Burn The Playbook - B2B GTM Strategies with Marc Crosby

The Framemaking Sale: Build Buyer Confidence, Win Bigger Deals | Brent Adamson

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The Framemaking Sale for B2B sales. How to create buyer confidence, reduce regret, and win bigger, cleaner deals. Brent Adamson shares why “be helpful” beats “be the smartest” in 2025.

What you’ll learn

  • What “frame making” is and how it differs from Challenger
  • How to drive high quality, low regret deals
  • Where frame making plugs into discovery, objections, and coaching
  • Why differentiation now means reducing decision complexity
  • How to turn customer stories into practical buying advice
  • How to rethink buyer intent, NPS, and thought leadership
  • The role of AI in buying and why humans must solve for “feel,” not “know”

Chapters
00:31 Intro to Brent Adamson and the “crystal ball” joke
02:06 Why another sales book and how frame making differs from Challenger
04:44 Implementing frame making in training, discovery, and objections
07:50 What good sales training looks like in practice
09:39 Sense making vs frame making
13:42 Differentiation in 2025: from product to solutions to helpful
18:19 The four buyer challenges and the real enemy: exhaustion
21:34 Rethinking trust: build customer self-trust first
25:44 Better questions: “phrases that frame”
27:40 High quality, low regret deals defined
30:19 How to de-risk regret and align stakeholders
33:47 Where AI helps, where it breaks, and what sellers must do
38:57 Burn It or Build It: rapid-fire takes
47:30 One actionable tip for 2026 + where to find Brent

Who this helps

  • CROs and VPs of Sales under pressure to grow without discounting
  • Sales managers coaching discovery and objection handling
  • Enterprise AEs selling complex solutions
  • Marketing and enablement teams building content that actually helps buyers

Guest

Host

Keywords
frame making sale, B2B sales, buyer confidence, low regret deals, differentiation, sales training, discovery, objection handling, sense making, challenger sale, challenger customer, customer verified pipeline, enterprise sales, decision complexity, information overload, outcome uncertainty, objective misalignment, sales methodology, sales enablement, LinkedIn content, buyer intent, NPS, AI in sales #B2BSales #FrameMaking #BuyerConfidence #SalesLeadership #ChallengerSale #SalesTraining #EnterpriseSales #DigitalRebels #BurnThePlaybookframe making sale; Brent Adamson; Challenger Sale; Challenger Customer; buyer confidence; low regret deals; B2B differentiation; sense making; sales discovery; objection handling; customer verified pipeline; enterprise sales

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Digital Rebels Consulting (00:31)
Welcome in on Marc Crosby. This is burn the playbook. My guest today is Brent Adamson, who was one of the world's leading voices in B2B sales. He's the coauthor of bestselling books, the challenger sale and the challenger customer and a frequent Harvard business review contributor known for reshaping how companies sell and buy. He's been called the man with the biggest crystal ball and B2B sales. Brent has trained and spoken to thousands of commercial leaders worldwide. His latest book, the frame making sale offers a roadmap for staying relevant and driving performance.

world overwhelmed by buyers and AI. Welcome Brent.

Brent Adamson (01:04)
Thanks Marc, it's good to be with you.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:06)
Where did that come from, the biggest crystal ball in B2B sales? Is that something that a lot of people have said or is that one person, why not unpack that one if we can?

Brent Adamson (01:12)
You

As you you're saying that I I hear it out loud every once in and people do what you just did and introduce me. And it just occurred to me this time for the first time ever. If you make if you make it plural it sounds completely different. But that's a but in any case somebody said it on LinkedIn and I thought it was kind of catchy. So I just I took it. Yeah. But now that now when people use it in the introduction they make it sound like lots of people are saying that. So I'm starting to feel kind of dirty and guilty about it. So maybe I should change it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:42)
No, I like it when I first read it and I thought

that was interesting and I first read it didn't see crystal ball. I thought it was the biggest balls and be a B sales, but you know

Brent Adamson (01:50)
Like I said, you make it plural. sounds totally different.

It's like the biggest crystal balls and never let's move on. Can we fix this in post? We need to fix this in post.

Digital Rebels Consulting (01:55)
Moving on, so the frame making cell, let's talk about...

I think we'll leave it in. We'll take it out. ⁓ Why does B2B need another sales book today and how does the frame making sale differ from challenger sale?

Brent Adamson (02:06)
Probably I'm guessing I'm guessing we'll leave it in. Yeah, it's all good

So I think, I'll tell you what the sales profession probably doesn't need is another sales methodology, which is, I tell people I'm not looking to die on any mountain, but I'm certainly willing to do battle on a mountain. And the mountain I'm willing to battle on here is that the frame making sale as we've just published it.

is not really meant at all to be the next sales methodology. So it's not like stop doing all these other things, whether it's challenger or spin or any of them long list and start doing this instead. It's rather as you continue to pursue greatness or just goodness at whatever you're doing already, whether it's a homegrown methodology process or something off the shelf. The question I'm really more interested in is.

is the mindset. And this goes to the other part of your questions, like, why do we need another book in sales? I think there's just such a really interesting opportunity to, to, if not rethink, to reestablish, what are we even trying to do in the first place in sales? And in some ways, people who read the frame-make sales say it's completely fresh and completely new. And in other ways, people read it and say, this goes back to the dawn of not just sales, but sort of human interaction. And I think both of those things are true at the same time, but

in a world in sales where we're really trained and coached to show up and make sure our customers know something, you know, and specifically know something about us, know about our products or features, our ROI, certainly to know about our value. ⁓ There's this really interesting opportunity to say, what if there was something else completely different that we could go after in that sales interaction, which is not knowing but feeling, and specifically not changing the way customers feel about us, but changing what customers feel about themselves. And so that double jump mark from, and we can unpack this or not, it's up to you where you want

go with this, but that double jump from no to feel and from supplier centric to supplier agnostic that that's what I often call a double jump. Yeah, leads you to land you in a place where just nobody's talking about these kinds of things right now. And that felt like it was worthy of a book.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:07)
I agree. It makes a lot of sense. would say that the content that you put out is something that's probably not found in other books. At least that's kind of what I see. So it is unique in its sort of way. But I think probably some people put it in that category of a sales book. I don't put it in there. And I think even as you articulate in your book, it's not necessarily too, it's not the frame making mindset is not supposed to be a sales mindset. It's supposed to, it could lay on top of a, a MEDDPICC or a spin.

