ETL 48: Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt on How Framemaking Changes Selling

Transcript:  Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt with Bob Buday

Bob Buday: Great to have you, Brent and Karl, on our podcast. Brent, we’ve talked before—I think it was two years ago, right?

Brent Adamson: Or a year ago. It might even have been more recent than that, Bob. Either way, it’s always great to see you. Thanks for the invite.

Bob: You’re one of our most popular guests—I look at the data. Karl, you’re new to Everything Thought Leadership. You two are publishing a book next month—we’re at the end of August now—and it’s a great book. I’ve read the preview copy you sent. Let’s talk about the genesis of the book: why you decided to write it, the big need in the market you’re trying to address, and how you worked together to develop it.

Brent: Karl, why don’t you take this, only because we were asked this question last week at a workshop we ran in California. I started the answer with “When I was young…,” and Karl jumped in—so Karl’s got the shorter version, but it’s a good one.

Karl Schmidt: Real brief, Bob. Brent had the ideas for what this book became rattling around in his head after many years of researching B2B buying and marketing. He’d been turning a very successful, influential keynote he delivered around the world into a 300-page book that pushes and pressure-tests the ideas. 

That’s when he asked me to get involved. Brent and I have worked together for years, and I was thrilled to dive into the hard questions: Why are buyers struggling so much? Why do you so often hear about “win-win” deals—buyers convinced of the value, sellers able to deliver, ROI compelling—yet roughly half of those deals still die with no decision? 

The question is why this happens—and, more importantly, what we can do about it. Brent was on this journey and said, “Karl, help me think this through and turn it into something that can change the world.” That’s how he convinced me to join him. Fair summary, Brent?

Brent: Spot on. Bob, I think you’ll appreciate this: Years of research at CEB [Corporate Executive Board] and then Gartner—Karl and I have been out of Gartner for a while and have taken different paths—but over that time we were involved in lots of studies and lots of publicly accessible data. We had a big pile of compelling datapoints—but that’s all it was: a pile.

Where you live and breathe thought leadership, it’s not just about generating research; it’s three things. First, lateral thinking—connecting findings across domains: “We saw this here, we heard that there; a head of sales said X, a buyer said Y,” and things begin to coalesce. Sometimes you force it; sometimes it happens while you’re walking the dog.

Second, naming. Giving something a name is incredibly powerful. I can tell you exactly where I was—walking the dog up the block—thinking, “So much of Challenger was about framebreaking—helping customers think differently. What we’re talking about now is framemaking.” Once you get those binary pairs—frame-breaking, framemaking—they click linguistically and narratively. 

Then you can build the story—the wrapper around the data that makes it compelling. Honestly, walking the dog is the single best place to do thought leadership storytelling: when you’re not “doing the thing,” your mind runs systems in the background. I started presenting this, it clearly resonated—customers said, “No one’s talking like this.” That’s when I pulled in Karl. That’s the long answer—I’ll stop before I start the “When I was young” version again.

Bob: You two go back a long way. You were both at CEB, and then when CEB was bought by Gartner—what was it, 2016?

Brent: Close—2018, I think. Feels like forever ago.

Building ‘Decision Confidence’

Bob: It seems to me the core idea of the book is that B2B buyers struggle mightily to buy complex offerings—consulting services, the Accentures of the world, technology, legal firms, and more. Salespeople have an opportunity, if they can help the buyer frame the decision better, to help the buyer become a more sophisticated solver of the problem they’ve come to your company to address, at least in part. Fair summary?

Brent: Yes—and I’d add this: Buyers don’t just struggle with buying; they struggle with deciding. We call this “decision confidence.” From our data—what you and I discussed last time, Bob—the single biggest driver of a high-quality, low-regret purchase (where customers buy broader scope, bigger solutions) is the degree to which buyers feel confident in the decision they’re making for their company. 

Here’s the interesting bit: It’s not confidence in you—the trusted advisor with great products and people—it’s confidence in themselves. “Have I asked the right questions? Done sufficient research? Considered alternatives? Am I thinking about the problem the right way?” 

Layer after layer of potential uncertainty. I can think you’re better than the competition—100%—but if I’m not sure I’m even solving the right problem, it almost doesn’t matter. You wind up with the customer’s #1 solution to their #3 problem, and then they say, “We need more time,” or, “We’re going in a different direction.” Framemaking is about helping customers feel more confident—not in us, but in themselves. No one in B2B is really talking about that.

