, but how do we help them feel something? And specifically I feel something about us, but to feel something about them. So now we've got a double jump situation. If you think about. So Karl's a BCG alum, right? So everything's a foursquare with Karl, which is why I love him because everything's foursquare with me. So now we've got a double jump.

Brent Adamson [00:48:48]:

Rather than being supplier centric, it's supplier agnostic. And rather than being about what we know, it's about what you feel. And that there's. We just don't do this in sales and marketing right now. And that's why this book now exists, is because we want to think, we want to ask the question, what does it look like to go to market to engage customers in such a way that we're solving for their perception of themselves, specifically around how they feel? And I think. And so we unpack that in the book, not just leave that as a big idea. So every chapter, every book, every chapter of the book breaks down like what does that look like at a very tactical level, how do I engage someone in such a way that I'm solving for their, for their own self perception? And word that Karl threw in that is so critical to all this, that kind of went sliding past is this word agency. How do I promote customers sense of self agency that they can do this, we can do this and we're here to help.

Brent Adamson [00:49:35]:

So. So, Bertrand. So that's kind of the, the high level answer to question. We can get into brass tacks in a few minutes we have left, if you'd like, about how we do some of the techniques for doing that. But it's a, it's chapter seven in particular. We get into this thing called hypothesis led empathy, which is really, really cool and a super powerful tool to engage someone on an emotional level. Not just on a knowledge level, level.

Rob Durant [00:49:55]:

I know we mentioned it at the beginning. Some have come in after and we.

Brent Adamson [00:49:59]:

Talked about the book.

Rob Durant [00:50:00]:

The book, the book. Remind us, what is the title of the book?

Brent Adamson [00:50:07]:

The book is. So I wrote, I ran. I did a. I ran. I seem to be ranting a lot. I'm just an angry old man. I need everybody. Okay, get off my lawn.

Brent Adamson [00:50:16]:

Get off my lawn. The book is called the Frame Making Sale. And the reason, the rant, the joke I was making, some people refer to as the frame maker sale, which goes along with Challenger sale. And we've already talked about sort of this idea of it's not who you are but what you do. So at the Frame Making Sale, the website is the framemakingsale.com we're on LinkedIn all the time. We've got keynotes and workshops and training and coaching. Training and some really cool marketing workshops that we're building now around how do I, how do I build frame making content and where do I deliver it? Super, super interesting stuff.

Tim Hughes [00:50:49]:

There's a, a title for your next book here.

Brent Adamson [00:50:52]:

I see that.

Tim Hughes [00:50:53]:

Solving for self agency.

Rob Durant [00:50:55]:

Yeah, true.

Brent Adamson [00:50:57]:

Or it's not me, it's you. Sometimes, sometimes when you're, it's just like dating, right? Sometimes when you're, you're on a date, they say, it's not me. It's, it's not you, it's me. It's. Sometimes it really is them. Right? It's like that's that. And that's the thing we could sell for. Damn kids.

Brent Adamson [00:51:13]:

Craig, You're Craig. Greg's on fire today.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:17]:

No, but I, I'll keep that punchline. You know, it's, it's moved from supplier centric to supplier agnostic. And it's not about what you know, but about what you feel. And I think that that is, that's going to be my takeaway for the day anyway. So any other questions? One last question, maybe. Adam? Richard.

Karl Schmidt [00:51:41]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:51:41]:

I've, I've got a question and the question is, will, will the two of you come back and talk about some of those tactical things?

Brent Adamson [00:51:50]:

Happily.

Adam Gray [00:51:50]:

And the reason, the reason I ask that is that in, in my experience, organizations hire really good people and then they, they have to give them the starting line. You know, here's something that you can go away and do today. Say these words, email this person, whatever it may be. And I think that a lot of the concepts, although I'm sure everybody in the audience has listened and thought these are fundamental truths and they make perfect sense. They're still, quite an abstract concept, aren't they? And. And it's like, okay, so what does that look like for me? I'm a frontline salesperson. I. I'm going to have to go out and see this customer.

Adam Gray [00:52:33]:

How do I apply this idea in a way that I can comprehend in a tactical way?

Karl Schmidt [00:52:39]:

Yeah, it's a great, great point, Adam. And obviously we're happy to come back. Maybe we could just leave a little bit of a taste, an aperitif, if you will, of kind of the ideas that are in the book and of course then are expanded on the workshops. And this is where we both love to tell the story of Tara, an example of a seller. And Brent, you do it with such color and verve, and you're in rant mode, so I really feel like you need to deliver this one.

Brent Adamson [00:53:08]:

It's a short story and it's a true story. I joke. Most of my stories are true. This one actually is. I was talking to a head of sales who, since retired, has become a good friend of mine named Kevin. Kevin told me this story. So this is where it comes from. Kevin was ahead of sales at a large human capital management company company.

Brent Adamson [00:53:24]:

So they're selling into heads of hr, payroll, you know, all that kind of stuff, benefits. And he was in a city doing customer visits, and he had a sale, a seller there. So he did a ride along with her and was one of his better sellers. And he said, her name's Tara. We call her Tara at least. And so he's on this ride along with Tara, and it's an early stage deal. And so they're calling on the head of HR at this relatively large company. And they go in.