Brent Adamson (04:22)
Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (04:34)
And I think that's what you clearly state in your book. And I think it makes a lot of sense. ⁓ I think what most people probably would like to do, and maybe they did this with Challenger as well as, is take that book and implement it into their sales process. So I guess it doesn't seem like it's meant for that, but, it's probably more related to, guess, what's broken in sales training today. So how do you see this, I guess, being implemented into sales training?

Brent Adamson (04:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So a couple of thoughts, one is give us a call. ⁓ So we've developed a series of workshops that go with this. But what's interesting is we've, and it's even more than in the book, as we develop the workshops, we began to really think hard about the answer to your question, which is where does this plug in specifically to sales process, particularly in a traditional linear process. And again, in the book, yes, but beyond the book is where we really try to make connections. So, this chapter is really about just rethinking discovery and how we engage the customers in the discovery conversation.

This conversation is really about or this chapter is really about objection handling That would be for what it's worth doing and keeping track of home chapter six We don't think we say objection handling much or at all in chapter six But when we started building the workshop that goes with it realized this is this is absolutely 100 % objection handling chapter three is all about ⁓ Process you asked me a question offline and it may come up here Is this meant to be the process frame making and is that it's not really meant to be the sales process? In fact, we actually suggest that the better way to think about a sales process is an idea that's been around

for a while, which is using a customer verified pipeline and sort of moving customers. So your process isn't a series of sales actions. It's a series of customer demonstrated actions that you can document and that they feel good about. The reason why that matters in the frame making sale is because oftentimes customers themselves won't know what that process looks like. That's opening up an opportunity for you to coach them or guide them to that process. So it's.

It is, you know, we think like, here's our sales, traditionally we think, okay, do we have a sales process at all? Okay, let's map that out. And then, you know, then we got really enlightened about 10 years ago and started talking or asking about does our sales process align to the customer's buying process.

And then we got sort of one step further and said, what if the customers don't know what their buying process is and where we landed ultimately now in frame making is this place of what if you know the customer's buying process better than they know it themselves and that becomes an opportunity for you to coach or guide them through it such that they feel more confident, not you, but in themselves to go on that journey in the first place. so frame again, so that's where frame making is a mindset as a mindset sort of sits on top of all these things. And we talk, as you know, very tactically in the book. So this isn't just a big highfalutin sort of idea book. Every chapter.

we get down to real deep brass tactical ideas of how you'd execute on these things. But I think a lot of those execution tactics are, in many ways, things that some sellers may be doing already, just never really with this purpose in mind. And I think that's what's kind of cool about this.

Digital Rebels Consulting (07:26)
Yeah, I think so. And you you hear a lot of things as far as just sales training and how it's broken, you know, in a lot of cases, ⁓ you know, sales people don't get training at all, or it's very limited and you're, guess mindset, what should sales training look like? ⁓ is it something like a one and done process? ⁓ if it's a, know, Brent's world and you're leading a sales team, how would you train your, your, your sales reps?

Brent Adamson (07:50)
⁓

in small increments based on behavior and taking action and repeatedly reinforced by coaching and so all the things we've been talking about, you know, it's funny for years, but I think traditional classroom training in a lot of ways is it's event-based, it's one size fits all, it's once and done, it's not reinforced, and it's not tied to a greater sort of higher level purpose of why are we even doing this in the first place? And so as we all know, know, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve and all that kind of stuff, it just gets kind of lost. And I know this from my background as a teacher too.

You teach your students something and three months later they've completely forgotten it. Sounds like me parenting right now. It's like, I thought we talked about this. I how many times, either as an author, as a parent, or as a teacher, I've said, I thought we talked about this. So it's like, And so at the end of the day, I think what we're talking about isn't some sort of flaw in teaching or even a flaw in humanity. It's just our reality.

I think if we're thinking about helping really long-term change behaviors, one is we've got to do it repeatedly and in small increments and based on action and at the time of need. All those things are true. I think, you know, as you know, Graham Hawkins and I were building a project that really designed to do a lot of that in some really cool ways. But I think equally important and where the book plugs in is this question of like the why. I think people are far more motivated when they understand why they're doing something and not just that they're supposed to do something.

And that's where I think these two things become really important. So there's, there's design principles around what good training looks like, but, then there's this higher order question of like, why are you even trying to do this? what's your goal? What's your objective beyond simply sort of training for the sake of training.

Digital Rebels Consulting (09:31)
Gotcha. I think that's probably ⁓ the biggest challenge that most ⁓ sales leaders out there probably run into is that they think there's a magic wand. think that there's a book that can buy. They think there's a workshop that they can do and then all their problems are solved and they can, they can move on and then sales are going to be great, but it's obviously not the case. It needs to be done in smaller chunks. You talked about sense making in the past. Now we have frame making. Can you define both of those and you know what the, what the difference is?

Brent Adamson (09:39)
Yeah.

Sure.

So real quickly, sense making is a form of frame making is the way we think about it. let's start with frame making. Maybe this better way to play starts. So the premise of the frame making sale and really a lot of the research that I've been involved with for a while is that the single biggest driver of what we call a high quality, low regret deal. And we'll come back to that concept if you'd like. But sort of basically the single shortest, best, most predictable path towards growth.

is the degree to which customers feel confident in the decision that they're making on behalf of their company. So if customers don't feel confident, they're gonna choose not to choose. They're gonna buy into status quo. The reason why that matters is because customer's confidence arguably is under greater threat today than it has ever been. They're overwhelmed with decision complexity, information overload, outcome uncertainty, objective misalignment. These are all things we unpack in the book. Frame making, frame making is simply.

the process, the activity, you will, of helping customers feel more confident, not in you, but in themselves to navigate those challenges. So it's to take something big and hard and overwhelming, like let's say decision complexity. I've got to go talk to all these different people in my company. I don't know who's involved. I don't know what order to get them involved in. I don't know what their priorities are. There's steps that I didn't even heard. Like, wait, I've got to talk to the legal team on this? I didn't know that there was some new freaking requirement in GDPR Europe or whatever. So oftentimes,

Customers we find they just get so overwhelmed just think about navigating their own internal complexity And so frame making is this idea of how do I take that thing? That's big and hard and overwhelming in this case a decision process and put a frame around it Give it some guardrails and make say yes It seems like there's a lot of steps But it's really these five steps that matter most in this order and by the way number two is when you may not have thought about before so I can I can Bound it. That's the frame I can prompt you to think about things. Maybe you haven't thought of but inside that frame I'm still leaving you degrees of freedom to make your own decision

Digital Rebels Consulting (11:28)
Hmm?

