Brent Adamson's Framemaking Sales - How to Make Customers Trust Themselves | Sales Influence Podcast

0:14 Welcome to the Sales Influence Podcast where we talk about finding the why and how people buy. I'm your host, Victor Antonio, and today, man, I'm excited. Damn it, I'm excited. I'm really excited. I got Brett Adamson on I guess on tap right now and I'm super excited. Now, if you don't know who he is, uh I'll be surprised if you don't know who he is, but anyway, let me just bring him in right now. Brett, how you doing this morning? I am great, Victor. It's so good to see you again. It's been a while >> here. And by the way, see that you see that always happens. He gives me that mellow voice, but I know he's more exciting than that. So, we I can juice him during this conversation to get some real information. >> Oh, you'll get me fired up eventually. say Brett for people who per chance don't know who you are you know give us give us the one minute bio and don't be

1:00 bashful >> well you know it's actually for people that I know pretty well like you Victor the there's there's assumption that people actually do know who I am and and what I find when I go to like Dreamforce or you know inbound or big conferences nobody knows who I am so which is totally fine but the um I but they know the book so the book is the challenger sale so I'm one of the two co-authors of the book called the challenger sale and it's subsequent uh or sequel the challenger customer which we published while Matt and I were at CEB which is of course now part of Gartner um back in the you know the early 2010s I guess uh 2011 is when the first one came out um I am now out on my own after kind of wandering through the desert for a little bit and doing some different things but I've got a new book coming out and I was excited to share it with you Victor and come talk to you about it and uh that's who I am

1:45 >> I love it so let's step back in time because I want to do this with you because I know I can do this with you the reason I get excited about talking to you and I've talked to Matt obviously is that when I talk to you I feel like I'm talking to sales brethren like real people who understand sales and so I want to take you back before we leap forward to your new book and I want to take you back to Neil Rackom's book spinelling >> and then fast forward over to the challenger sale because Neil Rackom wrote the forward am I right >> yep he did yeah >> and I was blown away by that because I I've studied Neil Rackom can you tell talk a little bit about spin selling back in the day and Then fast forward to the Challenger sale before we leap forward. >> So there there's there's kind of is a I don't I think it's a funny story, but the uh what happened was we' we'd written the challenger I don't know if

2:32 we'd written the book yet, but we certainly been out present. So we actually did the original research for the challenger sale in 2008 uh and published it and presented to what we called our members that is the clients of CB heads of sales around the world in 2009 and we went on about a year run. I I traveled that was my job. I traveled all over the world presenting our research and over that time it began to resonate like nothing else we'd ever produced in you know the years prior to that and so this there's a day when I walked into Matt's office said I think we should write a book about this and and he agreed and the rest is history but somewhere in that time um this is when YouTube was remember YouTube's like like there was a time when YouTube was still like this tiny little thing and it was kind of up and coming but >> the um I don't know how we found out but someone brought to our attention videos on YouTube of Neil Rackom the Neil Rackom him out presenting the challenger

3:20 research in workshops he was doing but with a hu logo on the slides and we're like dude that's not cool by the way this this ends happily I promise so I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus so we actually just reached out to Neil and said hey we'd like to just tell you more about our research and what's going on and give you like how help you think about how you might site our work for it and all that kind of stuff and he was very open it turns out um Neil lives uh at the time I think he still does he has he he has a writing cottage Victor Not all of us have a writing cottage. Writing cottage is code for he has a home. >> He has a wait a minute. He has a writing cottage. >> He literally has a home dedicated to where he could just go and like it's a retreat. It's just it's beautiful. It's it's it's you know it's a modest but very nice home and it's it's about 15 miles that way. So it's it's like very close to where I am in in just south of

4:05 Leburg, Virginia. >> Have by the way have you visited Have you been there? >> Yeah. So he he invited us out to the to the writing cottage and the uh so we went and spent a day walking through Matt and I went out there and we spent a day just walking through all the research. We went downtown Leburg and got Chinese lunch at this really little dive place that I didn't even know existed even though it's my hometown now. Um and that kind of led to this this really kind of neat working relationship for the better part of four or five years where uh among other things he um he agreed to write the forward to the book. One of the things Victor said at that lunch was really interesting to me and Matt and I didn't really appreciate the time. He says, "You guys," he first of all, he was very complimentary. He says, "What you're sitting on is really profound and incredibly important, and it's just a nice build from what I've been doing, but he said, "This thing is going to stick around for a lot longer than you possibly can imagine." He says, "I know you're thinking about writing a book and

4:51 it'll be people read it for a year or two and kind of move on." He says, "This this is going to stick around." And and here we are 15 years later. Isn't that crazy? >> And like to this morning, there was two posts about you've got to read this book called The Challenger Sale on LinkedIn. It's like it's I to some degree, Victor. It's like really people are still just fighting this. >> No, it's out for forever. >> I don't think you appreciate it. I'm sure you do, but I'm just saying from the outside perspective looking in, right? Because you're in the you're inside the challenger bubble, if I could say it that way. >> Yeah. >> Is that when I look at milestone of books, right? >> Uh you know, like spin selling the Neil Rackom, you know, that was I guess sponsored by Xerox at the time, I think it was. >> It was. Yeah. I remember I remember spinelling as being a great book. I he followed up with Major K selling another

5:38 great book. But spin selling >> and I remember when I read the challenger sale because people kept recommending it. I'm like another sales book and the couple of guys I had never heard of writing a damn sales book. Right. And so uh and I was talking to I think it was Metronic at the time and they're like, "Oh my god, we're just out of starting the challenge sale." I'm like, "Okay, let me go read this book." >> And I swear to you, Brent, I think I went through the book two maybe three times. I think two books two times right away then put it down for let's say six months I came back to it again and I was because I'm don't know if you know this but I have electrical engineering degree and so I am a nerd at heart and there was data in there >> and it wasn't conjecture anecdote it was real data >> and so to this day I still promote your book >> thank you >> you know it's like I said you got to