Brent Adamson [00:53:46]:

They go in the office, they sit down with the head of hr right before the meeting starts, the head of procurement walks into this meeting and sits down, says, sorry, I'm late. We could. Let's. Let's get started. And Kevin's in the background, like, who invited procurement? That's like, oh, this should be. He's like, he's actually. He's got a little bit of schadenfreude to go back to our German theme. He's gonna watch Tara just completely lose her mind.

Brent Adamson [00:54:03]:

It's like all of a sudden, procurement's here. But actually, the meeting goes incredibly well, right? They have this great conversation with the head of hr, the head of procurement. They start aligning on things, goes incredible, and this thing moves. They made more progress on that deal and probably that hour than they could have probably in several months had procurement not Been there. And they're in the car, the rented Ford Taurus, as it used to be, on the way back to the airport. And Kevin's talking to his is Tara. And he said, that was amazing. You handled that so well.

Brent Adamson [00:54:27]:

We made so much progress. He said, but I got to tell you, when procurement walked in, I almost lost my mind. You handle. You didn't miss a beat. I mean, how did they even get there? Who invites procurement? I mean, that's crazy, because all they do is they show up and they blow everything up. And Tara said, no, Kevin, they're there because I told the. I suggested to the CRO that. That she invite him.

Brent Adamson [00:54:43]:

So they were there since I told them to be there. And Kevin's like. And Kevin lost his mind. True stories. And he just went off on her. He was like, why would you do that? They come in late, they blow everything up. And Tara looked at Kevin, said, well, that's it, Kevin. I've learned.

Brent Adamson [00:54:55]:

And working with other customers like this, they come in late, they blow everything up. It's never good. So I've started advising customers based on what I've seen other customers doing. Well, to get them involved early and specifically go. After answering these. These three questions, Kevin was like, that's. Oh, that's actually really brilliant. And they turn.

Brent Adamson [00:55:10]:

They turn that into an actual technique. And he trained his entire team to start doing that. And that is a very light but very powerful example of frame making, which is you take this thing that's big and hard and overwhelming like this buying process, and say, look, there's a lot of things here, and there's a lot of things to consider. A lot of people are involved in a lot of things that can go wrong. But one of the things that you can do is just invite procurement in a little early. We've learned that from other customers. So I'm taking something and putting a frame around it and making it just feel a little bit more doable. And.

Brent Adamson [00:55:36]:

And there's. There's all sorts of really big, complex ways you can frame make with maturity models and diagnostics, things like that, but just providing a little nudge, a little piece of advice based on what you've learned from other customers and what's gone well and what's gone wrong becomes a really powerful way to show up and actually be helpful. And that's what Tara did that day.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:54]:

Well, that's. That's excellent. Well, Brent, Karl, this has been great. Where can we learn more? Where can we find you?

Brent Adamson [00:56:06]:

Karl? Karl. Every once in a while, Karl pops up his head on LinkedIn. So the the but all right.

Karl Schmidt [00:56:12]:

I always enjoyed running the research teams and let Brent stand on the stages. So having being the co author on this one, I'm trying to push myself to be a little bit more active in the world of social. But Brent is such a natural that.

Brent Adamson [00:56:25]:

Tim, he needs to read your book. You need to do some personal coaching to Karl. Would be super helpful if you could do that for me. That'd be amazing. But I'm on. We're both on LinkedIn but I'm on LinkedIn quite actively. The book is at the framemakingsale.com or if you don't like the framemakingsale.com will take you there as well. And that's probably the easiest and best place to find us.

Brent Adamson [00:56:45]:

We have a YouTube channel where we park all our videos. It's Frame Making Sale on YouTube. I, you know it's small but mighty and you'll find all of our videos on on our website as well. So and just reach out. We'd love to talk to you about keynotes and workshops and just kind of getting you on. Just like we put companies on the challenger journey, I think it's time that we all go on the frame making journey. I just think it's going to be really powerful for the next 10 years for us all.

Bertrand Godillot [00:57:08]:

Okay, thank you for that. Excellent. We now have a newsletter and I apologize for that, Karl, because you are. You're in the wrong spot right now.

Karl Schmidt [00:57:21]:

I like it.

Tim Hughes [00:57:23]:

He likes being in the background. He told you that.

Bertrand Godillot [00:57:26]:

So don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights, the behind the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You may scan the QR code on screen right in front of Karl or Visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. On behalf of the panelists, gentlemen, thank you so much, so much and see you all next time.

Karl Schmidt [00:57:49]:

Thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:57:50]:

Bye bye.

Tim Hughes [00:57:50]:

Thanks everybody.

Brent Adamson [00:57:51]:

Thank you.

Karl Schmidt [00:57:52]:

Thank you.#SalesStrategy #B2BSales #TheChallengerSale #SalesLeadership #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #SocialEnablement #LinkedInLive #Podcast