Re-defining the Role of Sales

Bob: Is that because most salespeople don’t see it as their job to help customers figure out the basis on which they should buy—or even how to crack the problem the product or service will help solve? 

Karl: There’s definitely a role-definition issue. A big part of the book is the role of sales, especially with AI emerging. We argue for a mindset shift. The framemaking mindset is: Help the customer make the best decision they can in as little time as possible. 

That’s different from how many sellers saw their responsibilities. It’s still necessary to identify fit and value—much thought leadership focuses there—but to overcome indecision, we must build confidence in decision-making. That’s context-dependent: buyers navigating internal processes, consensus across visible and invisible stakeholders.

The sellers who are crushing it already appreciate this: The customer must make a decision on what’s best to buy at all, not just “buy from me.” In workshops last week at a large tech company in California, we saw initial skepticism turn into recognition as sellers mapped this to the struggles they see every day.

When Framemaking Works the Best

Bob: Are there characteristics of purchases where framemaking is particularly suited—large-ticket, highly complex, lots of vendor options? I’m thinking of the decision to buy generative-AI tools: many choices, where to use, where not, how much to spend. Are there purchase profiles where this is especially helpful for both salespeople and customers?

Brent: Yes, and it’s nuanced. The book focuses on large, complex B2B purchases—capital equipment, consulting, business services, IT. 

We see four significant challenges that undermine confidence: decision complexity (scope and stakes), information overload (which applies even to “simple” decisions—have you ever gone down a rabbit hole buying socks?), objective misalignment (more people = more misalignment), and outcome uncertainty (implementation risk). 

It doesn’t matter if I show you amazing case studies. Customers often say, “I believe you got those results at those companies. But we’re different—and we’ll find a way to screw this up.” They don’t doubt you; they doubt themselves. This is true in complex deals and shows up in simple ones. 

Some of us “satisfice;” others maximize—depending on stakes, personality, context. You start buying a simple USB-C dongle [on Amazon] and three hours later you’ve compared 4.10 vs. 4.12-star ratings and hit “Save for later.” The upshot: frame-making is valuable in any purchase where customers struggle to decide—especially complex ones.

The Best Thought Leaders are Storytellers

Bob: One thing I picked up from your book is the explosion of information. You write about an explosion of quality thought-leadership content—though I’d argue with the “quality” part.

Brent: We should talk about that—absolutely.

Bob: In surveys we’ve done of executives who read thought leadership to decide which firms to shortlist, most say the content isn’t very good. Edelman and LinkedIn studies find the same. There’s been an explosion of content, but the quality bar hasn’t risen—often it’s worse. 

Everyone thinks, “We need a thought-leadership section” [of their website], then publishes superficial white papers and calls them thought leadership. Yes, there’s more content—on any topic—than five or ten years ago, which confuses people.

Karl: We’ve looked at this for well over a decade. Quality is subjective, but there have been objective improvements in sourcing and insight—and the bar keeps rising. What differentiated in 2010 won’t in 2025. Readers compare to today’s best, not 2010 standards. The recurring finding—even in Edelman’s recent work—is that the #1 driver is understanding my business challenges and context. 

Thought leadership often falls short because it doesn’t appreciate the audience’s context. Too much of it is brand-building: “Look at me. Look how smart I am.” In consulting—BCG, Deloitte, where I worked—that dynamic differs from typical B2B. 

But our research shows that “how smart I am” doesn’t move purchase outcomes much. We distinguish between thought leadership and commercial insight. Brent, do you want to add that distinction?

Brent: At the risk of provoking your audience—what if we thought of ourselves not just as thought leaders but as storytellers? Some will embrace that; others will recoil because they see themselves as researchers. Quality ideas don’t matter if you can’t move someone to act. 

When customers say, “It wasn’t good,” they rarely mean sample size; they’re reacting to how it made them feel. That’s the big opportunity: narrative. Thought leadership helps customers feel you’re smart. Challenger helps customers feel they’re wrong. Framemaking helps customers feel they can do this. 

Ask not only “What do I want my audience to know?” but “What do I want them to feel?” Otherwise, you’ll pile on more data—solving for “degree of knowing” rather than “change in feeling.”

Making Big Ideas Scalable and Practical

Bob: I define thought leadership differently than many: as a business strategy—especially for professional services—where research produces a superior idea that becomes a scalable service. Thought leadership research should fuel service innovation. 