6:24 read the book and I had a chance to present with Matt at an event that was that was a pleasure to meet him personally look forward to you know meeting you one day but I I think it is a seminal piece of work. It really is. And I think that will be like a touchstone for anybody who understands sales, spin selling, the challenge of sale to me, like ultimate touchston in, you know, sales. >> I'd say we got lucky and we did, but we also worked our butts off. And and by the way, it wasn't just, you know, Matt and I had the pleasure and privilege of being able to put our names on the front of that book, but there's a whole team of people behind it that really >> screw them. Screw them. We don't care about them. We just care about you. >> I do. I they're they're friends of mine, but the uh but you know, collectively what we produced is um it was kind of lightning in a bottle. There's it just the story was the right story at the right time in the right place. And in many ways I kind of feel that way about

7:09 this new work too, which we can get to in a minute if you like. But the uh >> um but the it's it's humbling, I think, Victor, more than anything else. You know, I knew the way it was resonating it was going to be important and it was going to have an impact. We had no idea it was going to have the impact it did. And um >> and when people come up to you and and say things like, you know, this book changed my career. It's like I'm successful because of I read this book. And I always tell them like, no, you're successful because you work hard and you did the right things. It's not because of anything I did. But the uh um but it's it's >> work very I am. I'm very humble. I really am because I grew up in Nebraska, so we're just kind of how we're raised. But but I'm also very deeply appreciative of the fact that people find the value in the work, which is very cool. >> No, it's a great book. I wanted to ask

7:54 you some questions cuz I you know talking to you is going to be great. >> By the way, have we not met? We've never met in person. Is that right? >> We've never met personally. You've you've ignored me. You've you've probably walked away the other way when you saw me coming. Something like that. But I I wanted to ask you Yeah. >> Brent, you you you wrote an article that I think was not read by a lot of people and I don't know if it was an article or study. I think you were still with CEB. It was on sense making and this is kind of the on-ramp to frame making. So, you know, talk about sensemaking because when I read that paper that you published, I think it was a paper or a study. >> I'm like, >> this deserves a book. >> Yeah. >> You know, and so tell me talk about sensemaking before we jump into your new book. >> So, what we did at CB is every year we do one large sort of landmark study and this is one of the last ones we did right before we got acquired by Gartner.

8:40 So, like 2018 or so. Um, and that in fact is um uh it's a HBR article now. It's a it's called Sensemaking for Sales. uh and it came out in HBR and Harvard Business Review in 2021 2022 one of those two. >> Um and the the whole idea Victor was what we wanted to start with was we want to look at information or if you want content trying to understand what's the impact is the fact that we're producing huge amounts of content and information and customers becoming overwhelmed by it. And this is all pre- pandemic and this is all pre- AI way pre AAI right so like fast forward today it's a completely it's like yes and right it's like even more but the the thing that we found in sensemaking was really interesting is that it starts with a very powerful it's like this disarmingly simple un seemingly uninteresting data

9:25 point which when you unpack it's really um powerful which is when we surveyed thousands of thousands of B2B buyers of complex purchases and asked them to what degree did you find the information that you encountered as part of this purchase to be of high quality 89% said yes. So 89% and we did it again a couple years later. I think it was like 92. So somewhere around 90% of the buyers, it's virtually all of them have told us, you know, the content that we encountered as part of this purchase was generally of high quality. And if you stop Victor and ask, what does that mean? Like what does high quality mean? It means it's it was relevant. It was backed by data had evidence. It was delivered in a channel that I find, you know, resonates with me that I find accessible. It was it was helpful to me and understands like it's it's all goodness, right? But but if you think about what that means, it's actually kind of interesting because from a

10:10 customer's perspective, like all this information out there, it's like there's a lot of information out there and it's all pretty good. Is a very different scenario than the early challenger days because in the early challenger days, what really set Challenger apart because you think of the heart and soul of Challenger, it's really an information strategy, right? It's a content strategy. It's a show up with commercial insight that reframes the way your customers think about their business. And as you know, back in 2011, when most of us were showing up with features and benefits and speeds and feeds and sort of a supplier centric kind of narrative, >> to have a story that you could share with a customer that wasn't about our company, but about their company, ways they can make and save money. That's Challenger in a nutshell. That was really remarkably differentiated. >> But I think what's really interesting to me is that somewhere around, you know, and you and I were there for it, somewhere around 2013, 2014,

10:57 I think every CEO in the world woke up on the same morning. I think it was a Tuesday, I don't know. And and they all looked in the mirror and they're all struggling with the same as they are today, right? They were all struggling with the same challenge, which is how do we stand out? How do we differentiate? How do we command, you know, disproportionately large margins in the marketplace? We want to make it fancy sounding, right? And and it's kind of they all looked in the mirror and said, "I got it. I have an idea. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to become a thought leader." And that that was their strategy. It's like everyone decided we're going to become a thought leader and we're going to stand out and demonstrate to our customers that we just know more than everybody else. We have better data, we have better information, we have better insights and we're going to deliver that more compelling fashion than ever before so that our customers see us as smart and trusted and we become the trusted advisor. So they we'll be the first one

11:42 they come to whenever they have a challenge. And so marketing got on board with this and said, "Oh, well, I've got a strategy for that. We could do that. We're going to call that content marketing." And then you know out of Boston rose this company called HubSpot says I got technology for that. We'll call it marketing automation. And so for the next five to six years it was what I call the smartness arms race. Everyone's producing large quantities of highquality content in order to stand out. And ironically I think where it landed was a place where the the smartness arms race ended in a tie and the only people to lose are your customers. Because now it's like whereas from a customer's perspective it used to be sort of separating wheat from chaff or signal from noise. Like there's a lot of information out there. Let me find the good stuff. Now it's like there's a lot of information out there and it's all good. Now what do I do? And so >> yeah, let me Brent, let me let me pause you right here. I know you're on a road,