Brent Adamson (11:46)
to follow your own path to make so I've made it easier for you without just showing up telling you what to do. And the reason why that matters is because again we're solving that for your confidence in me as an expert. Here's what you need to do. Rather we're solving for your confidence in you because that's the bigger driver of a high quality low regret deal. And so I've got to allow you to come to your own conclusions about what's right for you what questions to ask what steps to take. But I can make that I can make those decisions for you much easier by helping you feel like they're manageable. And that's the idea of a frame. Sense making

is this idea of frame making applied specifically to information, which is we live in a world awash with content. We all went down this road of thought leadership. We all want to be a thought leader. We've all got commercial insight or some sort of insight. We all have thought leadership. We're all producing tons and tons of quality insight. You I call this the smartness arms race. And we do that, by the way, in hopes of differentiating ourselves, which ironic because now we're all just really smart and customers are just really confused. And so.

What we find customers need today isn't yet more content. Hey, you know, Marc, I wasn't really sure what to do. But now that you've given me this white paper, I'm completely convinced. It's more like, my God, here's another white paper. Here's another website. Here's another video series like kill me now. I'm already confused. Now you just confuse me at a higher level. And so what you really again, somebody's big, hard, overwhelming and unmanageable. What if I were to, you know, as a seller, put a frame around to say, you know, and working with other customers like you, we find that yes, there's a lot of information out there. But for someone in your situation, it generally boils down to these three or four questions. And what we've learned

is that these five questions or these whatever the number is these the small number of questions is ones that you really want to get after first and by the way what we've been told from others like you is that these three pieces of content in this one website are the best ways to get after that so what I've done here is I've rather than showing up and saying here's another piece of content I've tried to help you make sense the sense making out of all of that content I've given you some guardrails to think about it so since making in that sense is a form or an example of frame making

Digital Rebels Consulting (13:40)
Gotcha. That doesn't make sense. Talked about differentiation. I I get it. I hope everybody else does. But you talk about differentiation. I think that word's thrown around a lot just as far as sales and we need to differentiate or we need to be different. I don't know. And maybe that's taken on different definitions over the years. And maybe that contributes to the noise just as far as, you know, sellers in the marketplace trying to be different and it just creates more confusion. So which should differentiation look like today?

Brent Adamson (13:42)
Thank goodness.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is, it was either gonna be the first chapter or the last chapter in the book. We ultimately decided to make the last one just because it's a pretty big idea. But even if I think Markover, I'm not super old, but I'm old enough. No one cares, but I'm 57. So I've been around, been doing this for a number of decades. And when I think about sort of the beginning of my career, at least in sales research, which was late 90s, early 2000s.

The big shift at the time then many will remember who were there was a shift from product selling to solution selling. Right. So the whole idea is we're going to compete. So traditionally, you know, if Todd Capone were here as a historian of sales, he'd tell me everyone was writing about that in 1911 and some weird manuscript that no one's ever heard of. And I love Todd for that. But, know, from my lived memory in 99, you know, like 98, 99, we're all trying to compete on my product is better than your product. It's got better features, better benefits. What happened in particularly in those years, the room is the dawn of the internet and all, know, the global economy and all that kind of stuff.

have been global before, but was fast followers, fast replication. It was relatively easy to replicate individual products with the speed that was heretofore unknown. And so it was very easy for individual products to get commoditized. Companies were saying, all right, well, if our individual products are being commoditized, the opportunity for differentiation there is narrowing. The window is narrowing. What we're going to do is we're going to find a new opportunity for differentiation by selling not just individual products, but solutions. So this is the dawn of solution selling. So we're going take these three products, snap them together and say one plus one.

one plus one equals four. The value is in the fact that they all come together. We're going to sell you on outcomes, things like that. ⁓ And so, you know, and a lot of the research I was involved with early 2000s, all about how to execute a solution selling strategy, how to put these bigger, more complex solutions together, how to go to market and articulate the value of the incremental value of the solution, that the, you know, the sum, the value of the sum was greater than the value of the sum of the, the value of the whole was greater than the value of the sum of the individual parts. And there it is.

Digital Rebels Consulting (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (16:00)
What happened then, I'm sorry, I've given you a long history lesson, which you lived through too, but it's actually kind of instructive. What happened then is companies went on and still to this day go on &A.

vendors, right? So we're gonna go out and buy think about UPS and FedEx one started with planes, one started with trucks. Now they both have planes and trucks. And by the way, they both bought a chain of stores, one bought Kinko's one bought mailboxes, etc. You remember them? So they have to you know, so basically, by building out their portfolios, they've started here and here and they converge to the same place. And so what happened was in an effort to differentiate themselves by selling solutions on products, they wound up commoditized on solutions, not just on products.

Digital Rebels Consulting (16:23)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (16:36)
⁓ into about 2011 or so people are now looking for yet a new way to differentiate and they realize maybe the way to differentiate is not based on what we sell but how we sell. We're going to go out and say really smart things. Enter the period of thought leadership that's right at that moment when Challenger hit and it was like lightning in a bottle. People grabbed onto that and said this is our ticket to differentiation. You fast forward another 10 years to 2020 and now everyone in the smartness arms race has kind of ended in a tie. Everyone's saying really smart stuff and now your customers are just overwhelmed.

Digital Rebels Consulting (16:51)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (17:05)
on too much information, decision complexity, all these other aspects that overwhelm them. And so the opportunity for differentiation today isn't that, it's still not what you sell, but how you sell. But in terms of how you sell it, it isn't just being smart, it's being helpful.

and is actually showing up and helping customers not just think you're great, but help them think they're right. Help them think that they're able, they're capable of making these decisions. And that's, no one's talking. This is literally why I dropped everything. I literally quit my job, because I'm an idiot, in mid-50s and put it all, I joke, I'm all in. I just don't know if I'm all in on red or black, but I'm all in on this book because I believe deeply that we're all walking past the single biggest opportunity to differentiate ourselves and win unfair share rents in the market that is higher.

Digital Rebels Consulting (17:22)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (17:47)
you know, more than our fair share. And that is by showing up and solving that for customer supplier perception, but customer self perception. That to me is the big opportunity to stand out today.

Digital Rebels Consulting (17:56)
Yeah, I think the, term adding value is probably way overused and we probably need to replace that would just ⁓ be helpful and simple as terms, just stop over complicated. And as far as what value is, because that means different things to different people. but just try to help them out. Just try to bring this some information that they haven't heard before, help them make a better decision. and all those things you talk about and your work as well. you had mentioned the, ⁓

Brent Adamson (18:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (18:19)
The four buyer challenges, complexity overload, misalignment, uncertainty, is there one that stands out as the biggest buyer challenge out of those four?

