156: The Buyer Confidence Gap That’s Costing You Millions | Brent Adamson

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you know I talked to lots and lots of sales leaders and that is by far their single biggest frustration is bad or

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ineffective qualification right it's like why do we keep spending our time chasing stuff that's never going to come in what would it take for you to be that

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kind of salesperson for your customer where as a result of that interaction your customer thinks I kind of feel

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better about myself as a result of interacting with Damon what is one more thing you could leave us with either

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around sensemaking or your book Frame and Sales the one thing I would tell you is this

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what if your biggest barrier to closing deals wasn't about how much confidence your customer had in you but the

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confidence they had in themselves that is the question that Brena Adamson co-author of the legendary book The

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Challenger Sale has been digging into bren is soon to be back with a new book and in the framemaking sale he shares

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something surprisingly different welcome to the Learn It All Podcast the show for today's leaders who want to get ahead

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and stay ahead because we believe great leaders aren't born or made we're always in the making i'm your host Damon Lebby

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two-time best-selling author and CEO of Learn It a live learning platform that has helped upskill over 2 million people

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over the past three decades i'm beyond excited for Brent to be joining me in a moment and I can't wait to hear from

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Brett around what he thinks about how sellers can boost buyers confidence why shifting from expert to guide is the

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future of sales how to help buyers make sense of too much information and how to navigate complex buying groups with

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empathy when you were first working on the research for Challenger sales I I believe in late 2008 2009 yep did you

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realize at the time that you were on to something special i think the honest answer is no uh we we knew so we had a

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process that we used at the corporate executive board or CB which is the company where we did all this research um which then eventually got bought by

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Gartner in about 2018 um but we had a process by which we we could hit You're

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a baseball guy right so we had a pretty trusted process that we could get doubles every time we got to the plate right i mean and sometimes you'd hit a

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home run good analogy right and it was just it was just highly um consistent in

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terms of the the quality of work that we could produce because of this process that we would follow and so we knew

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we're on to something it was interesting we we had originally set out so every year we start out talking to heads of sales saying you know what's the biggest

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challenge you're facing what do you got to get right this year what are the things we can help you with based on a lot of that research no one I don't very

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few people in the world know about this with even fewer care but the uh challenger actually started as a study on how to do segmentation better we were

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actually going to publish like essentially what today in the SAS world we call your ICP right it's like how to

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understand your ideal customer profile it was all about segmentation and just given what was happening in late 2008

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you'll remember Damon was you know the bottom was about to fall out of the economy the banks were about to completely fail it was things got really

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scary really fast and we were in a meeting talking about our segmentation study which started to feel very quickly

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kind of irrelevant and um and Matt Dixon was in the room and Matt's a good friend and he was co-author in the challenger

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sale and was reading leading the research team at the time and so I think we should just write about sellers uh I

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think we should just like figure out like what makes the best sellers better than everyone else and so and we shifted gears and started working on that and

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part of that came from conversations I and other people on the team were having where we would talk to these heads of

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sales and say you know what are you working on we all know it's a terrible year it's a tough year interestingly

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enough Damon you'll appreciate it because it sounds like you were just recently going down the track of figuring out comp plans but the uh the

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single biggest question or challenge in 2008 for sides of sales were comp plans because what do I do when my entire

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team's at 40% of gold do I just like is you know it's like yeah they've all lived by the sword but are they willing

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to die by the sword because that's about where we're going to go because no one's buying anything but the thing that

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intrigued us or piqued our interest other than like "Dude I I don't know that's that's a really hard question was almost every one of them would say but

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you know what the weird thing is you every one of my sellers is at 40% of goal not because they're not selling but because no one's buying." But almost

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never they would say something like "But I got this one person on the team that's still crushing it they're at 120% of

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goal in an environment in the single worst sales environment in recent memory if not ever." And they would simply ask

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"How is that even possible what are they doing that is so different?" And our our legitimate answer was we have no idea

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but that was sort of like but maybe we'll go find out it would actually be really interesting if we could go figure out what these bestsellers are doing

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particularly in this time where the the variation or the the difference between the best and everyone else was so

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obvious and so clear like now felt like a good time to go figure out what is truly what accounts for that difference

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and that ultimately led to this research that became Challenger we debuted it in in May of 20 of

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2009 and and I'll never forget that very first meeting Kevin Hendrick who's since retired he was one of the heads of sales at ADP was in the room and Kevin was off

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to my left and and he was he was looking at his research and even then on that very first day in May Damon it was it

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was blowing them away there like this is like I don't even say this because part of the message of course was challenger wins part of that story of course is

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that relationship builders were so less likely to win and he said and he's like flipping through this binder because we all use binders back then and he's he

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looked up to me he said I'm looking at my sales forces BB every single one of them is a relationship builder I I don't know what to do he says can you come

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train my team to be challengers and I looked at him said Kevin well no because we just found this in our data like two

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weeks ago I like it was literally like 10day old research but that eventually became keynotes which I traveled all

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over the world presented after a while it became that kind of resonance became incredibly strong so I walked into

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Matt's office one day and I said I think we should write a book because this is really like resonating like nothing else

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we've ever seen so that's a long answer to your question did did we kind of know what we had we didn't know what we had in 2008 but by 2010 it was pretty clear

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we were on to something special um right about the time we met Neil Rackom who lives actually not too far from me here

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in in Leburg Virginia he has a writing cottage cuz he's fancy like that um and he's a good dude and and and so we

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started talking about the book and he of course the author of Spinelling and and Spinelling was kind of the book at the

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time and and we went to lunch together and and we got his advice and we're talking about the preface which he wrote

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for us and he said something then Damon it was really interesting again 2000 this is 2010 I guess he look said just

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so you guys know he says this thing because he was talking about his own experience with spin he says this thing

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has legs that you can't even imagine he says you you think this is going to run its course in about a year year and a

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half and it'll be years from now and you'll still be talking about it and that was 13 years ago isn't that wild it

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it is wild i mean I I told you before we got started I was with uh 12 of my buddies last night and 10 10 Reddit you

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know i I would assume though I mean it was very disruptive i mean so did you get a lot of push back when when people

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because because at the time and you know in the in the decades before everything was about a relationship going have a

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couple martinis at lunch you know even you know maybe that's the '8s but um you

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must have got a lot of Yeah when was that when I like I would love to know when was this like mythical three

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martini lunch cuz can we all just go back to that that was like it sounds kind of amazing doesn't it right i think

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it was in the mid 80s i I remember my dad was a a president of a bank and I

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would go meet him at um Jeremiah Towers restaurant in the city and and those all those guys be with their martinis and

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the customers so back then but yeah you must got a lot of push back we we did

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the um and it wasn't so much that you know there the dimensions of push back were manifold there were many um we kind

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of upset the apple cart uh and and had a big machine to upset the apple cart cuz CB had a pretty big marketing team we

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ran these events all over the world that was my job at the time is to travel and run those meetings so I was in front of

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heads of sales weekly all over the world uh for you know 10 years um and

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particularly about that time and it got really intense and so there was things like relationships do matter how can

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these guys say that they don't know what they're talking about and of course as you dug in deeper you found out like no we believe they matter is what is the

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basis of the relationship is it familiarity is it martinis or is it your ability to bring insight to the company challenges or thinking so we squared

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that circle eventually um you know these guys aren't saying anything new my best

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people were challengers already that this is there's nothing new here to which we'd always say like no we know your best people are doing this already

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because it wouldn't have shown up in the data if it wasn't doing it already you guys just gave it a name how dare you it's like well there's actually real

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power and value in naming things and putting frameworks around things so so there was just a lot of just particularly among other sales trainers

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who were quickly getting crowded out there was a lot of um either angst or

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frustration or you know like what about me and and a lot of people were just kind of

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mad but we all seem to get over it i think what happened was over the next three to four years it started

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generating really just incredible results for companies and then everyone kind of quickly got on board with some

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version of it you know a lot of people talked about insight selling at the time this big book that came out shortly thereafter and about four or five years

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later just about every CEO in the world woke up in the same morning and said "We need to be a thought leader," which is sort of a watered down version of

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challenger so now we're all trying to be thought leaders and this whole idea I think is um there's a longer historical thing i

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won't unless you want me to I won't go through the whole thing but you know it's like we we'd all tried to compete on products and found that our products