I worked at a firm that created the biggest management concept of the ’90s: business reengineering, which created a big market that other consulting firms scaled better. I equate thought leadership with service innovation and service excellence: making the ideas practical. Many who read “The Challenger Sale” never called CEB; they just tried to implement it. Whether they succeeded is another issue—but the book made it practical.

Brent: Right. CEB later sold the Challenger training business—after the Gartner acquisition—to what’s now Richardson. The IP has been on a journey.

Bob: My broader point: If you can’t deliver on the promises that you made in your book or [Harvard Business Review] article with consistent service quality, someone else will. Your first and second books made Challenger practical.

Brent: And “The Framemaking Sale” does too. It’s one reason I invited Karl in. From the start, our mandate was big ideas plus brass-tacks tactics. Every chapter is “Here’s the idea—and here’s what to do.”

Karl: Exactly. Strategy ideas are great, but if they stop at “think differently,” impact is limited. At CEB, I led 50+ researchers to identify best practices that turned insights into Monday-morning actions—what heads of sales, enablement, marketing, or content teams should do differently. That’s the core of framemaking: introduce the insight and how to apply it.

Bob: And some customers will say, “Great way to think about this; we can handle it ourselves.” You’ve still added value by changing their framing.

Brent: It’s a double-edged sword. For the book to take off, it must stand on its own—immediate payoff. At the same time, there’s more meat on the bone, which is where our workshops come in. Thought leadership must deliver value now and create grounds for ongoing engagement. Balancing that is tricky.

AI and Decisionmaking

Bob: Let’s talk generative AI. Is it creating complexity for chief sales officers? Are customers using ChatGPT, Anthropic, etc., to figure out what to do—so you’re not even getting called? Are you hearing about lost leads because buyers use chatbots to self-solve?

Karl: Yes. In last week’s workshop we had participants do an exercise: “Imagine you’re the customer. Ask AI the key question driving your decision. What comes back?” Few had actually done this. 

The newest hire—fresh out of college—had, unsurprisingly. Most first looked for “Where does our company appear on the list?” But the bigger point is how AI responses affect confidence. Even with specific prompts, AI sends you to many sources and raises questions you didn’t know to ask—nudging many of us to maximize rather than satisfice, especially in consensus decisions where we fear others’ judgment: “Did you do enough research?” 

At this stage, AI often exacerbates indecision more than it cures it. Over time this may change, but right now it opens more avenues to over-evaluate.

Brent: And tweak one variable in your prompt and the output can flip—“Buy vendor A” becomes “Buy vendor B.” Confusing and overwhelming. 

I tried to buy artisanal, human-grade dog food—used AI to build an RFP—and at the end I thought, “I just need to talk to someone—like other dog owners.” That human context is missing, for now. 

The backdrop: In Gartner research, around 75% of B2B buyers of complex deals told us they’d prefer a rep-free experience if possible. That doesn’t mean a human-free experience. They don’t want to talk to a seller because of perceived incentives—but they need help sorting it out. 

The heart of frame-making is: What would it take to be the one seller customers want to talk to—because interacting with you makes them feel better about themselves?

Framemaking’s Key Players

Bob: Beyond the chief sales officer, who else plays roles in a frame-making sale? Marketing? Market research? Though leadership research?

Brent: Yes. Karl and I talk about this a lot.

Karl: At the core are the three E’s. First, Establish the frame: the guidance sellers will use to help customers overcome complexity. That often means frameworks—maturity models, processes, two-by-twos (think Porter’s Five Forces, BCG Growth-Share Matrix). 

The more involved the framework, the less an individual seller can or should build it alone, so sales enablement and marketing are key. On the other end is framing without a framework—a simple nudge. If involving procurement earlier will help the customer navigate their journey, a seller can suggest that on their own. 

The complexity of the framing dictates who needs to be involved. Then Engage: Whoever faces the customer—seller, account manager, customer success, sales engineer—uses the framing. Finally, Execute: Carry the framing across the whole buying group, over time, to close. It takes a village.

Brent: On that second E—Engage—customers interact via human and digital channels. So beyond building the frame, map touchpoints and deploy frame-making across them. In the later chapters, we discuss levels of framing—“just the facts” vs. subjective guidance—and which are better human-led versus information-led. It gets subtle, but the main point is this is a team sport.

The Magic Quadrant’s Pitfalls and Opportunities 

Bob: Say you’re a mid-to-large tech or tech-services firm that doesn’t like where you appear in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant: lower left. You think it’s unfair, that the criteria aren’t the right ones. 