12:27 but I got to pause right because I want to make sure everybody's >> I told you I'd get there. >> No, that's okay. The the because again what happened was when the challenger sale came out in that book there were several data points. The biggest one was provide insight, right? Yeah. >> Give them information they don't know. Position yourself as a trusted adviser. And then as you said around 2013 every CEO woke up on a Tuesday and he started creating content right. Yeah. >> And then you said something interesting and I think you said information or insight has become table stakes. I think it's the phrase you used. >> Yeah. >> And I said in other words everybody has to have at least this much information out there. And so now all this information is created which leads us to the next part which is now there's so much information flooding the market. So much great information. >> Yeah. take it from there. So, so because

13:15 you know, so what do you do? Like this whole strategy, this content strategy was at its heart was an effort to to differentiate, right? And by the way, whether whether you were on the Challenger journey and we're doing this through Challenger or you didn't ever even heard of Challenger, you still want to be a thought leader. One way or another, we're all producing all these high quantities of high quality content. And so the the very thing that we set, you know, the put that that we pursued to set ourselves apart kind of just makes us look the same as everyone else. And we knew this from data, right? that's unpacked in the article and in the book now too. This is one of the chapters in the book which is uh you know somewhere it's roughly about 60% of customers say that you know there there's a lot of great information out there but it all kind of looks the same. 75% just under 75% said there's a lot of information out there. It's really good but it's really overwhelming. But I think the one that's most interesting Victor was 60 roughly 61 62% of

14:03 customers we surveyed said it's it's really high quality information but it's contradictory. Right. So other words, you're telling me to zigg and they're telling me to zag. And you think, well, that's the heart and soul of challengers. Everyone's telling them to zig, you tell them to zag, I'm challenging you, right? But that's but if you think about where it is, like when all that information is data backed, then you've got a problem. In fact, this happened in Palo Alto. I was presenting this work, the sensemaking work originally in Palo Alto when a head of sales literally I was going through the very stats I just went through and it's one of the heads of sales interrupted me said, "But Brent, hold on. Stop for a minute." Is it we did what you told us to do? It's like, "Oh god, this never ends." Well, I did what you told me to do. So, we built a challenger message and we're out there challenging our con our customers. We got completely differentiated story. All of our competitors are telling our customers to zigg and we're telling them

14:49 to zag. And I said that's great, but think about it from the customer's perspective. This is like the moment of empathy, Victor, right? It's like the >> from a customer's perspective, if you're telling me to zigg and you've got data, you've got research, you've got experts, but they're telling me to zag and they've got data, they've got research, they've got experts, now I don't know what to do. I'm just confused at a higher level, >> right? And it's like and if you show up with a commercial insight in that environment, you're right. You you need to have something. You don't want to unilaterally disarm in a smart arms race. So you got to have a take and a perspective. But but in many ways like great I'll take your commercial insight and put on the stack with all the other commercial insights and I'll kind of work through it. Why don't you call me in six months after I've had a time to kind of give thought. By the way, customers never really want them to call you back in six months. And so what we found in the sense make to get to the punch line and it does set up frame making which is the seller who wins in

15:35 this context in this world what we found is first of all you have to have an information strategy that's not something that's ever come up in sales before right so the you know it's like we have a we have a opportunity qualification strategy you have a segmentation strategy but an information strategy I don't know what that is but what we found is sort of there's three approaches to providing customers information is giving telling and sensemaking giving is just I I called indiscriminate generosity it's you think my my value as a seller is simply to give you information. If you want more, I'll give you more because that's how I add value. Um the telling seller, the telling seller is the expert. You know, the I've been this for 30 years. Let me tell you what you need to do. Um and it turns out both those strategies actually make things worse. They they confuse customers. They make them feel overwhelmed in just different ways. But the the sensemaking seller is the one that shows up says and just acknowledges

16:20 first of all one the challenge. There's a lot of information out there that's overwhelming. And then two, they acknowledge the context that whatever insight I'm providing you has to exist in the context of everything else that you're reading and everything else you're consuming. And so the sense making conversation starts a little differently. It sounds a little bit like there's a lot of information out there, isn't it? Yeah, it's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? It's really kind of confusing. Let me see if I can help you just kind of think of ways to just make sense out of all of it and focus on the questions that are going to matter most for you and then we can figure out where that makes sense for you to land. And and so I'm starting with help. I'm starting with acknowledging this is hard and I'm starting with by helping you take just make sense out of all of it which I've kind of raised up you know so if challenge is all about be this is literally I was out walking the dog about two years ago and it's like well if challenge is all about being frame breaking which I still stand by I think it's right in context I think what's

17:07 really the big opportunity to stand out today isn't to be frame breaking but to be frame making right to be the person who shows up and says let me take all these things that are hard and overwhelming and and put put a frame around it to help you sort of help not tell what to do but help you be in a better position where you have agency to make your own decision but it doesn't feel overwhelming and then that led to a question like so what else are customers overwhelmed with u besides information and then it's like I think there's about four things and then that ultimately led to the book so framemaking is this idea of how how do I take things that are big and hard and overwhelming and applying this frame approach to each of them such that customers feel more confident not in you but in themselves to make a decision >> because it's you know what one of the beatings you guys took when you came up with the challenger sale. >> Yeah. >> Is that remember that that I think the