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were getting you know commoditized and there was fast followers so we then said okay we're all going to compete on

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solutions which is you know bundles of products wrapped in services and then even those solutions started getting

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commoditized you think UPS versus FedEx they have incredible solutions but they're very similar to one another so

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then sort of right about this time where the sort of window of differentiation on solutions was also closing people began

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to look around and say what's my new biggest incremental opportunity for standing out in the marketplace and right about that time is when challenger

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hits it was like lightning in a bottle and it offered up this completely different perspective on how to stand out in the marketplace which isn't your

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product or your solution but your insight your ability to teach customers something new about their business it wasn't what you sell but how you sell

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and so all that language started to really really resonate and we were kind of off to the races and so that's it was

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an interesting time and and and again we were backed by this machine that just gave us access to the world of sales leaders and so it was um it was kind of

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a perfect combination and then came along the challenger customer right where you're kind of looking at at the

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insight uh you know in the head of of of the buyers themselves yeah yeah and that

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that started you know about 3 four years later and it's it's continues to be the work I do today um and the new book

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that's coming out in the fall is really it's it is absolutely about selling and marketing but it's but its starting

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point isn't selling or marketing it's it starting point is buying and what's happening in the on the buying side of

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things and and this is why and I think that really matters in a lot of ways Damon because when I'm on stages with

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whether it's the new stuff or challenger customer challenger or challenger it's all kind of the same story or the same

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sort of um physics or dynamic which is and I've learned this at the school of

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hard knocks like really literally the hard way um if if you get on stage for give someone like I get on stage like

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I'm a sales anthropologist I'm a researcher god knows I've been in thousands thousands of sales calls but I'm not a sale I'm not a seller per se i

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study it right and if I get up on stage in front of say 500 people and say "You're selling wrong and here's a

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better way to sell go sell this way." That goes down like a ton of bricks right it's like "Who the leaper tell

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me?" Like "Who's this guy?" Yeah exactly right and and then they start looking around and you know you people in the back of the room with their arms crossed

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and they're all pissed off and and this is literally I learned this the hard way and so what I've learned is it's about

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positioning which is um and and I I don't mean this in an in insincere way i think it's actually true which is you

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know I often tell sellers like "My job isn't here to say you're broken and I'm

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here to fix you." Because I think we'd all agree a lot of you guys are doing great already what I'd like to lay out for you is a story of not how the world

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of selling is changing but how the world of buying is changing because the world of buying is changing actually quite dramatically and quite rapidly and if

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the world of sales is not and the world of buying is then what happens when you take the old world of selling and run it

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into the teeth of the new world of buying is things start actually falling apart so if we can understand that new

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world of buying and how it's changing then we can talk about how we take what's good already and adapt it to remain good so my job is here to make

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you good at selling my job here is to keep you good at selling and that seems to go down more easily essentially what

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you're talking about is you know thought leadership came in everybody wanted to be a thought leader then you have UPS

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and you have FedEx as an example where there's some pretty good products out there you know and so it's it's it's

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about it's about you know value i mean I mean it's hard to sell in value when there's all these good products and people are putting this information out

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there and so then at that point did you decide or you thought hey look we got to move beyond just Challenger sales and or

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just Challenger and and find a new way to look at it 2015 to 2017 2018 we we

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began to really there's like disturbances in the forest right you begin to see like customers you know buying groups getting bigger and bigger

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and the amount of information accounting is getting higher and higher and what you start to see pretty dramatically

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even pre- pandemic is customers really starting to struggle a little bit to just make decisions um and so this led

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to the work that we wrote for HBR um uh and and some of the people I wrote it with had just a part of Gartner so they

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didn't get to have the by line like Nick Tolman but we all wrote it together and um sense making right sensemaking for

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sales is the name of that article and that is now a chapter I think it's chapter four in the in the new book the point is that customers just overwhelmed

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with too much information and it's high quantities of high quality information which makes it really really hard to kind of just figure out what to do in

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the first place and where that starts to get really interesting then Damon is if you take the challenger sort of approach and run it into that world even that

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begins to wobble a little bit right because I may have this great insight that changed the way you think about

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your business challenges your mental model shows you new ways to make money save money all the things we talk about challenger but if your customers are

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already overwhelmed with too much information too many people saying too many smart things then you're just

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another person you know it's like or another voice or another text like I'll just take your white paper put on the pile with the other four white papers I

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got to read and I was doing a meeting in Palo Alto where a head of sales said "But Brand I did what you told me to do my whole all my competitors are telling

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my customers to zigg and we're out there doing Challenger we're telling our customers they need to zag." And I said "Yeah but from a customer's perspective

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they're telling me to zigg and they've got data and experts and you know evidence you're telling me to zag and you've got data and experts and evidence

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and now I'm just confused at a higher level and I don't know what to do so maybe I better research this more let me take a little longer why don't you call

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me in 6 months while I try to figure this out?" And so things start to slow down they gum up and this is what we

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didn't anticipate with Challenger in 2009 because it's a different world is the word I used to think about today is

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the word context we need to think about what your insight looks like in the context of everything else that

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customers are going through and this by the way is and if you think well how did that happen this is kind of a fun

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footnote but I think it's actually real it's pretty interesting is is because product selling was no longer offering

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opportunities for differentiation the way it used to and because solution selling was no longer offering opportunities for differentiation the

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way it used to somewhere around 2013 14 CEOs realized maybe I could set myself

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apart in the marketplace by just showing up as very smart by being a thought leader by demonstrating to customers

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that we have cutting edge solutions that are worldclass problems and so you know right about that time HubSpot said hey

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I've got software for that now all of a sudden we had marketing automation and marketers woke up and said hey I've got a strategy for that we'll call that content marketing and so we built this

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entire machine to to create massive amounts of not just content but really good content

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backed by data backed by evidence i call it the smartness arms race because we're all in a hurry to demonstrate that we

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are smarter than our competitors and you know it's somewhat tongue and cheek but I think it's true i think the only one that lost in the smartness arms race is

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your customers because now they're just overwhelmed at a higher level trying to just figure out what the heck to do in the first place and last on this as you

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fast forward into today Damon I mean just we now live in a world post pandemic and in the current political

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climate and the current you know current environmental degradation and you know just what's going on in the world and you like certainly right now with what's

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going on in our economy which is no one really knows is um is just it's and and then of course

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AI everything and like what was AI six months ago is not AI today because it's changing constantly and developing con

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which if you you know what's the old things like may you um it's like I hope that you get to live in exciting times

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right welcome to your worst nightmare/b best dream but it's like it's so hard to

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make decisions as companies in this kind of environment and so now we're just overwhelmed and so if it just feels like

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today in this world where customers it's like there's so many people and you like we talked to big enterprise companies

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where they'll have 60 70 80 people in a buying group i talked to president of an ERP company the other day how does that

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even work how do it well that's the point it doesn't right it literally doesn't right i talked to president it's

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a good friend of mine named Randy i talked to him the other day he sells ERP software into car dealerships and he was

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talking to a big multi- national car chain that we all know and he said the buying group right was 20 people but he

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said the big problem with the fact wasn't just that there were 20 people in the buying group it's that these 20 people had never made a decision

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together it's not that they never made a purchase together they'd never made any kind of decision together so they didn't

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even understand sort of what are like almost like the Robert's rules do you remember those like like what is the process by which we go through the

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deliberation to make a choice it's not like do we think you're great or not great do we want your product versus the competitor's product it's literally like

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we don't know how to do this do you know what I mean and so that's where so much of what I'm writing about today is

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really falling is yeah when that happens a lot of times what could have been a priority then just gets stuck down the

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line right because like we can't come to any kind of consensus on this so let's just go let's go pivot in another

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direction which leads to no decision that's exactly right or let's just put it off or let's study it more let's give it to a tiger team and have them report

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back right or and then and then next time it comes so and maybe you work your slog your way through that decision but

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what we found is that that leads to just like muscle memory of pain right so so what happens at the next purchase that

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comes up it's like oh god I don't want to do that again why don't we just hold off on this and so the the there's like this inertia that around status quo that

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builds and builds and builds because as each one of these purchase decisions becomes that much more difficult and painful and fraught I'm less and less