Brent Adamson (18:27)
I, you know, we had this big, long debates about this and writing the book and in some ways the answer is not necessarily, it depends a little bit of what's midsize account versus a key account. But one thing that seems to everyone seems to be struggling with, and it's kind of the sort of the Uber sort of challenge is just decision complexity. Cause all of it gets rolled into like, Oh my God, I just, you know, it's so I've gone out for years and asked people to think about a purchase in their own organization, senior executives, think about something you've bought with your colleagues over the last two years or so, whether it's, you know, IT system and consulting engagement, capital equipment.

Think about all the people involved, all the steps that took, all the steps took, all the questions came up. If I were to ask you for one word, one adjective to describe that entire experience, what would that word be? And I've yet to hear a positive word. Quite literally, I've asked tens of thousands of people that question mark on big stages and small rooms. I've yet to hear a positive word. I've yet to hear someone say, it amazing. I loved it. was collegial. It was cooperative. It's more like it was awful, frustrating, hard, long, painful. The F-bomb shows up every once in a while. The one that's most memorable, we talk about in the book is Chicago meeting with a of CMOs. CMO just bought a CRM.

system. took her two years with her colleagues. And you could tell she still had PTSD from it, not to make light of PTSD, but she like you could still see the like exhaustion and fear and frustration in her eyes and her word was

I never want to do that again. All one word, all jammed together. And you could tell like she legit never wanted to do that again. And yet she's going to have to do it again, maybe not for a CRM system, but for something else. And this is where we are with customers today is like, that's sort of the overarching challenge. It manifests in decision complexity and information overload and outcome uncertainty and objective misalignment. But this higher level challenge is simply exhaustion, resignation, frustration, confusion. And at some point you just think, I just, I just don't want to do that again. And as I was talking to the guys at Salesforce the other day,

Digital Rebels Consulting (19:48)
Hmm.

Brent Adamson (20:09)
when

I was at a Dreamforce, said, this is all of us. It's not just you, it's all of us. But imagine your sellers are showing up virtually or in person in the offices of potential customers today trying to sell a CRM system. And your sellers are now paying the price for your customers past bad decisions. That's what you're up against. You're not up against the competition. You're up against customers exhaustion and frustration.

And if you can't solve for that first, it doesn't matter how much they love your product if they can't figure out how to get that decision done inside their company. it's like, that's what happens. And the way that'll manifest, it'll show up and God knows I've heard this. I've heard this recently and painfully recently, like this week recently. But when that stakeholder looks at you and says, Marc, I love you, man. I love your product. I think it would have so much impact on our company. It delivers so much value. And I'll tell you, if it were just up to me, I'd buy it today.

Digital Rebels Consulting (20:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (20:58)
And then the deal crashes and doesn't because it isn't just up to them. that's because it's like if we're just up to me, I'd buy it today. Yes, 100%. But it's not just up to me and all that. That's not worth it. That's just I love you, man, but that's not worth it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (21:11)
⁓ And you mentioned maybe part of that boils down to just having trust and you trust in your solutions, trust in your organization. ⁓ And maybe we should revise sales just around that, one theme of trust. So how do you establish trust with your buyers? And I guess how do you even measure trust also, because that's one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about the linear process of, of sales and the funnel and something that I keep thinking about is.

Brent Adamson (21:34)
Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (21:40)
⁓ it's not, it's never linear and you've talked about this as well. And it kind of just boils down to establishing that trust. ⁓ so how do we measure trust and how do we know when we've gotten there as a destination, so to speak.

Brent Adamson (21:44)
Yeah.

So this is where, hopefully very diplomatically and with a lot of love and support for you personally, Marc, I'd love to reframe you because I think that this, what you just asked is actually the problem. And I say that with huge respect because goodness knows I've been part of this story too. We all are solving for the same thing. And I think we're all solving for the wrong thing is what we're all solving for is how do we get customers to trust us?

Digital Rebels Consulting (22:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (22:15)
How do we get them to trust me as an individual? How do we get them to trust our brand, our product? How do we get them to trust our value? And so that's what we do. show them, trust me, I've got 30 years experience. Trust our value. Here's the ROI calculator. Trust our commitment. Here's the five other raving fans who love it. But notice, everything we do in sales is specifically designed to solve for customers' perception of us, and specifically their trust in us.

And I was talking to Charlie Green about this the other day. He is the author, one of the co-authors of Trusted Advisors. So I mean, if anyone knows about this stuff, it's him. I told him, said, Charlie, just think, I think there's a different way to think about this. And I wanted to see if he was aligned to it. And lo and behold, he was, which is he's a smart guy. He's a great guy, the way. You should have him on your show. He's a really neat dude. the, ⁓ what if, rather than solving for trust in us as the primary objective,

We solve for customers trust in themselves as the primary objective. What if we help customers feel more like I can do this? We know what to do. We know which questions ask. We know what's right for our company. We know we're aligned. We know how to get aligned with each other. If you become the agent of customer self-trust, you will win their trust as a byproduct of that action. So in other words, the way I think of customers trust of you is not so much as the objective, but the byproduct. And that is complete. So it goes back to your first question, why write another sales book? Because nobody's thinking like this.

And yet I think it is absolutely the right way to think about it. It's like in that conversation with Charlie, he said, you know, it's kind of like a good therapy session. Like the therapist doesn't tell the patient what to do and get the patient to trust the therapist. The goal of the therapist is get the patient to make their own decisions and come to a place where they can trust themselves to take action.

And it's this is why this book, Frame Making Sale, is really a book about humanity dressed up as a book about sales because it's the exact same dynamic we're talking about here. It just feels so foreign because we don't talk about sales like this. We talk about sales as like we've got to make our value clear.

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:05)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Adamson (24:08)
We've got to make sure they understand you've got to be their trusted advisor. It's like, no, you got to be the agent of helping them feel better about themselves, trust themselves, more confident themselves. You're that trust in you will come directly as a byproduct of being the one seller that shows up like that. Cause no one else is. Do you buy that by the way? say that with conviction, don't I? But do you buy that? Does that ring true to you? Or do you think like dude's smoking something? I don't know what it is, but I want to get me some of that. Yeah. Tell me more. mean, yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:21)
Mm-hmm.