17:53 stat was 57% of buyers are in the buying cycle. >> Yeah. >> And and then people ran with that and said sales people are no longer needed. And I'm like I don't think that's what they meant. >> You know kind of my head said I don't think that's what they meant. And so fast forward what you're saying even if the buyer is 80 90 95% into the buying cycle. >> Yeah. >> Obviously there gets a point where they need help. So walk me through the frame making philosophy and let's start there. >> Okay. So, so the framemaking philosophy and and and and by the way, I called a mindset for what it's worth. Real quick, and you'll appreciate this given your just incredible deep expertise in this world. I have zero interest, Victor, and I mean this sincerely, I have zero interest in bringing in another sales methodology to market. That's not what this book is for. That's not what I'm trying to do. But it is a mindset. It's an approach. It's a set of tactics and

18:40 tools I think are critically important. >> I think the word methodology overpromises and underdelivers. It was never my intention for challenger to ever become a methodology. I used to just say it's research. That's all it is. And it, as you know, it kind of became the market turned it into a methodology. I'm going to try to avoid that was frame making. That's as a footnote and aside, but I think it's an important one so people can see how this slots into everything else that they're that they're doing. But frame starts with a like so much in my life and and at least in my professional life. It starts with a bar chart. And it starts with a bar chart. That's one of the most interesting things we ever found while we were still you doing this kind of research at at at CB Gartner which is trying to understand what are the drivers of a high quality low regret purchase. A purchase where the customer buys the bigger solution with a broader scope with a higher price point but nonetheless feels better about it at the same time.

19:25 >> You you say that so quickly because you know it so well. But I want you to say that line. It's what is it? High value low regret. >> A high quality low regret deal or high quality low regret purchase if you want to think of it from the customer's perspective. So it's a bigger deal. I you know I don't settle for status quo. I don't settle for the small pilot. I buy the bigger scope deal probably with the higher price point, higher margins for you. And usually, as you know, when you buy these big complex, high involvement purchases, that comes with a certain amount of buyers remorse or purchase regret. So, we wanted to say I want to do all that. I want to buy that bigger deal, but I don't feel good about it at the same time. It's like it's like the unicorn. It's like, how does that supposed to happen? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so, by the way, you're the you're the first person, at least for me, that I heard use the low regret with that combination. And that's why we kind of want to emphasize because we don't think about that, especially when it comes to B2B sales. Totally. Yeah. And and it's what's and it's critically important

20:11 because of course in in B2B sales like so many other places in sales, we're trying to not just win a customer but keep a customer and expand a customer over time, right? So hunting becomes farming and expansion and certainly in a SAS world, expansion of existing customers becomes the bigger opportunity. But all of that's unlikely if customers buy it and hate it or buy it more importantly they buy it and hate themselves, which is I mean sign me up for that. I've been there with all sorts of things I bought. Right. So you know what I mean? Because when you make a mistake, >> it's funny the way you said it. They hate themselves. Like you, you know, after you make the purchase, you send them to a psychologist. It's okay. >> No, but Victor, I'm not this isn't just tongue-in-cheek sort of fun for podcast. I think that's legitimate at the heart of these B2B purchases, something very deeply human, right? If you buy a CRM system on behalf of your company with 10 of your colleagues and it turns out to be a disaster, are you going to hate the

20:57 CRM system? Yeah, probably. But are you going to hate yourself for making that decision? Yeah, probably even more. There's a certain amount of shame that comes with that that we don't talk to. And you know what happens the next time you have to go buy a new CRM system? Oh boy, you're going to be a lot more careful. You're going to take a lot more time. You're going to slow this thing down and maybe you just hold off a little bit, right? And that's what we're finding is that when you go and study what are the drivers of a high quality low regret purchase, it turns out maybe not surprisingly but nonetheless very interestingly the single biggest driver by far Victor by like statistically by far I know that's a it's not a wonky term but it's an order of magnitude if you want the wonky version but the uh um the single biggest driver is the degree to which customers report a high level of confidence in the decision that they're making on behalf of their company. We call this decision confidence. When customers report a high

21:44 level of decision confidence, the likelihood of winning a high quality lower grade deal doesn't go up by 10% or 100%. It goes up by 10x. It's like 900%. And everything else we said, we've run all the challenger attributes through this model. We've run, you know, different sort of marketing strategies, different configurations of the buying group. We've run just about everything you can imagine through this model. Nothing else comes even remotely close >> to just the degree to which customers are confident. Like we have, which makes sense, right? If we don't feel good about this decision decision, we're going to choose not to choose. We're going to study more. We're going to look at longer. We're going to put it off. We're going to go to some other higher priority. >> I don't want to put you too much on a pedestal because then you get a big head. Don't want to talk to anymore. >> No, no, trust me. I I take I literally just brought in the trash can here. So, you know, good. But you were also like I and I think it was in sensemaking

22:30 because it's again it's something we don't think about Brandon is that and and give me the phrasing and I'll just tell you what I I think I remember is that it's not about >> uh buyers having the confidence to make a decision. It's having decisions you know having the confidence in themselves to make the buying decision. And it's and and you've already stated that but I wanted to emphasize it for the listening or watching viewing audiences that that that's key today that it's not about whether they want to buy or not. many reasons why they pull back or hold back or defer. It's because they don't have the confidence in themselves to push buying decision forward, which is where you as a salesperson come in. And this is where, and I think this is such an important point. You know, the thing we all used to ask in sales, we Matt and I wrote a blog post called it the single worst question you can ask in sales is what's keeping you up at night? Just because like there's that's a whole

23:16 another episode. Let's not do that right now. But but I'll tell you what keeps me up at night. Not that anyone asked or anyone cares. But what besides the fact I'm a 56-y old man and you know like this you have to pee every 10 minutes but that's a different story again. But the uh uh but the sorry too much information but the thing that keeps me up at night is what I call the false positive problem which is when people hear your research this reframe this new idea this new perspective. Oh yeah that's really smart. We in fact we work on that a lot. We do that already. And what's interesting is the reason I mention that here is because this exactly what happens often when I show this confidence data right when when we talk about the single highest or biggest driver of a high quality low um deal is the degree to which customers are confident in the decisions they're making on behalf of the company a lot of particularly CEOs MDs you know exact leaders what I find is that their reaction isn't like oh my god their reaction is like well yeah of course