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and less inclined to make more purchase decisions going forward and in that environment I've often joked it's it

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kind of it's kind of amazing to me that commerce still happens at all i mean it's like and and and I said that one

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story I had to research it Gartner and he looked at his name's Eric he's a good dude and he said "Brett that's that's really stupid." It's like you know he

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said "Of course commerce is still going to happen companies still have to buy things machines have to run you know factories have to you know replenishable." He said "Of course

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commerce is still going to happen." But I looked at him said "But Eric," I said "I know but it does make me honestly wonder how much more commerce could

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happen." Mhm if customers just felt a little bit more confident not in your product or your brand but felt more

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confident in themselves all the opportunities right and I just think that may be the single biggest unlock of

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the global economy today is just helping people feel more confident in themselves to make bigger decisions and that's what

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your your new book's all about right frame that's right so how would you even like how do you define what a framem is

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okay so the book is called the framemaking sale which I suppose has an echo of the challenger sale um it's uh

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it's on Amazon now so you go or wherever you wherever you buy books you can pre-order it now it'll come out right that's right september 9th uh which is

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my dad's birthday so it'll come out then I'm out keynoting on it we're building the training we're training companies on

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this now but the whole idea of the framemaking sale starts from a datadriven perspective is how I'm wired

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and and the work we did at Gartner and that's all the stuff is publicly available it's all cited back to Gartner when when it's Gartner work but we found

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this really interesting thing at the time which is the single biggest driver of a high quality low regret deal so a deal where the customer buys a bigger

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solution with a broader scope with a higher price point and feels good about it the single biggest driver Damon of of

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make of increasing the likelihood of that kind of purchase is the degree to which customers report a high level of

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confidence in the decision they're making on behalf of their company so we call that decision confidence and part

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of the conclusion was we need to run everything through this lens of customer confidence um now there's sort of this

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weird sort of what we call a a false positive here because what happens is when CEO CRO hear that they say yeah we

weird sort of what we call a a false positive here because what happens is when CEO CRO hear that they say yeah we

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agree that's why we need customers to be confident we totally agree with you Brent they've got to be confident in our value they've got to be confident in our

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people they've got we've got to be trusted advisers they got to be confident us as thought leaders they got to be confident in our brand and our product and and the kicker of all this

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data is when you peel it back a little bit as we walk through this in the in the book is when you look at the dimensions of confidence that lead to

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this incredible commercial outcome it has nothing to do with the supplier at all it's all supplier agnostic it's

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customers asking how confident are we even asked the right questions how confident are we that we've thoroughly

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you explored alternatives how confident are we that we've done enough research how confident are we that we're even aligned with each other on what we're

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even trying to do in the first place none of that has anything to do with whether or not you're a trusted adviser

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and this to me this is why I quit my job and stopped everything in the middle of my 50s and put it all on it's like I

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went all in on black or red or whatever because it's like I'm going to write a book and tell the world about this stuff and which is footnote but terrifying um

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but the because I'm I'm just I think there's this huge opportunity we're all walking past which is yes we we've been

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trying for decades to make customers or help customers feel more confident in us we're just walking right past the single

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biggest opportunity which is helping customers feel more confident in themselves and that's where frame comes

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in because in this world where they're overwhelmed with decision complexity they're overwhelmed with too much information they're overwhelmed with

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objective misalignments trying to get them their selves agreed on themselves agreed on you know what they're even trying to do they're also overwhelmed by

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just figuring out outcome over you know overcoming outcome uncertainty which is what Matt and Ted write about in Jolt

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for example this fear of messing up it's like we know you've shown us great results for four other companies but we'll screw it up anyway because we're

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different right so in this kind of world there's this real interesting opportunity for sellers

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to show up and not just talk about how great their brand is how great their company is or try to build trust that you trust me or demonstrate their

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expertise rather it's to take these things that are so big and so hard and so overwhelming like how do we how do we So

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I'm I'm at this company with 19 of my colleagues trying to make a decision i don't know how we make a decision how do we do that you know it' be nice if

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someone could just help like kind of take us by the hand figuratively and just guide us right like a coach right i

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mean you're a sports guy right so it's like having a really really good coach is just someone who's there to not tell

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you what to do but to give you enough agency so that you they can give you the options to put a framework around it

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right there's a couple ways we can get good at this Damon right you can you can do it like this you can do it like this we find with other athletes of your

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stature your weight or your size or your skill there's sort of these three things you might consider and I kind of leave

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it up to you to decide do I want to do the work do I want to do that work do I want to do it that way or this way so I'm leaving you agency because I want

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you to feel confident in yourself and so you've got to feel like this is my decision so if I just show you up show

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up and say "Damn here's what you need to do these three things." Like that kind of works but what we find in our research you're just telling me then

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right you're just telling me exactly and what we find in our research at least in sales that backfires customers are actually le if you just show up and say

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"Look I've been doing this for 30 years i know what I'm doing here's what you need to buy or here's what you need to

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do." We find that in that environment at least in sales customers are actually less confident not more they're less

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likely to buy not more so rather rather than just showing up and sort of brute force why is that why is that why is

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that you think well you tell me i You tell what do you think i think it's really interesting what what's your take on that i think it's

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because they want to be working with somebody who it's not their first rodeo let's get that you know I think that's

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important but at the end of the day when it comes to agency they they want to

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feel like if they're going to make this decision which could cost millions of dollars for their enterprise that um

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they're confident in it and that they feel like they've helped at least co-create what that what that decision

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is totally you know not that it's being pushed on them but it's like I believe

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in this i'm confident you know I want to move forward with it i think that's probably what it is i think I think I I

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No I agree with you and I So I think it's if I'm solving for your confidence in me but I'm solving for your

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confidence in you then it needs to be based on a decision that you're making or at least to your point co-creating or

24:07

collaboratively decides like you're you've got skin in the game right you haven't just outsourced it to me um and

24:13

there's a whole kind of rant/ riff on the consulting industry here but let's park that that's actually kind of interesting but the uh but you know one

24:19

of the things that as a result of this is really interesting cuz your point you made a point which is interesting to me is like you know it kind of has to not

24:25

be your first rodeo and and so there's even ways around that in this world that are really interesting let's say I'm a

24:30

27y old seller and I don't have a lot of experience and I can't say I've been doing this for 30 years but you know what I can do Damon is I can I can I can

24:39

give you an answer to your number one question uh and this is somewhat this is somewhat tongue and cheek but somewhat

24:45

not right it's like I mean you've been in business for decades right so you know like what is the one thing your customers want to know about more than

24:51

anything else more often than it feels like they want to know what other companies like them have done or other companies like Right right it's like we

24:57

just want to know what other and by the way they'll also say we're totally different in our company and then they'll say but we want to know what other companies like everybody's

25:03

different how can both of those things be true how can you be totally different and want to know what other companies like you were doing but but that's where

25:08

we are so but what notice that that opens up this really interesting opportunity particularly for newer sellers and I've literally been through

25:14

this in my own career which is I may not know because I haven't sold for 30 years but it doesn't matter because you're not

25:20

trying to trust me what you want to know is what other companies are doing well either for my own personal experience or

25:26

the experience of my company and my colleagues if I can sort of you know um aggregate that and present it back to

25:32

you and say you know Damon curate about right exactly and say you know it's it's funny you should ask that because in working with other customers like you're

25:38

facing the same challenge you know we've kind of learned a couple things some of them are a little surprising but here's what they tell us what they wish they'd

25:44

done differently here's what they think they tell us are like the three most important questions for them at least and notice in that case I don't need to

25:51

p I don't need to precede that with I've been doing this for 30 years right it's like so my value in that world is no

25:58

longer as an expert my value is as a connector right I'm my value is is

26:03

giving you the one thing you don't have on your own which is access to other companies and so this idea of framem and

26:10

and flip side is at the same time I'm offering you social proof from other

26:16

companies like you which helps you feel more confident in yourself to make a decision within that framework that I've

26:21

just established by reporting to you what other companies are thinking i think what's gold what you said right there introducing it as uh in my you

26:29

know in working with us other customers or other companies here's what we've seen and I we call this the role we call

26:34

this role or we call this sort of approach playing the role of a connector rather than an expert and I think you

26:41

know when I go talk to college kids we call them kids because we're old right get off my lawn but you when I college students when I go talk to college