I think,

A little bit of both. I

think for trust, one of the things that I learned in a sales course that I took a long time ago was just asking questions and asking more questions. And then once that felt uncomfortable for me is asking more questions because I think if you're trying to establish trust and even to get to the root of why people buy,

Brent Adamson (24:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (24:55)
I think you have to, you just have to dig deeper into user, guess, a psychologist analogy that that's kind of what they do, right? They ask you questions or you tell them a problem. They ask you a question and they turn it around back to you and they ask you another question and they just keep asking you questions to immediately you arrive to that conclusion yourself and you have this aha moment ⁓ while you're sitting on the couch, so to speak. But I think that also works. Tell me if you disagree as far as just in sales is, you know, understanding why they would want to buy the product, what problem are they trying to solve and then kind of drill down into the why of.

Brent Adamson (25:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:24)
those buying, I guess, habits or reasons why they would buy. And I think once they come to that conclusion themselves, then it probably like the frame making sale. ⁓ you know, they have more confidence in themselves once they kind of realize like, this is the right decision based on all the questions you asked me. ⁓ I guess that does, does that make sense to you?

Brent Adamson (25:38)
Yeah.

I think so. think I put a, I was super interesting, right? I think I put a slight later and spin on it, but I think we're largely agreeing with each other. But what if you came to the table with a hypothesis of the types of questions they should be asking themselves, right?

Digital Rebels Consulting (25:44)
You

Brent Adamson (25:58)
And so rather so there's a different way there's there's different kinds of questions you could ask and there's different reasons why you'd ask questions. And I think that's where we get sort of that's where these things run into false positive problems. Right. So if I ask you like what's keeping you up at night hopefully we all agree that's just a horrible question. Right. It's the it's the educate me on your business because I was too lazy to do my own research sort of thing. Right. But if ⁓ have you talked to your manager about this it feels a little bit like an accusation. Right. But it all but but but I take that same question. What if I know that I

can't sell you unless I know that your boss's boss has bought in. So I might just say, you know, have you have you talked to your boss's boss about this? Because that's important. That kind of sounds like either like I've just given you an assignment or work. But what if I take that question and re articulate it as a piece of advice that I learned from someone else who's been in the similar shoes as my customer? We call this the phrase that frames and what if I were to say rather than saying, you know, Marc, I've been doing this for 30 years. One thing I found if your boss's boss is involved, ⁓ you were kind of toast on this. Have you talked to her about it?

that's not very helpful. But if I say it like this, the phrase that frames, say, you know, Marc, one the things we learned is it's actually kind of interesting in working with other customers like you and a couple that have struggled and a couple of succeeded. The one thing that seems to come up again and again is this multi-level problem.

And we found from a couple of customers who've managed to get this across the finish line and feel really good about it, they actually brought their boss in early and specifically around these two questions. Is that something that you've considered? we're learning from them that that might actually really matter. So notice I just asked you a question, but I asked you a totally different question, but to the same purpose.

Digital Rebels Consulting (27:33)
Yeah. And makes sense. One puts me on the defensive and the other one just kind of opens me up to kind of thinking about, don't know, have I asked my boss? But ⁓ it makes sense, at least the way you re-framed that question and it sounds a lot more eloquent. ⁓ You talk about in the book and you mentioned it before, as far as a high quality, low regret deal. So what does that mean? And I don't know. How do we know when we've established, I guess it's kind of similar to the question asked about trust. Like how do we know when you've gotten to the point of a high quality, low regret deal?

Brent Adamson (27:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (28:00)
to where we can go ahead and just sign the contract or knowing that they're going to get a buy-in and do the deal. I guess the other thing I think about, I had started to layer like three questions into one thing, because I'm just thinking about it. And I already lost my train of thought, but tell me more about a high quality, regret deal and how do we know when we got there?

Brent Adamson (28:11)
Sorry, it's all good. I do this too.

high quality, low grade deal.

So there's two ways to define high quality. There's actually multiple ways, I suppose, to define high quality, low grade deal for the purpose of our research. in sort of this outcome of customers decision confidence being the single biggest driver of high quality, low grade deal by far, there was a customer's perception. And the way we defined it in the surveys we ran to generate this finding was it's a deal where you didn't settle, but you bought sort of the...

You did you thought you were buying this and you didn't wind up buying that you didn't know it's for the maybe if there's anyone listening and so you didn't think you're going to buy something big and you want to buy something small but rather you bought the size or the scope of the deal that you originally planned if not even a little bit bigger. Maybe you invested in a couple extra services. In other words you didn't shrink it down. That's a high quality deal from from the customer's perspective and the lower grad assembly you felt good about whatever you decided you didn't have purchase regret as a result of buying the thing that you did. So you put those things and you asked those in there's three or four different questions you ask for quality

dimensions and a two or three questions you asked for regret dimensions and that gives you a regret score and a quality score need to put all that together mathematically and it gives you a high quality low regret score. I think from from a supplier's perspective a high quality deal is essentially is a deal that is aligned with your strategy right it's the deal that you're trying to do so it's like it's obviously status quo is probably not where you want to be unless when you're in a pure renewal based business then of course maybe it would be but the ⁓ if you're looking to expand is it expand by three percent or is it ten percent or five is it expand across geography

or is it expand across product business units or product lines or whatever might be word seats, additional seats or, know, so there's lots of different ways you can think about high quality, but for our purpose in research and what we're talking about here is simply a deal where the customer doesn't settle for status quo, doesn't settle for the small deal, but buys the bigger solution, the broader product and feels good about it at the same time, which ultimately is what we all care about in some fashion or another on the supplier side, because that's what's going to lead to growth. And so it's deals that lead to expansion.

Digital Rebels Consulting (30:15)
Gotcha. the question I was thinking about before that ties into that is the low regret part of that. And so I guess the example I was thinking of is kind of establishing that it will be a low regret deal for the longterm and not just the short term. And I guess the question I'm thinking is, like, you know, if I were to tell you, Hey, would you like some oceanfront property in Arizona? And you said, yes, absolutely. And then I, then I took a pause and like,

Brent Adamson (30:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (30:40)
Don't you want to see it or because I don't want you to have any regrets after this, you know, finding out that there is no ocean and there is, and you know, for enterprise deals, you want to have those, you know, long-term relationships and partnerships and you don't want anybody to, guess, have any regrets. So at what point, I guess, do you establish that we've, checked all the boxes, we've covered all our basis as far as you're not going to have any regrets. Your boss isn't going to have regrets. All those people that are in that multi-threading ecosystem. ⁓ everyone's good. I mean, how do you know like when you.