24:02 like it's kind of this no duh moment was like of course if customers aren't confident what they're doing they're going to choose not to choose I'd say yep yeah I'd agree with you And and here's what they do next. They'll say, and no disrespect at all, what they'll say next, Victor, is that's why we need to make sure that everything we do is ensuring that customers are confident in our company, in our brand, in our people, in our product. Everything that we have to do has got to go through this lens of making sure that customers truly are confident in us more than they're confident in anyone else. And that's where I would always say hopefully with respect, I don't disagree with you, but that's not what this is about. That's is that's not what this data is about at all. Because when you unpack this >> this um so the the the sort of the sub attributes to get kind of wonky again of decision confidence it's it's things

24:48 like from the buying perspective Victor it's like how confident are we that we even ask the right questions >> which by the way in a world like today where everything is changing so fast and whether it's politics economics or of course technology with AI it's hard to know whether you're asking even the right questions right like think about the first time you bought a home for those who are homeowners or like picking a college for your kid or like or working with your kid to pick a college, right? It's like I don't even know what questions to ask, right? So, and so it really slows things up. How confident are you that you've thoroughly explored alternatives? How confident are you that you've done sufficient research? And what's interesting, there's two things about this I find really interesting, Victor, is one is if you unpack each of those dimensions, the first thing you find is none of them have what I would call an objective finish line. >> Which questions are the right questions? Are those the right ones? Are those

25:34 right ones? Okay, that's hard. I don't I don't know what right means. this. Okay. Well, how confident are we did sufficient research? What does sufficient mean? Is it an hour? Is it a day? Is it a month? Is it a year? It's like I think some for me sufficient simply means if the deal went south after you bought it, that wasn't sufficient, right? So, the um >> and so and you know what is thorough mean? You go through this whole list and everyone has got this weird thing like you can't define an objective finish line. And what that tells me is >> in sales, Victor, we're so hellbent on focusing on what we want our customers to know. We need them to know this about our company that we need them to know this about our product about our ROI about the total cost of ownership. We need to know we or in challenger we need them to know this about their company. But it's all very knowing based, right? >> But if you unpack these dimensions of self-confidence, the thing that matters most is you find

26:21 you can't know any of them. You can't know that those are the right questions. You can't know the resource was sufficient. You don't know it. You feel it. And so here we are in this really interesting moment where the single biggest driver of a high quality low regret deal isn't based on something you know. It's based on something you feel which is do you feel confident? And then the second dimension that's so interesting is none of those dimensions have anything to do with supplier at all. How confident are we that we asked the right questions. How confident are we that we did sufficient research? And so then it becomes this really interesting moment where and this is literally not that anyone cares, but I I I literally quit my job and I I I tell people all the time I'm all in right now. I am completely all in. I just don't know if I'm all in on red or black yet. The market will tell me. the uh but the but the thing that we're all I think walking past right now is this massive

27:08 opportunity that we see in the data and we see anecdotally now which is what if our engagement strategy what if our go to market model wasn't so much to be focused on changing the way customers think about us our company our product our people to become a trusted adviser which I think is still a noble thing to try to do but I think there's a better way to do it what if our primary purpose and or our primary engagement strategy was to engage customers such that Our engagement didn't change the way they think about us, but changes the way they think about themselves. What would that even look like? What would it look like to to to lean into a sales interaction that was specifically designed to help customers feel better about themselves? And that's that's the book. That's like so as I thought that out that became frame, which became the book, which is why we're here talking today. Um, and I think to me

27:55 it's it's not a stop start. Like, you know, do you still want to have them think positive thoughts about your company? Absolutely. But the best way to get them think positive thoughts about your company or product and you personally is to be the one that shows up to help them feel better about themselves. It's exactly the same as high school dating, isn't it? It always is. Everything comes back to dating in high school, which if you want to get a great date in high school, help the person you're trying to date feel better about themselves. Trust me, it'll work. I didn't fortunately figure that out until after high school date in high school. But that's all right. >> That's in what what I love about this I mean there's so many things to unpack here in what you just said. >> Yeah. >> And that is that you're almost looking at the >> you don't want to touch. I know but >> no what what I love about this conversation. So I've been doing this podcast since 2008 I think and so the subtitle of sales influence is finding the why in how people buy. So I've

28:40 always been interested, you know, ever since I read Chald Deini's book, Influence on on psychology, behavioral economics and things of that nature. And what you're saying really is reminiscent with that. In other words, we got the we got the left side figured out, right? All the logical things we need to say, you know, as you say, ROI, TCO, whatever it may be. >> Yeah. >> He says, but there's something within the psyche of the individual. And I go back to one of your examples is that if the if the person bought a bad CRM three years ago, for example, >> the new salesperson arriving has to deal with that psychological baggage of what was there before. And so, so, so go a little deeper on that because I think that's really fascinating. In in fact, I want you to set it up this way because you had a story in a in another podcast. >> I feel like you've cheated on me, by the way. So, you had a story in another podcast where you talk about I think you

29:28 were looking for some dog food or treatment for your dog. >> See, I study you, man. I know you're wondering. It's like, damn, he actually knows that story. So, tell I want you to tell that story and then walk me through walk the audience through the psychological process you went to try to make that decision. So my co-author Carl Schmidt and I are doing a we're essentially breaking down the book in a series of about 11 minute videos which of course are too long because everyone has attention span of 10 seconds but we're putting them up on YouTube under the framemaking sales. So and this is where we talked about this because this actually literally happened to me the other day because there's really interesting question about of course we live in the world of AI and by the way when we started this book AI hadn't exploded like it has now. So it's like we've had to adapt. It's really interesting Victor as a footnote if you go through the book and do a search a word search for AI you'll only find it once in the entire book. But I think that actually works well for us. And