26:47

students are in sales you know like down at the University of Texas at Dallas for example it's one of the best sales programs in the country Howard do runs

26:53

that program and there's others uh around the country that are really exceptional and so I often will meet

26:58

them either in person or oftentimes in Zoom classes where their cameras are off and they're in their pajamas and it's kind of funny um but I I share this idea

27:06

with them because to me it's especially as exciting as a 23y old or 22-year-old

27:12

fresh out of college and you're now a BDR and you're tasked with like calling on directors and VP level executives and

27:19

like who the hell who the heck am I to be talking to these people and and and I love this approach because it opens up

27:25

an equally powerful opportunity for you as it does for someone who's been doing this for 30 years right you can you can

27:32

add value from day one by just helping that customer understand what other companies like them are doing i really

27:37

like that you know from a a learn it perspective like what we do sometimes I'm a big believer of bringing in people

27:44

relatively new you know who have great attitude and aptitude but they don't have all that experience and I'm what I'm hearing you say is you know in our

27:52

business if we're selling to a chief of people officer or a human resource officer who's been in this for 25 years

27:58

and I'm I'm somebody in my early 20s that I can come across as you know

28:04

reputable and add value by taking this approach 100% and it may be you know it

28:10

doesn't have to be age condition right it could be someone who is transferred in from you know exactly someone who's in their 30s but was a school teacher

28:16

and has decided to transfer out or whatever i'm just kind of making up now but you know it's like I mean in my case it's exactly what it was i was prior to

28:24

my work as a researcher in sales at CB I was at Michigan State where I was a researcher and teacher in German and

28:30

linguistics right so I literally this is a true story i literally went from like on a on Friday of one week I was a

28:35

German professor to Monday the next week I was giving senior vice presidents of sales at the world's biggest companies advice on how to run Salesforce how's

28:41

that i mean what's a quick version of that story i mean how's that happen well what happens you learn very quickly it's

28:46

like Brent we're trying to figure out our key account management program i think key I'm like over here like key account man what is a key hey Jeff

28:52

what's a key account management program i mean it was like it was kind of awkward right and so but what was interesting is after about a week of

28:59

that Damon it's like oh they're all asking the same question and first of all they're all telling me they're different and then they're all asking

29:04

the same question and I learned almost by just out of survival skill right very

29:09

quickly I learned oh you know it's funny you should ask that Damon because I was just talking to two other companies and

29:14

they were asking the exact same question one of the things that one of them mentioned was really interesting and I was just doing it sort of instinctively

29:20

as a survival skill and and what id learned at the end of those call say wow that was really really helpful i so appreciate your input i'm thinking I

29:26

didn't even do anything do you know what I mean but what I did though and and so now today that's exactly right looking

29:31

back I appreciate what I was doing pure instinct 100% and that's so so there's

29:37

you know the things we talk about in the framemaking sale is it's all based on research and bar charts because that's

29:42

how I talk but a lot of it's based on school of hard knocks you know it's just like lessons learned from life too and I

29:48

I think what's important about that too and if you're if you're a sales rep even if you're a BDR like let's say you're

29:53

BDR and and you're trying to get meetings um I was I mentioned I interviewed Mark Cox who I thought is

30:00

great you know and we talk about the importance of personalizing your message i mean even coming in with with your

30:06

messaging and saying "Hey I'd love to share with you uh what we're seeing with others in your industry you know is a

30:13

great way to get get in there." In fact there you can because my training is linguistics I geek out on language probably more than I should but I you

30:20

can even tweak a little bit and say you know working with other customers like you one of the things we were surprised to learn is right and so just that word

30:25

surprise even that changes the tone right it changed like oh you're steal right so so like there's some there's

30:32

kind of a mystery i want to know what the surprise is there's a little bit of that there's also a little bit of again humility in that it's like I didn't see

30:38

this either so it's it's almost the exact op saying I'm an expert trust me I know what I'm doing it's like dude that

30:43

was weird but let me tell you what's weird this is And so now you see now it feels like we're kind of in it together like hey David you check this out man

30:49

this is like this is kind of crazy right and so it's got that sort of feel to it and and maybe it's partly my upbringing

30:55

uh you know you and I were joking off air and it's true i'm I'm from Omaha Nebraska right so we're we're just kind of humble people um yeah it's I I joke

31:04

and it's true i I grew up a a block from Warren Buffett and and and what's interesting is in fact we drove by his

31:10

house the other day i showed my kids that's one of the richest people in the world lives in a house and they said "What in that house it's just a normal house and it's exact that's it right?"

31:15

You know it's like it's not I grew up in a gated community i grew up on 54th in Fargo and he lives at 55th right it's just this normal house in the real right

31:22

in the middle of town and we're all kind of that way and so I I I found that bringing that kind of humility to the

31:30

job of sales can be really powerful because at the end of the day the dirty little secret is none of us know what we're doing and now that you're a parent

31:36

and you're deep into this parenting and and you're in your 50s like I am you've re you we were at that age now I think

31:43

where we realize not a freaking one of us knows what we're doing i couldn't I couldn't I couldn't agree with you more

31:49

and I think it's actually helped me become more humble and and tying it back to what you're saying i also think that

31:56

as a seller if that's how you're behaving you're coming across as more authentic and genuine yes and people can

32:01

connect better with you then I was having a conversation with one of our reps i was watching some of their you

32:07

know gone calls or whatever and I'm like you're just too robotic you know you got to get off of the script and just be

32:12

yourself and and and connect with with the with your customer yeah well and I

32:17

think again particularly I I guess I you this conversation is really interesting is kind of focused and that's I drove us

32:23

there not not I don't intentionally but so someone sort of new in their career and starting out but I think it's equally true for any level but I think

32:30

particularly when so we worked with a lot of people right out of college at CB and we would put them in front of SVPs

32:35

of heads you know of HR marketing sales from day one and and it was really

32:41

interesting you could always tell the ones who were brand new on the team because they felt like they had to put on this air do you know what I mean they

32:46

felt like they it like almost became like the show and it's like I there was they had assumed a certain set of

32:52

expectations which no one had put on them but they kind of put on themselves given sort of how like oh I have to

32:57

sound like this or I have to talk like this or I have to sound and it's like actually no do you know what I mean it's

33:02

just like you you just I think that's one of the benefits of age is you learn like none of it really matters it's like

33:09

we're all just fumbling through life and we're just trying to figure it out what we're doing and as a result when you tap

33:14

into that it's actually quite powerful um because it it lets other people let

33:20

their guard down do and and it won't always work but by the way I've tried this with some people and it was a

33:25

complete flaming disaster so it's not a guaranteed slam dunk but it it's not

33:31

just in sales i see it you know I I coach and mentor a lot of pe you know people who are moving into whether it's

33:36

a sales leader role for the first time or or just a leadership role for the first time totally and they feel like

33:41

they got to come in having all the answers um when instead if they come in and saying "Look I don't have all the I

33:48

don't know." um in a certain situation but let's figure this out you know and they come in and they say that with

33:54

confidence i think it goes a lot further than people see right through uh you know if you're coming in and and you're

33:59

trying to make it look like you got it all figured out you know not to give away too much of your book but walk us through a little bit of of how it works

34:05

and maybe even an example of a a company who's an organization or some individuals who've been implementing it

34:11

where it's working really well okay yeah sure so the uh so again not with I don't

34:16

mind giving away secrets in fact actually we're doing um my co-author Carl and I are doing a a weekly series on on YouTube/LinkedIn where we're

34:23

actually going pretty deep in the book and so we're kind of giving away already so it's more just for the sake of time and and by the way I've watched it so

34:29

I'll put I'll put I watched a couple of those episodes are great you know oh thank you i'll put an uh a link to it in

34:36

the episode awesome thanks man in in the book we break down sort of so we set up this idea customers need to be confident

34:41

and it's not confident you but confident in themselves that matters because there's at least four different dimensions under which they're along

34:47

which their confidence is under threat which I mentioned earlier so you got decision complexity information overload objective misalignment outcome

34:53

uncertainty and what we do is across the book we unpack each of those four here's kind of what's going on here's why their

34:59

confidence is is so under threat or is so weak in these four areas and then we talk about um what you can do about