Brent Adamson (30:44)
Right. Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (31:09)
have that low regret and everyone's on board.

Brent Adamson (31:12)
So I'm going to put my nitpicky researcher hat on for just a second. It just sounds really annoying and say we can never really know anything. But I know that sounds annoying, but we can't. So the point of it, just to be fair to the research and to you and everything we're trying to say in this book, everything is about probabilities, right? So it's about how do we increase the likelihood of as opposed to how do we guarantee? And I think that's, you know, it's one thing we can easily gloss past, but it's actually important to remember. But here's the answer to your question one way or another, which is this idea of low regret. Remember, so what we're trying to derive from the research is

What are the drivers or the things that are most likely to lead to low regret? And it turns out it's these dimensions of customer confidence. So the question becomes if we can gauge and measure and ultimately what frame making sales about encourage or increase the customer's confidence across a purchase, then we are more likely to decrease the level of regret. So we can't we can't operate on regret directly, but we can operate on direct on regret indirectly through increasing confidence in those confidence dimensions. This all laid out in the book. But it'd be things like how confident are we that we've even asked the right

questions in the first place. How confident are we that we've done enough research, that we've thoroughly explored alternatives, that we're aligned not just on the supplier, but we're aligned on the problem and the solution. And so there's not only sets of questions you could ask, and we're working on this too, I think it becomes a really interesting sort of like exercise you can do with customers around, like you could literally on a scale of one to seven, how confident are you that you've asked the right questions? ⁓ But more important for a seller, I think you get into this question of

What are the right questions? Leonard, if you do your homework up front, working with previous customers that either wiped out or bought and are happy, then you can begin to ask them, like, what questions did you ask that proved to be the most important questions you ask? Who were the people that were most important to get involved? At what point did, so that I can, as I learn all those things, I can begin to identify.

We call this the established phase of framing. So you're establishing your coaching, you're establishing your framing. You can begin to identify what's the fingerprint of a more confident decision. What is the fingerprint of a decision that's less likely to lead to regret? And then you can turn that into advice. In working with other customers like you, what we found is there's really three questions that seem to matter most, or there's two people that need to be involved here. So again, rather than me showing up saying, hey, Marc, here's what you need to do, I show up and say,

Here's what we've learned. So I'm positioning myself as a co-learner with you. I'm on this journey with you, trying to feel confident with you. And we're doing that by using social proof from other customers and the lessons they've learned around things that have driven their confidence.

Digital Rebels Consulting (33:32)
Mm-hmm.

Gotcha. And how does AI, I guess, play into all of this? I think some people are probably just going to go to ChatGPT and they're going to say, hey, I'm in the process of trying to create a high quality, grit deal for this customer. Give me 10 questions I should ask them. Will it give me ⁓ good questions to ask or give me a bunch of hallucinations?

Brent Adamson (33:47)
Yeah.

It's a great question.

think I you know, one way to find out is to go try it. Honestly, I and I don't mean to be flippant about it. You know, I have I think like a lot of us have sort of mixed emotions about AI era, not about they're gonna take over the world. But I'm just in terms of using it, right? I asked I asked AI the other day, I was trying to get the annual revenue of a privately held company, asked AI and it says about $10 million as well. That's kind of small. I it was a lot bigger. And as though you're right, it's $100 million. Like, wait, what? You know, it's like

If I hadn't asked the second question and just gone with the first one I could have showed up and been a total jackass in front of that customer. It's like so as a 10 million

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:26)
So he goes back to my point

before, keep asking more questions.

Brent Adamson (34:29)
And see, that's the

problem. See, this is exactly right. So when you ask like, so if you read the framing sale, or when, right, is you're going to find AI, honestly, because we did this once, we did a word search on the book, the entire manuscript, and I think AI is in there twice. It's either in there once or twice. It is clearly not a book about AI, partly because we started long before AI completely exploded, but partly because that's not what we're trying to solve for. Because I think customers using AI and building RFPs and filling out column fodder and all that kind of stuff, they wind up in the same situation.

Digital Rebels Consulting (34:37)
Hmm.

Brent Adamson (34:59)
They wind up actually more confused not less confused because they change the prompt even slightly to get a completely different answer saying now No, do I do? It's like I wish I could just talk to someone I don't want to talk to sellers because they're just gonna try and sell me that pain in the ass, right? But I wish I could talk to other buyers I wish I could talk to someone like me who's already made this decision and what if then that became your opportunity as a seller It's not to show up as a seller but to show up as a connector to say, you know What I have is not my expertise what I have is my access to other companies like you and Share with you the stories of what they learned what they wish they'd done with what they have done differently

what worked for them, didn't work for them. And I think that's the thing again, we're all kind of walking past right now in terms of our value as a seller is our value in terms of access.

to other customers like the one we're selling to. Not so much our value as an expert. We're all trying to be a fricking expert. And so, particularly when we're young in our career or new in our career, we think, well, how am I supposed to sell successfully if I'm gonna do this for the years? I need to wait 10 years before I become an expert. It's like, you can go start figuring out right now what other customers have learned and share that and make your value differentiated by being the only one that's actually providing customers what they really want, which is social proof and access to other people like them and not just another fricking AI prompt that tells them something different yet again.

Digital Rebels Consulting (36:10)
Yeah, I hate it when I ask a question to chat GPT and then I challenge it and it's like, you're right. I didn't made that up. Why would you do that to me?

Brent Adamson (36:17)
Right. And well then it's really funny because I'll get, I'd say, do you ever ask?

It's really funny because I've done this. Like, so why did you, if it's that, then why did you tell me this? I'm well, you know, sometimes we make mistakes. AI is not perfect. It's like, am I seriously having this discussion with AI right now? I asked, by the way, this is true story. No, it's, I was.

I was ⁓ in writing the book, I wrote the book, I didn't use AI to write, because I love to write. Well, actually, I hate to write, but I love to write. It's a weird thing, long story. But anyway, so I don't.

And I don't even use AI to edit, but what I did use AI for was just citations. uh, and one was super easy. It's like, I got to a place where I was going to make a reference back to the Challenger sale. And I just needed, I needed the, the Challenger sale citation in Chicago manual style so I could put it in, you know, just put it in footnote. I don't want to go look up as things in an arrow. it a, you know, is it a period here in a comma or a period like last name? Well, I was like, so I asked chat GPT and actually asked copilot. I don't know if it matters, but I asked copilot, but, uh, it turns out, I know you knew this, but, the Challenger sale was written by Neil Rackham. I did not know that.

and so it's like that was ⁓ that's like are you sure because i kind of seem remember anyway so god love neil no no offense neil but he he didn't write the challenges he wrote the forward but not anyway yeah i love that man yeah so i i have i don't know if i trust we'll get there i'm sure we'll get there i don't mean to sound like a luddite but i i think where we're gonna get what's it but here's the thing if if chat

Digital Rebels Consulting (37:32)
Gotcha. Yeah. All right.