30:14 here's why. >> Hey Brent, can I can I just throw you in I got to throw this in only because this is >> Yeah, go ahead. >> This is self-gratification at this point. I wrote the first AI book in sales >> in 2017. >> Sales X >> how AI is transforming the 2017 that's four years before Chad GPT and I think I sold maybe on the high side 50 copies. >> Absolutely. >> And now everybody's an AI. I feel >> so not only are you way ahead of everyone else, you're also the best dressed man in the sales profession. So I mean like you got two things going for you but it's like the >> All right story. Give me the dog story >> because otherwise I was going to go on a long riff about your wardrobe which is just so on point. But anyway, that's the God every time I see you online it's like I got to dress like that guy. But anyway, true story you like so many of these days. The other night I was

30:59 flipping through I don't know I think it was Instagram just completely lost and just wasting time doing reels and and the algorithm kind of figured me out and figured out that I have a dog of a rescue dog. It's very cute. Um and like every rescue dog in the world ours has some some mild digestive issues. And so all of a sudden I'm getting all these advertisements for like you know um human grade dog food and artisal dog food. And I'm thinking like maybe maybe I'm not a very good dog owner. maybe I should do good by my dog and get my dog better dog food and I I'm not a very good person. I should be better at this. All the other kinds of things. You beat yourself up. So I said I you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to AI and I'm going to essentially RFP dog food, artisal dog food, just the same way that people might use AI today to write an RFP for like a CRM system. And so I I you know I was I was really excited to do this. I I think it was it

31:46 was it was co-pilot that I was using at the time. Not that the others wouldn't have done the exact same thing, but he's like I I put all these specs in a prompt about dog food and artisal and asked to tell me about, you know, the quality of the food and the service delivery and the service reputation and pricing and then I asked it to put it all on the table for me and make a recommendation and it did all that because it's a freaking AI, right? So, it's it did a table put all together and and I got all excited, Victor, because unlike you, I haven't been doing this since 2017. So, I was like, "Oh, look at me. I made a table in AI." I like so advanced. This is what happens to your I agent. It's like Anyway, so I took it down to my wife and there it was all laid out in all the different categories and it's it's it's exactly what you'd want if you're buying say a CRM system or anything else in B2B, right? Is all the different advantages and disadvantages laid out with the pricing structure and then an actual recommendation based on

32:32 all this. We think you should buy Brand X. And I looked at that and I and I looked at my wife and said, "Well, what do you think we should do?" She said, "I don't know." She said, "What do you think we should do?" And I said, "I don't know. Um, you you know would be nice if we could just talk to somebody about this like so and it it was interesting just and and we took that little table that we created with AI and we set it on the kitchen counter and quite literally it's it's right over there in the kitchen. It's still sitting there like a month later and we never did anything with it. And I thought to me that was such an interesting moment because you know as AI got you right up to the finish line and what I realized is I kind of just want to talk to other dog owners who've been in this situation and kind of get their thoughts. It's like it's not that I didn't trust AI, it was it just wasn't sufficient. It's like, okay, that's what co-pilot thinks, but what do what do humans think? Right? And and that moment right there, I think, is still the

33:18 moment, that window is the window of opportunity for sales professionals today because so much of that can be done with AI, but so much of it leaves this little moment, this little opportunity for your customer say, "Awesome. I just wish I could talk to somebody about this." And if you're the person that shows up in that moment, says, "Well, let me let me go into more depth about my product and service." you've just lost a massive opportunity to be the one person that shows up differently and says, "Let me just help you out with this. Here's kind of how and you know to and we go through all this in the book about using things like social proof. So, you don't really care about my opinion. What you care about is the experiences of other people, other leaders, other companies like yours." And so, my role is not to be the expert, but to but to be the connector to bring to you because what sellers have that that is so valuable isn't expertise.

34:04 What sellers have that's so valuable is access. they have access to other companies like this one and that they can bring those stories to bear say you know working with other companies like you we call this the phrase that frames and working with other companies like you one of the things we found that's really surprising is that there's kind of two questions that often times they haven't come up but probably should because if you don't acknowledge them they they can kind of blow up in your face and there's there's a lot out there but really since we we've learned it kind of boils down to these three things I did that was a little awkward but you hope that the idea >> no that was by the way that was good I love I actually wrote that down the phrase that frames Dude, that is >> the phrase the frames. >> And by the way, in in the book I call it the phrase that pays and I realized later that was just too too crass. So we call it the phrase the frames now. So the phrase that second printing. Yeah. >> I'll use that and I'll get and I'll make

34:49 sure I attribute that to you because I love that because I think it it is about framing. You know what's interesting is that I I've always looked at >> confidence >> as almost like a uh a differential. Let me I'm I'm going run my theory by you. Why not? I got an opportunity. Here it comes. Okay. So I want you to imagine Okay, here comes Brent. Let me see if this passes the Adamson test. So if you think of a uh you know a revenue line and a cost line. >> Yeah. >> Revenue cost. Right. The difference between that is profit margin. Right. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Now if you replace the revenue line with certainty and the cost line with anxiety, >> the difference I call it is a confidence margin. And our job, like in business, is to increase their certainty and reduce their anxiety, which thereby