35:06

adopting a sort of frame making approach and then and we talk about mindset stuff and some marketing things at the end of the book but just to give you a real

35:12

quick sort of to answer your question Brasse example um in terms of decision complexity right so think about again

35:19

maybe this example that I mentioned my friend Randy who's selling into this company with 20 people in a buying group that never made a decision together and

35:25

they're like I don't like like we're going to struggle we don't even know how to do this right so one of in in frame

35:32

making we we break it down almost like in challenger which we had teach tailor take control In framemaking we have

35:37

three the letter E we use three times so it's um it's establish engage and execute uh which makes it easier see how

35:44

it works it's the ease of of framing but establishes we need to figure out like what kind of frame do we want to put

35:49

around buying complexity then how do we engage customers that that frame and then how do we execute over time and so

35:55

real quickly Damon the one of the things we talk about in in this section of the book is what we call an it turns out

36:01

that audit and that sounds really wonky I know and it's kind of somewhat on purpose we made it sound wonky cuz I

36:06

think it's funny but I often you know and in the book I do this too i do this on stage a lot it's like what are the

36:11

four worst words you can hear in sales the four worst words you can hear in sales is when your customer black holes on you and finally out of you know after

36:17

weeks of waiting appears out of nowhere and starts the conversation with uh it turns out that because anything right

36:22

you've had that conversation i've had that conversation whatever they say next it's going to be bad right it's like

36:28

it's like a relationship call it starts with we need to talk it's all downhill from there right yeah uh and but what's interesting to me all joking aside is

36:35

almost inevitably what they say next they're surprised about it turns out that our legal team need to look this

36:41

over and they've got some questions it turns out our procurement officer um has got some new rules in place it turns out that our capital review board has to you

36:47

know and like and what's interesting to me is when they say that they're almost inevitably kind of surprised they didn't know they were about to run into that

36:53

hurdle inside their own company and yet as a seller more often than not your reaction as a seller is like "Oh god let

36:59

me guess it's legal isn't it?" Right and so that actually what that describes is an asymmetry of information what you can

37:05

do better than your customers themselves is predict the obstacles that they're going to run into in their own buying process and so it creates this

37:12

opportunity to say well what if we were to sit down as a team in you know inside our own company and and run what I call

37:18

and it turns out that audit which is a dorky way of saying what if we sit down and just kind of figure out make a list

37:24

of like all the ways that our deals have gone off the rails over the last 6 to 18 months in due to some sort of obstacle

37:31

inside the customer organization that customers themselves hadn't anticipated where do things get stuck inside a

37:38

typical buying group inside the customer organization and then do the sort of the 8020 on that like you know 80% of the time it's this 20% of the problems that

37:45

they don't see coming and then that gives you then an opportunity to talk to other customers about it so this gets from that's established and engages in

37:52

working with other customers like you we find that you know as excited as you are to work with the solution we're excited to work with you and we can't wait to

37:58

get this off the ground but but inevitably what seems to happen is we're going to get three months into this process and then procurement is going to

38:04

jump in and they're going have three really hard questions that have torpedoed other companies on the same journey and I hate to see that happen to

38:09

you and and so talking to a couple companies that have managed to navigate this successfully one of the things they they've actually given us some ideas on

38:15

they're really smart I think is to actually bring procurement in early and you can kind of go on from there right so other words I can begin to coach you

38:22

on how to navigate your journey based on what I've learned from others who either have successfully or less successfully

38:27

navigated that so uh and then and then what you could do after that then the execute that's the engage and execute is

38:33

then we could actually essentially document that put that in sort of a process plan what we call a a sequence

38:38

of events which is an idea taken from um the IT sector and actually just map out a not not a map of how we run our sales

38:46

process but a map for the customer and how they need to navigate their own company um and that's the brass tax kind

38:53

of stuff that's what we're getting into in the book no I like that and you know for for our listeners out there one of the things that I'd even kind of

38:59

recommend is if you're thinking about to yourself like it turns out that like how does that relate to to our business um

39:07

if you again if you are using Fathom or Gong or Chorus or any of these take all

39:13

those calls run them through and and and see what comes up most often i'm sure

39:18

there there's there's the standard ones like it got stuck in procurement or legal or whatever but you know you could

39:24

even maybe specialize them for your for your own business oh totally you can imagine that conversation hey you know

39:29

Dana I'm so excited we're making progress i can't wait to welcome you into the you know the you know as a customer some came up the other day it's

39:36

kind of weird we're talking another customer and they ran into this thing we've never seen before but they've got this person on their team um they the

39:43

title is this is I don't I'm make I'm making this up as I go so bear with I'm playing i'm you but it's like have you seen things like that before you say "No

39:50

I haven't." Well here's kind of what to look for in other words you see what I'm doing i'm just kind of adopting this this approach of coach and I'm I'm just

39:56

helping you kind of think like and and hopefully what I'm trying to do is create a moment where you think "Wow I didn't even think of that that's actually great i this guy just saved me

40:02

a lot of pain and heartache i I love working with Brent because he helps me kind of figure these things out." And Brent think about it if you're able to

it if you're able to

40:08

do that you're setting yourself apart from other sellers at other organizations who maybe like you said

40:14

the product can be just as good but if if you're somebody who's like looking at something differently and and helping

40:21

them be navigate internally I mean that's a great way to go so you asked

40:26

about a company that's doing this well we we pretty pro extensively in a couple different places in the book profile the work of a company called Expedient um

40:33

they're out of Ohio and Pennsylvania and it's a cloud services company and they're they're a regional national

40:39

player now up against you know we all know who's in the cloud computing business right so they're up against these massive massive organizations and

40:45

we go into a lot of detail in the story but the uh when I first met him Brian Smith was the head of sales at um Brian

40:52

with a Y um was the head of sales at Expedience and when I profiled them in HBR that's where he was but Brian has

40:58

since not surprisingly to be honest uh been um promoted to the CEO So it's now he's running the company he's literally

41:05

Damon probably one of the smartest commercial leaders I've ever met and he's just because he's a Midwesterner he's a really good dude and when I was

41:12

presenting some of the the the sense making work which is frame making for information which we haven't talked

41:17

about it as much but the uh I was presenting some of that work to his team and we kind of did this sort of approach of you know um establish and engage and

41:25

execute we ran through that with information and we walk through all that in the book but as part of that meeting he stood up at the end of the meeting

41:31

and he said something that stuck with me every once you hear someone say something he's like "Uh I need to

41:36

remember that that's really good." And he said something I've since had with his permission i've heard him say it multiple times since then and I've we

41:41

actually made an entire chapter about this in the book we call it the framemaking mindset and he said this to

41:47

his team he said "Guys we have one job." He says "Our job as a sales organization is we go to market if we want to stand

41:52

out our job is simply to help our customers make the best decision they can in as little time as possible that's

41:58

it he says "If we solve for that and keep that as our northstar we will always win in the long run." And

42:04

inevitably when I hear Brian say this there's always I don't know if it's a plant or just some like someone who's just it's like you got some you you're

42:11

brave but anyway someone will raise their hand say "But Brian what happens if we help our customers make the best decision they can and they choose to not

42:17

choose or they choose for the competition?" And Brian will always say that's why the second part of the quote

42:23

matters in as little time as possible because he says it's sales guys and if we're going to lose I want to lose early right is we all we all kind of know that

42:29

in sales but how many of us just push this deal deep into the pipeline 12 18 months in when we know it's not going

42:34

anywhere and he says but if our posture the way we show up is by helping our customers make the best decision they

42:41

can and it's you early on it turns out it's not us then that's great then we know and we walk away I'll tell you

42:46

something when it comes time for them to make the next decision they're going to remember that they're going to remember

42:52

how we interact with them they're going to remember how we help them and we're going to be the first ones they call and that's how we're going to grow over time

42:58

and that's the company I want to be and that's why he's the CEO now I also think Brent too if if if you're shortening the

43:04

sales cycle it's giving them less opportunity to go out and explore other places because you're moving you're moving the sale along in the process

43:11

100% and even if you lose I mean look nobody likes to lose in sales nobody likes to lose period right a few of us do but the

43:17

uh but there might be some out there i don't that's that's good that's that's a different podcast but anyway the uh um

43:23

but the opportunity cost of time right i mean like there's nothing like the pig and the python just that huge number of