Brent Adamson (37:45)
If AI can solve for what customers need to know, I think we just discussed our limitations, but let's assume there aren't limitations and it gets better and better and better, which I'm sure it will, because the number of data centers that they're building here in Loudoun County, Virginia tells me it's going to get significantly better very soon, because it's all it is here as data centers now, right? But what that means is AI is going to get better and better at helping customers know things. And this goes back to our point from earlier in the discussion about differentiation. Well, if I'm trying to show up

is different from other sellers, but also different from technology. What can I do as a human being that technology cannot do, or at least cannot do very well? And there might be still a small but shrinking window of opportunity to help customers know something that AI can't help them know. But I think that window is going to slam shut pretty quickly across the next couple of years. But the window of opportunity that's going to remain open for the foreseeable future for me as a seller is to help customers not know something because then I'm competing against AI, but help customers feel something because then I'm competing.

in a blue ocean because neither sellers nor AI are doing that right now.

Digital Rebels Consulting (38:49)
Well said. ⁓ Our point of differentiation on the Burn the Playbook podcast is our segment called Burn It or Build It, which we'll jump into, which is our rapid fire questions. ⁓ I will throw out a topic and you tell me either to burn it or build it and maybe a brief reason why. number one, first, are you ready? Okay. All right. Number one, customer is always right.

Brent Adamson (38:57)
Okay.

Alright. Hold on. Okay, I'm ready. Yes.

Burn it. The customer is rarely right and they know it. And so you know more about how customers buy, who should be involved, what decisions should made, what information matters most than they do themselves. Use that to your advantage and become their coach and their guide.

Digital Rebels Consulting (39:17)
Burn it.

Nice. Number two, traditional sales training workshops.

Brent Adamson (39:37)
Well, as a person trying to sell traditional training workshops right now, I would say build it and build it like crazy and sell the hell out of them. But I would suggest, and I think we'd all agree that that is step, if not step one, step two, maybe there's a keynote in front of it, I'm sell those two. But you have to get the idea out into the world and socialize it and get people familiar with the tools. I think where you and I both go would be without long-term reinforcement and without a higher level why this matters in the first place, then it's insufficient.

So rethink it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:09)
Agreed. So we're split on that one and that's fine. Traditional acronyms like MEDDICC BANT SPIN all those things in sales, burn it or build it.

Brent Adamson (40:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

I drove a steak through the heart of Bant pretty aggressively about 15 years ago and it's still alive. ⁓ So happy to go on that riff if you want, but MEDDICC on the other end or MEDDPICC or take your flavor. I don't think it's a sales methodology. So don't, but, I do think as value, so don't burn it, but understand what it is and make sure that you don't build an entire house on that foundation. Cause it's not foundational is rather it's a qualified, it's a, it's a great rubric for qualification. is not a sales methodology.

And in any one of those letters of MEDDPICC is a reframe that's waiting to happen. I've built some of that content. So if anyone wants to be reframed on each of the letters of MEDDPICC, me a call because that's a rebuild it. That's what that is.

Digital Rebels Consulting (40:59)
Gotcha, a rebuild it. All right, we need to have a new answer. I don't know.

Brent Adamson (41:01)
Yeah. Is that a thing? I made up a thing.

Bant on the other hand, burn that thing. Burn that thing with like just put that in the solo stove and just let it go, man. It'll be gone in 30 seconds. Have you used a solo stove? Those things are amazing, by the way. Yeah. my God. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:07)
Burn it.

I do, have one, I love it. It's fantastic. It's so

efficient and it's great this time of year.

Brent Adamson (41:20)
You

go through like $500 worth of firewood in one night though because it burns it so fast. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, fly by. Fly by marketing. I'm ruining your game. Keep going. What's the next one? Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (41:26)
It works. It's effective. No, it's all good. Solo, so we're going to build that.

Discounts to win deals. So when it's all said and done, we're at the finish line, so to speak, and we're just going to discount our way to close the deal.

Brent Adamson (41:37)
Yeah.

You know, I don't know if I can get you 10 % discount, but I might be able to get you five. I just need to talk to my manager, but only if you act now. I think that's a bad way to go. I burn the heck out of that. However, I think there is, in fact, I just did this this week. It's not, I don't know if it's discounting, Marc, but it reducing the price while, while shifting the value commensurately. Do you see what I'm saying? It's like.

Okay, we need to bring it down by $15,000. But instead of being able to do this and deliver this value that we're gonna have to we're gonna have to re scope it such that the scope is now consistent with the price. don't know that that's discounting. So as long as there is a consistent relationship between value and price, then I think the price can go up and down as necessary. Obviously, we always want the price to go up, but the value should go up with it too. but but just discounting for the sake of discounting. That's a that's a slippery slope into really bad places.

Digital Rebels Consulting (42:25)
Great, so we'll burn that one so it's official. Company history and PowerPoints. And the reason why I asked this one at least is that typically we lead with the first five to 10 slides about our company history. We're 150 years old. ⁓ Burn it or build it.

Brent Adamson (42:27)
Yeah, we'll burn that one. Okay.

Burn the heck out of that one. This is old Challenger. If I had a long riff on this one, like, oh, you were founded in 1853. I thought you were founded in 1863. Well, now I'll buy from you. That 10 years really makes a difference. Right? Burn that.

Digital Rebels Consulting (42:51)
It changes everything.

Burn that, that was easy. was a layup. Thought leadership PDFs. There's a lot of thought leadership on LinkedIn these days. Burn that or build it.

Brent Adamson (42:58)
Yeah.

I don't know if you need to burn it, but I wouldn't build much more of it. This is where we, if customers are already overwhelmed with too much information, just pouring more information into the world doesn't really seem to be helpful. So rather what I would suggest is rebuild it, rebuild your content. This is a lot of frame making, a lot of the work we're doing with marketers is rethink your content strategy around being helpful to customers to make decisions rather than just giving one more thing to think about.

Digital Rebels Consulting (43:29)
It sense, goes back to being helpful. ⁓ For a number that says seven. ⁓ NPS as your North Star.