35:35 increases their confidence margin. Yeah. What do you think? I like it. I like it a lot. Here's the thing, though, and and this is actually no criticism of anything you just said, which I'm bought in. But again, it's a false positive problem because what I find this is why I'm just going to be hellbent for the next couple years trying to get this. Give it to me. >> Which is when people hear what you just said, they'll say, "You're right, Victor." They'll look you right in the eyes, you're absolutely right. And that's why we need to help customers feel more confident in who we are. It it just the gravitational pull back to a supplier centric conversation is so strong it's almost unavoidable. Right? So the this whole idea of essentially so what we talk a lot about in the book isn't so much being customer centric, it's being supplier agnostic, right? Is how do I think about that confidence margin you just described so nicely. I

36:20 think it's a great metaphor is is again it's just I just in a broken record annoying sort of Brent we get it sort of way which is is not confidence in you it's customers confidence in themselves >> right >> you know what I mean and that's the opportunity >> talk talk about the the this this agnostic the supplier agnostic approach >> yeah give that some more give that some more texture so this is something actually I landed on personally just watching the research of Challenger all those years ago because you know the the whole idea of challengers. So for those who know it is this idea don't lead with your unique strengths but lead to them. Right? So the the conversation we have with your customers that reframes their thinking isn't about you at all. It's about their business, how they can make or save money. And that was the first time it kind of came sort of be very clear to me that the single best conversation you can have with your

37:05 customer isn't about you at all. It's about it's about them. >> And that always led to one of these, as you know, Victor, one of these core questions of Challenger, which is yeah, but Brent, how do I get paid for that? Right? How do I >> how do I avoid the free consulting trap of I show up and reframe their thinking and someone takes that idea and puts it out to RFP and my competitor wins the business. So you spend a lot of time in challenge talking about whatever you teach them about their businesses leads back to your unique strengths which means you need to know what your strengths are. All of that still holds here for frame making. So you still need to be sort of on point with what are our unique strengths. But I think to me I'm I'm willing to go a little further with this which is if you and it goes back to Chaldini funny enough, right? It it's it's what's called a value exchange. If you can be the person that shows up uniquely to help your customers

37:53 feel better, not about you, but to better about themselves, I think we'd all agree on a human scale. Victor, there is massive value in that. >> Just like there is in personal relationships, right? I like to be the my the people who are your friends, the people may hopefully that you marry or that you date or whatever, the ones you gravitate to naturally are the ones where you just feel like I like not just I like you, but I like me when I'm around you, >> right? >> And and what what and what will happen is you will repay that person with your time, with your attention, with your love, with your affection. Not to get that, you know, that freaks people out. We're talking about sales, we're talking about affection, but they think that's true. In B2B, I think it's the same idea. the physics are very similar because we're all still human beings when we buy CRM systems, right? And if you could help me as an individual, help us as a company just feel better about ourselves and the decisions we're

38:38 making, you're going to be the person I call, not because you're smart, not because you know things, not because I trust you, but because I trust me as a result of interacting with you. It almost goes back to like brain psychology of, you know, the the surv the survival piece or the safety brain, you know, the the amygdala. It seeks safety and if I know I'm safe with you, >> I will reach out to you, >> right? And so we boiled in I told you we don't call it a methodology. We call this a mindset. Um and because I think that's the thing that we need to because this is really a mindset shift. It's very much not to be supplier ccentric but to be supplier agnostic >> right and it comes down to something I heard from a friend of mine now at least a working friend who used to be a client this guy named Brian Smith. Brian Smith is now the CEO of a company called Expedient. Expedient is a cloud

39:24 computing company. He was I got to know him when he was head of sales there and I presented the frame making or the the the sensemaking work to him a number of years ago and and and he's developed that and they've done some amazing things with it. But I've heard him not do this a couple times both as head of sales and now as CEO. He what the way he expresses this Victor to his company is in a very simple phrase which we've with permission adopted and adapted a little bit but it essentially boils down to this is we have one job at our company. He says our job is to help our customers make the best decision they can in as little time as possible. That's it. That's how we show up. That's how we interact. That's how we engage. We're just going to help our customers make the best decision that they can for their company. Full stop. And every time I've seen them do this, I don't know if it's a plant, if it's on purpose or it's by accident, but there's always a brave soul in the front of the room that raises his hand and says, "Yeah, but Brian, what happens if we help our

40:10 customers make a really great decision and that decision is to not go with us, but to go with someone else, right?" >> And this why I love Brian, I respect the bleep out of him because he's the one that's brave enough as a CEO to stand there and say, "You know what? That's the second part of the quote. How do we help our customer make the best decision they can in as little time as possible? Because if we're going to lose, >> I want to lose early. I don't want to you. So, but but but he said, 'But I'll tell you, if we show up as our primary posture is helping customers make a great decision that they feel good about, they're going to remember that. And when they make a decision not for us but go in a different direction and ultimately doesn't pay off, we're going to be the first people that they call when it comes time to make the next decision because we're the only ones that make them feel that way about themselves. And and that's with again permission and adaption and adoption. That's that's that's the mindset that

40:56 that's the mindset because again if your sort of mindset is I got to tell them this. I got to get them to know this. I can do that now as a customer with AI. I can build the freaking spreadsheet. I can build all that. I can find all that. like what's the role that's not just makes you unique from other companies but what's your role that makes you unique from emerging technology that completely changes the game and that's your humanity >> it's not your knowledge it's your humanity right the as someone actually was funny enough was at Salesforce was a sales rep there I've known for many years he said this to me the other day he says you know Brent here at Salesforce were doing amazing work with a agentive and and they are and agent force and all this incredible AI that they're rolling out he says it raises a really interesting question right if AI is all about offloading the inefficient non you the productivity the the repetitive tasks from human beings such