43:28

stalled deals in the middle of your pipeline have all been sitting there for 12 to 18 months and you're still chasing them rather than chasing stuff that's actually going to come in and that's

43:35

part of what every you know I talked to lots and lots of sales leaders and that is by far their single biggest frustration is bad or ineffective

43:41

qualification right it's like why do we keep spending our time chasing stuff that's never going to come in uh and

43:46

there's all sorts of reasons why that's a whole another episode we could do but but that's that's a whole another episode i was gonna say because a lot of

43:51

it has to do with either self-awareness or just lying to I don't need to go on that tangent comp plans and confidence

43:58

in yourself and a thousand other things right and your territory planning if it's the only thing I have to go after I have no choice you know there's there's

44:04

lots of things that are wrapped up into that but but I just love so we we with Bryant's permission we took this we call

44:09

it the framemaking mindset so the framemaking mindset Damon is how do we help our customers make the best

44:15

decision they can in as little time as possible and and we're wrapping the whole thing around that and solving for

44:21

customers not perception of you but perception itself and the if I had to kind of sum it all up and I always do the end of my keynotes or almost always

44:27

if if I haven't vibe with the audience I don't do this because it gets a little personal I suppose but the let's see if you see if you I don't know you see you

44:33

may dig this but I I'll ask the audience um to take a moment and think about

44:39

someone really important in their lives someone they really love a a spouse a child a friend you know it could be

44:46

someone from the present day someone from the past but someone when you think of them you just kind of smile inside and if we're not not everyone of us has

44:52

someone like that but hopefully somewhere in your life you've you've had that kind of relationship with somebody even better you have one now but I tell

44:58

him is I think about that person for a minute and what's really interesting about that relationship as you think about that relationship is you probably

45:03

are thinking about that person like I love you because I love you but I also love you because I love me when I'm

45:08

around you and that's special and not many of us have a lot of those in our life and you find someone like that hang

45:14

on to them is what I would tell anyone listening today is now that I'm in my 50s because I've had a few of those and I've lost them over time for whatever

45:20

reasons if you've got someone in your life where you think I love you not just because I love you but I love you because I love me when I'm around you

45:26

when you look in the mirror and you think I love this version of me that results from interacting with that

45:31

person that is one of the most meaningful sources of happiness I think in your life and not to be sort of crass

45:36

about it or benol but that's kind of what I'm asking in this book the framemaking sale is what would it take

45:43

for you to be that kind of salesperson for your customer where as a result of that interaction your customer thinks I

45:50

kind of feel better about myself as a result of interacting with Damon i think I want to interact with Damon a little bit more and that's that's how we're

45:57

trying to change the sales profession with this book and I would assume having a high level of empathy or

46:03

learning to have a high level of empathy plays a major role yeah yeah there's a

46:09

there's a whole chapter we in this framemaking mindset chapter we dig into this idea of empathy and curiosity and

46:15

specifically curiosity around not just what I want you to know but what I want you to feel how does it feel like now so

46:20

I I teach this um this is an idea I literally again made up from the school of hard knocks and I kind of systematized it turned it into this idea

46:27

and I put it in the book which I call hypothesisled empathy and it's you know because people say well either you're

46:32

empathetic or you're not it's nature it's not nurture I can't teach you how to be empathetic but I kind of can at least I can what I can do is I can teach

46:38

you how to approximate empathy and I used to do this with um our teachers and what we call approximate empathy yeah so

46:44

so here's the technique in a in a nutshell so um at CB we have again a whole bunch of 20something things out

46:50

presenting to a bunch of sales leaders and and you wanted to make a connection and I used to tell people as you present our research it was exactly what you're

46:56

talking about with your sales team and the on the gong call it's like it's kind of robotic so I'm walking through research here's a bar chart it says this

47:02

okay moving on here's another bar chart and here's a graph it's like oh god you're not wrong but you're not interesting either do you know what I mean exactly so and that sounded harsh

47:10

but you hopefully I would say quite like that you know but but I'd say all right let's stop it kind of is right that's

47:15

true yeah I mean yeah and so what I would do is I say all right think about this page is it give you a page with a bar chart on it i say "All right tell me

47:22

what the bar chart says." And we go through that and I just make sure they're locked down on what the bar chart says and the teaching points and all that kind of stuff all right now

47:28

then I say "All right so that's what you want your audience to know." And then for people had been through this before they like "I know what he's going to do

47:33

next." Right but it's like "All right now here's what I want i want to ask you this what do you want your audience to feel on this page?" And and they would

47:41

all look at me like I was crazy and say "Well do you want him to feel excited do you want them to feel scared do you want them to feel confused do you want them

47:46

to feel overwhelmed?" because every one of these slides had a sort of not just a teaching point but an emotional point

47:52

depending on where we were in the narrative and so I'd get so and we kind of tease it out and they say I want them

47:57

to feel I don't like frustrated i said okay now give me four words synonymous with frustrated frustrated overwhelmed

48:02

whatever we'd write them on the whiteboard right and we put all those words i say "Okay now present this page to me one more time but you've got to

48:09

use at least three of those words as part of your presentation." And they do it again and then we do this we call

48:15

them master classes and we do that again give me an example when they come back to you and do it again what does that sound like so let's take a look at this

48:21

bar chart here because there's something kind of scary about this when you unpack it because what's really going on is

48:27

something that not all of us would be sort of thinking about but it's kind of surprising but not surprising in a really positive sort of way see see what

48:33

I'm doing i'm just It's very subtle but I'm just weaving emotion through i'm I'm essentially I'm telling you how to feel

48:39

about this you see what I'm saying i'm guiding your emotions i wanted you to do that cuz you were kind of a master with words like we brought up earlier just

48:45

throwing surprising and you know that emotion for me it's totally instinctive for me i just do it with I don't have to

48:50

think about it right but but let me just stop you right there because our listener might think well look it's not instinctive for me but that's okay

48:57

because you're saying it can be learned well exactly because after we do this exercise they they represent it with

49:03

using three of those words and the other four people in the room that were doing the master class with us would look at me and say "What did you just do that

49:09

was so different." And I said "I didn't do anything i I just sat here they did it i didn't do it." But they just use

49:15

because what they're doing is they're making an emotional connection and not just a cognitive one and so going back to this hypothesisled empathy this idea

49:22

is sometimes you don't know if something's scary or if you don't know if something's exciting so what I and I

49:28

had to learn this again the hard way when I was talking to all these heads of sales as a German professor i'd say sometimes I just be super open and naive

49:34

and kind of humble about it say man if that were me I I I would imagine that's pretty scary is that as scary as I think

49:39

it is and I've probably done that to you in this conversation right and and you might say oh Brent you have no idea so

49:45

now I'm making a mental note okay that's really scary or they might say no actually it's okay and I'm think okay not scary you know it almost doesn't

49:52

matter if I get it right i'm just putting an emotion out there you're putting it out there yeah right and I'm calibrating their reaction to that

49:58

emotion so next time I talk to someone about the same topic I might say you know I've talked to a couple sales leaders and a couple say this is kind of

50:04

scary some of feel pretty good about where are you on this and I do that enough times and eventually it would kind of sort of coalesce around one

50:11

clear emotion and eventually it becomes this this is really scary isn't it do

50:16

you see what I'm saying and it's like oh you have no idea and now we just made this connection and I got there because I I hypothesized my way there and I used

50:24

inputs to kind of circle in on the the most common emotion and but but you'll

50:30

find if so one of my jobs at CB was to write the script that we used to present all this work and if you go through all

50:35

those literally millions of words I wrote for CB you'll find every single sentence every every single page at

50:41

least packed with words that expressed some kind of emotion and I think if you go back and listen to your your gong

50:48

calls of your sales team and you try this technique and say "Do it again but just put in a couple of these words around this emotion see what happens." I

50:54

think you'll find it changes everything in what way does it change everything it makes people It makes them feel

50:59

differently to customers yeah it's like it it makes you it makes it feel more human it makes it feel more authentic it

51:05

makes it feel more less transactional uh that's what I was getting at yeah it gives permission implicitly to talk

51:13

about that more human side of things you know no head of sales is going to volunteer hey Brent I'm really scared about this or very few of them are but