Brent Adamson (43:38)
Net promoter score ⁓ with respect to Fred Reichheld ⁓ I would tell you that see what we found in research. So this is burn it again with due respect to Fred. We have never met but burn it unless your North Star is retention and pure retention not expansion just retention. Net promoter score is a great indicator of likelihood of retention. As soon as you throw growth into the equation whether it's new logo acquisition or expansion of existing net promoter score is no longer predictive of an actual outcome.

Digital Rebels Consulting (44:06)
So it's slightly burn. ⁓ Yes. Yeah. Okay. Rebuild it. So you established a new category rebuild it. That's okay. That's why it's called burn the playbook. We can just ⁓ redo it as we go. We're burning our ⁓ buyer intent data. So this is very popular.

Brent Adamson (44:10)
Yeah. Rescope it. it. Burn it on the edges. Yeah. Burn it so it's smaller. Burn it. Burn it. Yeah. There you go. Anyway. Yeah. I'm completely blowing up your ear. I'm sorry. I'm not playing by the rules at all. Yeah. We just we just we just burned the playbook of the playbook of the yeah. And it got it. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (44:36)
There's a variety of different data points that people look to ⁓ burn that or build it.

Brent Adamson (44:43)
I'm about to do a keynote for 6Sense so I think we have to keep it. ⁓

I think so build it, but build it differently than you think you should. I think it's interesting. I really do. And I think there's more that we can learn there. One of the things we know from our research though, is that much of the consumption of content and activity online that customers engage in a purchase happens far earlier than you think. So to the degree that you think those intent signals are actually indicating process through a purchase and advancement through a purchase, they probably aren't. But the degree that you see intent signals as someone at the top of the funnel as maybe potentially ready to

Digital Rebels Consulting (45:00)
Hmm.

Brent Adamson (45:21)
go on that journey, I think they have some real value. To be totally honest with you, I think I've got a lot more to learn there. I'll raise my hand and say, before I pass judgment, I'd love to get smarter on it. we have to just be careful what we think that intention is telling us.

Digital Rebels Consulting (45:22)
Mm-hmm.

I agree. It's kind like the last one on an NPS. You just shouldn't put all your, you know, I guess eggs in one basket, so to speak. Final one here is LinkedIn post to buy buyer confidence. I'm sorry. Buy boost, boost buyer confidence.

Brent Adamson (45:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

⁓

I it feels like I'm not only living in LinkedIn all day, but sleeping there too. So the by the way, if someone wants to do it, maybe you could bring someone on the show and I could watch and we could talk about top of the funnel and just like the very top demand generation that has become complete mystery to me is like if outbound doesn't work, if inbound doesn't work, if content doesn't work, as I've said three times on this call today, you know what?

What does work? I read email or a LinkedIn post this morning. Apparently the guy was advocating for sending handwritten letters because it's so differentiated. Go back to your differentiation points. Like, well, artisanal, but maybe effective. So I'm placing a pretty big bet on a high level of activity on LinkedIn right now. And I absolutely see it helping, but it's hard to imagine it's going to help at scale, which is so...

I don't know. don't. To me it's hard for me to say burn it unless I had an alternative, a clear alternative and I don't. So for me it's build it.

Digital Rebels Consulting (46:50)
guess you could tie it back into the know the frame making Mindset and just be helpful. So if you're gonna put content out there Make be helpful and just don't repeat all the same stuff that everybody else is saying

Brent Adamson (46:58)
Yes.

I've been saying to marketers for years, it's not

your content that matters, it's the content of your content. So they worry about chance. your question was a channel question, should it be in LinkedIn or somewhere else? my answer would be, what it really would be is, it doesn't matter. It's less important where you put it, and more important is what you put in it. Like, what is the content of your content? It matters more.

Digital Rebels Consulting (47:18)
True. Well said. That's the end of the burn and rebuild it. You get the final, the final word today. ⁓ actionable tip for a sales leader that they can implement today to help drive better sales for 2026.

Brent Adamson (47:30)
One thing, whether you're a seller, a sales manager, a marketing team, sales enable any of us, and all of us probably could and should do is a tip we lay out in the book and something we found as a best practice number years ago at CB, which I think is super cool. It goes sort of under the idea of rethinking customer testimonials. So when you go out and talk to a customer and find looking for a customer testimonial, happy customer raving fan, and usually we do that so that they can go talk to potential customers and tell them about how much they love us, right?

is like how much value they got from us, all the great things about us. And so, okay, now enough about me, here's someone else to talk about me, right? ⁓ A totally different way to think about those happy customers or customers successfully bought is if you were to sit down and have a conversation with them, ask them, so this someone has managed to buy your solution, going through the long slog and cross the finish line, ask them if you had to do it all over again, the buying journey, what would you do differently to make your life easier? How could you have made this process less painful, a little bit more efficient? How could you?

What would have had to have happened such that you come out the end the other end saying, I never want to do that again, or I actually, wouldn't mind doing that again. And don't make it about me and our company, just make it about your own company. And then whatever they say, that's advice. That is raw material for frame making. And then use that in the perspective customer and saying, and working with other customers like you, one of the things we've learned is, that, so rethink your customer testimonials and asking questions like, if you had to dwell over again, what would you do differently?

Or if you had to do it all over again, what would you do to make it easier? Or if you were about to give advice to someone else about to go on a similar purchase journey, what advice would you give them to make their life easier? Super tactical idea. You can do that at any level of the company. And I think what you're going to learn becomes raw material for incredibly powerful frame making.

Digital Rebels Consulting (49:07)
Nice. Love that. Well said. And where can people find Brent to set up a frame making workshop for 2026?

Brent Adamson (49:16)
The I'm the frame making sale.com is the book website or if you want to take the off frame making sale.com will take you to the same place. I'm on LinkedIn. Those are probably the easiest places to find me. I, know, if you happen to be in Northern Virginia and let me know and we'll go out and get a Chipotle bowl. Oh my God. I don't know about you, Marc, but I eat Chipotle eight days a week. So it's, it's, it's, it's not good. Yeah, I know it's not good. So this is why I need more workshops to sell. Cause I got to fund my Chipotle habit. Yeah.

Digital Rebels Consulting (49:44)
Good stuff. Well, thank you for joining us on the Burn the Playbook podcast here and appreciate your time.

Brent Adamson (49:50)
Cheers everybody.

Digital Rebels Consulting (49:52)
All right, cheers.


Head Shot

Marc Crosby - Digital Rebels

Host
Head Shot

Brent Adamson

Guest