41:43 that we free up human time for higher value activities it raises a question which is what in the world are higher value activities what is it what is this thing that is still uniquely human and I think that's that's where we are right now and by the way to to your point I think a subtle point there is that most people think that high value activity is quantitative when it should be qualitative >> or and I mean there's an and not just nor it doesn't have to be but like but again so much of >> I mean we're head to a place where so much of what you've done as a seller can now be offloaded AI and customers can self-s serve on it we were already there with just the internet right now we're there in spades with with AI and everyone's wondering is this the you know in in the introduction we ask is this the death of sales as we know it

42:28 and we think maybe but it doesn't have to be the death of sales altogether right because because that because you have to ask yourself what's left when AI and technology and information could do all those repetitive tasks. What's left is I think something actually really beautiful because it's deeply human and it's a thing that in sales we traditionally stay away from because we're all trained in boiler room sort of techniques. But there's a moment there's a window of opportunity right now for humanity in sales and I'm all for it. I think that's really cool. And when I when I look at what you just said, you know, I I I have this spectrum in my head between transactional and complexity. And what's happening is that a AI is moving down the from the transactional point and moving towards the complexity piece. I think there's a point where we won't be able to go

43:13 beyond and that's the gap where sales people will always be valued much like the the dog food example, right? It may seem like a transactional, you know, buy or purchase, but when it comes to a human, a a dog rather, a dog that you love, it becomes very complex >> and you make different decisions. So, I think there's always going to be that part of it. Uh, I wanted to ask you, you know, in this book that you, you know, the Freightm sale, is there anything now that you've because it's coming out next month, right? September. >> September 9th. >> Yeah. Pre-order now. >> Yeah. >> All right. There you go. Pre-order now. Um, I love, by the way, I just I just want to say again, I I love your books. The Challenger sale, I got to be honest, I wasn't a fan of the Challenger customer between us, but that's because I didn't think it it just didn't fit me. >> I'm sorry. But this one, I'm back. It's like you're back. The first one's like

43:59 challenger sale. Yeah, Brett, go. Then the challenger customer's idea. That was >> I don't know what that one's back. >> We'll call it the software slump. >> Somebody else might read might read it and go, "This is a brilliant book." Um, But is there something that you didn't put in the book that you that you in the last month or so you said, "You know what? I wish we would have put more of that." We always have those >> regrets. How's that? >> Oh, so you know, you have no idea. So the Yes. I I just But you've written books. You know what? It it takes a chunk of your soul to write a book. And this is why it took so long to write this one between or the p the break between two and now this one at three >> is I can't go to that well very often in my life because it it it's actually literally psychologically physically hard for me at least. Other people you

44:46 know I the you know airport novelist they crank them out and I I'm not that guy. So I pour everything into book. I'm sure they do too but I find writing I think I'm pretty good at it but I find it really really hard. Um, and so I don't know that there'll ever be a new edition. I think like the book is the book and it's a moment in time. But the thing is the for anything right now that's a moment in time, Victor, you like the world is changing so fast. So one of the things we're doing this week and we're going to debut them next week for the very first time is a series of workshops that go along with the book. Uh, and so we're building them now. And so when you sit down to write the workshop, there's four of them that go with four different chapters in the book. It forces you to really get into the the tactical nittygritty detail of like how am I going to actually train the seller to do something with this? A lot of that's in the book already, but you it's a forcing mechanism to go even

45:31 deeper and then every one of those four workshops like man we should have thought of this or we should have put that in there. There so there's a hundred things now that I wish is in >> Come on, give me one, Brad. Give me one. I'm pushing you. Give me one. >> Well, just one I'm just very basic or a very general one is this point about AI is I'm not kidding. when you go do a word search in the book, the AI is I think in there one time and it's not within this. But I think so that's this dog the dog food story I think would absolutely be in the book now if it were if we're if I could have it back. Um and a lot of this is more tactical stuff. Uh and there's some naming things like I I mentioned before that we called the phrase the frames. We call it the phrase that pays in the book. I deeply regret that. I will fix that um going forward. But the world keeps evolving. And that's that's what's so interesting, right? Is is that and you know someone when we

46:16 came up with challengers, someone asked me like Brent, what do I do when all sailor at all companies are challengers? Then what? And it's like, well, first of all, I don't think we're ever going to get there. And sure enough, here we are 15 years later and we're still not even anywhere near that. >> But at some point, the world changes enough where a strategy that really helps you stand out becomes undifferiated. And this is what we we I talked about this a lot in the last chapter. I don't if you made it there yet, Victor, but the the last chapter goes these areas of differentiation. So the the first era of differentiation was better products. We're going to differentiate based on our product being better at your product. Then there's fast followers and rapid replication. So now it's like okay, we're going to differentiate based on our solutions, right? So, so now we're going to take my these products, put them together and offer value ad where 1 plus 1 equals 3 and and this when I joined CB in 2002

47:01 2003 this was the stories like how do we differentiate go to market with solutions such that we could differentiate ourselves in the market that kind of ran its course everyone now >> built out solutions and so it became like how do we differentiate based on insight this is the thought leadership point we're talking about earlier and I think we're at the point now where that window is not closed by any stretch I think there's still the meat on the bone with challenger for example >> but the window of opportunity for differentiation is is smaller. It's declining. And so if you're always looking for like what's the next thing, what's the next big opportunity to stand out at least for now, I think that's frame. And how long that window stays open as the single biggest window, >> I don't know. Usually they seem to have about a five year or six year life cycle, but we'll see. >> Yeah. I the you know I I'll say this the I think we every product or service with the exception of the 1% of the 1%

47:48 reaches a point of par >> where there is no differentiation. And I I always say this in my workshop, you the salesperson maybe using frame making become the differentiator >> because again it all the products are almost the same. It's not like uh when I do presentations you know I ask people uh are is your company and your product special? I'll say yes to it. No you're not >> because as soon as you get something different somebody else will kind of match it. Yeah. >> So I truly believe I this gets back to the the humanity piece is that the the saleserson has become the only unique

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