51:20

over time I've got heads of sales that tell me that all the time because we've created that kind of connection with each other because I've essentially

51:26

created an environment where that's on the table right and they can feel a little bit more vulnerable to express

51:31

that too 100% and now and now I can do a better job of helping them feel confident if I sort of know their current state of emotional being cuz

51:38

remember what I'm solving for is solving customers confidence themselves i'm not solving for what they know i'm solving

51:43

for what they feel and to know and to solve for what they feel i got to kind of know what they feel now and I got to

51:48

feel I got to understand what how big's that delta and in which direction you know and it's so interesting when you

51:53

look at the single biggest driver of customers making high quality lower grade deals is not what they know it's

51:58

what they feel and yet we're solving so much for what I want you to know this about my product i want you to know this about my value i want you to know this

52:04

about the ROI you know I want you to know this about my raving fans and we're solving for what we want our customers

52:10

to know and we're walking right past this massive opportunity to solve what we want our customers to feel when

52:15

you're work working with customers are you trying to get access to the other uh stakeholders to help them get more

52:21

confident as well or you just or is your goal really to make them feel more confident themselves to go out and

52:26

present to the or go work with the other stakeholders um yes and yes so it's whichever yeah like both things need to

52:33

happen so one of the big challenges this is one of these four big challenges we talk about in the book is this idea of objective misalignment where you're and

52:41

this could Oh this is I mean you've been there you you're a sales guys like I am right so I mean how many times has your

52:47

customer said "If it were just up to me." Yeah of course i know where you're going i mean I I'm

52:53

going to cut but Exactly right but it feels differently hr feels different but

52:59

keep going yeah or the other one which is I love what you guys do i'm so excited to partner with you but you know we had a conversation internally we've

53:05

decided to go in a different direction i've had a couple of those even recently and lost a lot of money as a result right and it's so frustrating and what

53:12

you realize is they were confident in your product they were confident in your value they were it's like it's like you

53:17

all these things you were solving for you'd already won that battle what they weren't confident in which they never told you about was whether or not their

53:23

peers or their boss or whoever was prioritizing the same problem or the same solution or the same approach as

53:30

they were and they had to go sort that bit out and so in the in that chapter on frame making we spend a lot of time

53:36

unpacking some of the techniques you can use to help your your stakeholder either by doing it directly to your point like

53:42

let's all get in a room on a zoom call or in literally in a room which is ideal if you could right yeah and you know you

53:47

get into big enterprise sales it's literally what they do you know it's like companies like I don't like a G or Seammens or whatever just to make some

53:53

up you know they'll they'll actually have these alignment workshops where they'll get the all the stakeholders from the customer organization in a room

53:58

for like a day and a half we used to profile an approach like this from Cargill and they would do these day and a half workshops with their biggest

54:04

customers where they're the whole thing was about aligning that customers the customer stakeholders with each other on

54:09

what are they even trying to do not I want to put you in a room and for a day and a half I can convince you how great we are that was never the point is I

54:15

let's get in a room together and see if we can help you guys just reach agreement on what are you even trying to do and based on what you're trying to do

54:20

then we can explore whether we're a good partner for you but if you can't make that happen you're going to get these calls like we decided to go in a

54:26

different direction or if it were just up to me or it's it's maddening so the book's coming out in September but

54:31

you're you're already working with customers on on this it is it's through

54:37

workshop coaching stuff like that um the company we built around this is called A2B Insight and if anyone's read

54:43

Challenger Customer you'll know where that comes from but it's a it's a a insight technique not that it matters

54:49

sorry but the um I'm on LinkedIn that's probably the best way to find me is on LinkedIn i'm at brentbinsite.com um there's a whole

54:56

another thing which we could talk about either today or some other time but I'm we're so long now I'm guessing your listeners have all gone off the lunch

55:02

but the uh the uh but the other thing I become really interested in Dam something you and I chatted briefly

55:07

about is like so after the keynotes done so so this is all keynotes workshops

55:12

training that's how we're going to get frame making out in the world very much like how we got Challenge out in the world and I'm I'm super excited to talk

55:17

to companies who want this in front of their team and want to do training with us we're building the training now so if anyone's interested look me up let's get

55:23

it happening there's this other thing I'm doing which is called Q's q os and it's Q's.ai is the website and Q's is

55:31

irrespective of framing so Q's is content agnostic whereas framemaking is very much about the content q's is much

55:37

more about delivery which is you know the thing we all find very frustrating about training is that it's once and done it's event based it's sheep dip you

55:44

know it's and like and it never sticks so the idea of cues is what if we were to take all that training content break

55:50

it into sort of micro actions and take those micro actions and embed it right in the flow of work so it's it's delivered just in time to your sellers

55:56

as they need that help that to me is the other side of this I think super super interesting so it's kind of like a

56:02

one-two punch like worldass content frame making worldass delivery with cues and I'm really

56:08

busy i'll tell you man there's a lot going on no I mean we we I I might even

56:14

if you want to we should even just do a whole episode just talking about you know uh the important the value of

56:21

there's more than just a one and done when it comes to We should That's cuz that's your Bailey that's your your wheelhouse that's our sweet spot you

56:28

know exactly so that'd be fun that's a fun conversation we could maybe do on another call is is dig into that how do

56:34

we help adults not just learn but do and maintain and develop over time and get

56:40

better um because so much I think you would agree and I'll be careful I put it because I would imagine this is

56:46

something that frustrates all of us in the training and sort of skill building environment is how much time is spent and wasted on just like trying to get

56:54

people better and nothing ever happens right and it's it's it's maddening isn't it like and so it it is maddening i

57:00

think one of the things we you and I talked about before is the individuals and their leaders and again this isn't

57:07

just for sales i'm not just you know calling out sales here is them understanding the importance of of

57:14

getting better and continue i I call it like a learn it all versus a know-it-all you know a know-it-all they they already have all the answers figured out where

57:20

learn all knows that in order to stay relevant especially with all the stuff going on with AI and everything that you you got to be continuously learning and

57:26

and growing and evolving what's What's I mean Brent I mean you're you're awesome um and you're an amazing storyteller we

57:34

all know that my wife would tell you differently but that's not I'm kidding really does your wife tell like my wife

57:39

tells me I just tell the same stories over and over again all the time my wife tells me to take out the trash it's like

57:45

it's Tuesday get the trash cans out same same day same day for me man what is What is one more thing you could leave

57:51

us with either around sensemaking or your book uh uh frame making in sales

57:57

the um it to be a quick thought because the book will be out in the fall again we're doing keynotes training on it now i

58:03

would love to work with anyone everyone out there's got a sales force is looking to build these skills the one thing I would tell you is this and I I used to

58:08

say the same thing about Challenger and eventually I kind of lost the battle but people are already saying "Oh this

58:14

framemaking thing you're talking about you know is maybe that's the methodology we should adopt or adopt." And and the

58:20

the one word and I again I'm this may be like tilting at windmills but I'm trying very very hard not to use the word

58:25

methodology Damon u because what I find is the word methodology overpromises and underdelivers and it did the same for

58:31

challenger you people are sometimes frustrated with challenger because it doesn't help them with this or that or that it's like it was never meant to help you with that you know what I mean

58:37

it's it's a it's a way to engage customers in a really powerful conversation frame making is very much

58:42

like that it's it's a customer engagement strategy it's not how to run a better pipeline per se we think your

58:48

pipeline will get more healthy by doing this but it's not a sales process it's a And the reason why that matters is

58:53

because sellers can get really confused like what you just told me to do uh I don't know Wilson or Miller Heyman or or

58:59

you know um whatever it might be and now you're telling me to do Challenger do I do that or do I do this i think it's like a stop start or an eitheror and I'm

59:06

so much more interested in just getting these frame concepts sort of sprinkled across the top of everything everyone's

59:11

doing as opposed to saying stop everything you're doing do this instead did the frame making concepts work

59:18

for opportunities that aren't large complex deals yes um I abs I think they

59:25

absolutely do um that's a longer conversation because I think what you find is even in sort of more simple

59:30

stuff mhm i'm not talking about transactional i'm talking about something but actually even even there

59:35

though so I mean so this is actually how the book opens and I do this riff on stage all the time um there's there's

59:41

two kinds of people in the world Damon that there's what we call maximizers and satisficers is based on Konaman stuff he

59:46

won the Nobel Prize for and depending on whether which of those guy's a freaking genius right but

59:52

depending on where you fall in that continuum this story makes no sense or totally you relate to it but the brief

59:57

version is um it's it's shopping on Amazon so this is totally consumer very transactional you ever do that thing

1:00:03

where you go on Amazon maybe you're buying a new pair of gym shorts or a pair of like something stupid like a pair of socks or a dongle that I always

1:00:09

tell the story in terms of a dongle I need like a 5 in dongle to connect my USBC everything to my laptop because

1:00:15

it's like so fresh no big deal i go to Amazon i'm going to buy a dongle seven bucks should take five minutes you go in

1:00:21

you put in like I don't know in the search box dongle USB all that kind of stuff and Amazon says "No problem here's

1:00:26

1,500 options." Like "Okay that's overwhelming." And it's like I kind of knew that was coming but that's okay but Amazon's like "Let me help you narrow it

1:00:32

down that's really hard." So here's Amazon's choice or here's customers pick or here's top seller so I go to the one of those like "Okay it's got 4.8 stars

1:00:39

it's got 7 in dongle USBC great yep okay let's put on the cart you know hold on wait before I put in the cart let me do

1:00:44

one real quick thing let me just read a couple of these reviews to make sure I'm not a schmo and buying something stupid and if you read reviews Yep yep yep

1:00:50

sounds good good good good all right okay one last thing what there's a couple of these one stars let me just take a look at those one stars real quick oh you look at the one stars i do

1:00:56

that i do that right right right we all do this right like do not buy totally do that broken 30 seconds you're a chump if

1:01:02

you buy this you're thinking "Oh my god this is horrible i can't do this." And see oh god dodged the bullet there let me look at the next one that's 4.78

1:01:09

stars it's not quite the same and and and you know and all of a sudden like three hours later you're still on Amazon

1:01:14

shopping for a freaking gym shorts or a dongle or whatever is now you're really frustrated because like this was supposed to take five minutes now it's

1:01:20

taking three hours and you're getting really frustrated and you don't hate Amazon you kind of hate yourself right and it's like blessed right and you get

1:01:27

really annoyed and and and the sort of the way this story ends is like it's like Amazon's got a button and the

1:01:33

button if you press that button all the pain stops and everyone thinks the button is buy now but you can't buy now because you're still kind of caught in

1:01:39

the circle But the button they do have that makes the pain stop is save for later and if you press save for later

1:01:45

the pain stops you don't get your dongle but you don't have to deal with this anymore and you'll come back to it later and you never do and so the joke the

1:01:52

punch line of the whole story which is absolutely true is um I always say because I check on a regular basis because I tell the story so often but I

1:01:58

checked on my wife's Amazon account the other day and she has 582 items saved for later right you got to be careful

1:02:04

with that you don't want to hit buy all by mistake what what that's fair point millions and

1:02:10

millions of dollars but this is like super simple super transactional relatively easy you would think

1:02:16

purchases just like I'll just come back to later i got to look at this a little longer there's more here than I thought yeah I'll just it's I'm I'm not going to

1:02:22

do it right now and and so it again it kind of makes me wonder how does commerce still happen and if someone

1:02:27

were just say look dude like a lot of people out there travel like you do you know it's like it's it's probably one of

1:02:32

these three just buy one of you you'll be fine it's like all right that was it's like what are the three questions I need it's like if someone could help me

1:02:38

just and Amazon tries to do that a little bit with Amazon's choice but you're still overwhelmed now I'm going

1:02:44

over but what frustrates me is I'll have a selection that I'm ready to buy right

1:02:50

and even if I do look at a one star but then it says you know Amazon also recommends this so here are three things

1:02:55

you know and and I'm then I'm and you're off to the races again i'm off to the races again saying right need that right

1:03:02

it's like it it's so so the point so there's a long answer to your very simple short question which is does this

1:03:09

present and frame making work downstream from complex sales and I think this goes all the way in the B TOC and you see it

1:03:14

in B toC with things like real estate agents or one of the examples we use in the book is like it's been a while for

1:03:19

me but if you remember the first time maybe the only time depending on your perspective you bought a diamond ring for a spouse like I was 24 I was a broke

1:03:27

grad student I was borrowing money from my dad he took me to a jeweler it's like I don't know a bleeping thing about diamonds he's all right you know

1:03:33

industry standards there's four C's there's cut clarity and color and whatever the other carrots right and it's like all right so that's and so

1:03:39

basically took a framework said "Here's the trade-offs here's how to think about it you can get this for that you move this it's almost like a graphic

1:03:44

equalizer you can move them up and down and the price will change." And it it they take something that's so completely mind-bendingly new and overwhelming it's

1:03:51

kind of boil it down to like something you can at least manage so that you feel a little bit better about the choice so same thing with a real estate agent if

1:03:57

you're a new home buyer right and Brent let me just stop you right there my wife my wife's a real estate agent you know

1:04:04

an excellent one sometimes I feel like I'm a sales coach behind the scenes and I can't tell you how many times it's so

1:04:10

true and I'll let you carry on but it's like the buyers are just lacking confidence in themselves 100% you know

1:04:18

cuz that's a massive It's not a It's a massive decision it's a massive decision

1:04:24

and I would imagine if you were to ask your wife about this if she would and we're just run this by says "You would say anything like this." I got to

1:04:30

imagine more times than once in her career she said something to a young couple maybe it's a young couple buying their first home you know I've worked

1:04:35

with a lot of other young couples like you and I know it's really really overwhelming this is kind of a big event it's a scary event you know and you're

1:04:41

really worried about making the wrong choice what we found in working with young couples like you is it really kind of boils down to the these three or four

1:04:47

questions that seem to matter more than anything else number of bedrooms school i'm making this up at this point but you know it's like and I so what I've just

1:04:54

done is now I'm not so that's frame making and that's taking something that's big and hard and overwhelming and

1:04:59

putting a framework now if your wife were to show up and say "Hey guys I've been doing this for 20 years um I've

1:05:05

worked with a lot of young couples and let me tell you this is the house for you you need to buy this home right now." I think you're telling you're

1:05:11

telling you see what I'm saying you feel the difference between those two things right and that's the difference between telling and sensemaking or telling and

1:05:17

frame making and I think so to your point about I think there's a huge role for this framemaking idea in B TOC and

1:05:23

in transactional and down market and simple stuff and and I'm hoping you know

1:05:29

knock on wood this book takes off in anything close to challenger sale we'll see but I think if it does it's going to

1:05:34

be because people see in this story a very human interaction that rely I think that's important that as you're framing

1:05:41

this book that that that idea right there for real estate agents is huge right i'm not financial planners bankers

1:05:49

accountants lawyers all of it it's like all of those places where I feel like I I'm overwhelmed i don't know what to do

1:05:56

um is an opportunity for frame making and I think what's great about what we talked about before we went on um on the

1:06:03

air was at the end of the day if you could just make people feel a little bit better about themselves when it comes to

1:06:09

doing this I think that it's great well Brent you've been awesome i mean we talked about a ton of stuff you know

1:06:15

challenger sales to uh sense making i really like what your phrase in working

1:06:23

with other customers like you which is key for people maybe even going from

1:06:28

accounting to sales or right out of college into sales it gives them an opportunity to have a seat at the table

1:06:34

with uh senior VPs and and so much more you're awesome again the best place to connect

1:06:40

with you LinkedIn linkedin yeah and again I'm at at brent um a2binsite.com

1:06:46

which is hard for people to remember perhaps um so just LinkedIn's the easiest thing to do well thanks and then for our audience out there if you're in

1:06:53

sales at all or if you're somebody who struggles with uh confidence in your

1:06:58

decision-m uh or you know somebody who does send this uh episode to them i think there's a a lot of value uh I

1:07:05

can't wait for the book to come out in September the framemaking sale yeah it's out there already you can pre-order it

1:07:10

now cuz that helps the numbers okay well we'll get on it and uh you got to come back you're going to have to come back

1:07:16

okay okay i'd love to Damon thank you man all right everybody um as I always say stay curious keep learning have a

1:07:23

great day see you the customer experience is more um how you made the

1:07:28

customer feel it's the Maya Angelou line about they'll forget what

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