If you created a different frame for how customers should judge providers, you’d use a different set of criteria that you genuinely believe are better—not to bash competitors, but to help customers evaluate differently. Is that an example of where frame-making applies?

Brent: Funny you mention it. There’s a very similar example in the book from a cloud-services company called Expedient. There are a couple of approaches. 

One is to launch your own competing framework—“Don’t look at the Magic Quadrant; look at our model.” That’s tough. Gartner’s brand is strong; at best you reach parity, but buyers won’t stop looking at MQ. 

The better move is not to run away or react against it but run at it. Acknowledge it: “If you haven’t seen the MQ, it’s worth a look—interesting way to think about this market. In working with companies like yours, we’ve found a couple of considerations not fully baked in that may change how you evaluate. Keep these two extra dimensions in mind.”

That’s framing the framework using prompting and bounding, backed by social proof. You’re not saying, “Trust me, I’m smart.” You’re saying, “Others like you have learned X.” Competing framework vs. framework is usually a losing battle—especially against a neutral-perceived third party like Gartner.

Bob: And Gartner appears neutral.

Brent: Exactly—especially when you’re a supplier and perceived as not neutral. So don’t say, “Ignore the MQ; use ours.” Run at it.

Bob: Karl, same view? I hear Brent saying: Don’t bad-mouth the dominant model; show where it may miss considerations the customer should weigh.

Karl: Yes—add a lens. In Expedient’s market, “You don’t get fired for buying IBM” still echoed. Rather than create competing videos or a rival model, Expedient said, “If you haven’t watched these two IBM videos, you should—they frame the challenge well. As you watch, keep these one or two questions in mind.” 

Those questions were the ones that differentiate IBM’s solution from Expedient’s. The sooner a buyer recognizes the right question, the sooner they conclude, “Our best answer is Expedient—let’s talk,” or, “It’s IBM,” in which case the seller disqualifies early and moves on. Everyone wins by getting to the best answer sooner.

Expedient: The Power of Humanity

Bob: Let’s talk a little about Expedient. Two or three minutes on that example—it’s core in your book. They’re a cloud-services company—say more.

Brent: Expedient is a North American cloud-services provider. Headquarters are a Pittsburgh/Columbus, Ohio combo. I’ve known the CEO, Brian Smith, a long time. He’s one of the smartest commercial leaders I’ve met. 

He used to run sales. I’ve heard him tell the Expedient salesforce many times: “We have one job: help our customers make the best decision they can in as little time as possible.” Inevitably someone asks, “What if we do that and they choose the competition?” Brian answers without missing a beat: “That’s the second part—if I’m going to lose, I want to lose early—and I want to lose while being helpful. When they make the next decision, I want to be the first call because they know how we show up.” 

In a world where buyers can learn features and benefits on your website—or via AI—how you show up as a human is the differentiator. That posture is a huge reason I respect him.

Bob: That posture also counteracts the buyer’s suspicion: “If they’re telling me how to frame the problem, it’ll be skewed to their product.”

Brent: Right—and look at who Expedient faces in cloud computing. If I asked you to name 10 cloud companies, Expedient probably wouldn’t make the list. We can all guess the top four or five—massive brands with huge salesforces. 

Brian’s play is humanity. Not to imply competitors are inhuman—but that’s his differentiation: “We help you decide.” That’s not how most companies show up.

Bob: And that’s led to impressive growth at Expedient.

Brent: It has—and a promotion for Brian.

Be a Jedi – Not a Darth Vader

Bob: Good stuff. What haven’t I asked about frame-making that I should—especially as it relates to thought-leadership research and how marketing gets clients to read a hopefully good piece of research?

Brent: In your prep questions you raised what I’d call the burden of proof. If I’m a vendor providing a framework, won’t I be perceived as biased? To some degree, yes. But you can make your framing more objective. 

The #1 lever is social proof—right out of Cialdini. People want to know what others like them do. In thought leadership this becomes sample size—but it’s more qualitative than quantitative. Your value comes less from expertise and more from access: hundreds or thousands of companies like mine. 

Aggregate, synthesize, and narrate what they do—so you’re a connector, not an authority. It’s counterintuitive, but framing from access resonates far more than framing from expertise.

Bob: I agree. Michael Hammer—God rest his soul—the guru of business reengineering, would tell us and reporters: “I didn’t invent it; I discovered it—through case research with hundreds of companies. The best did this; the worst did that.”

Brent: There’s humility in that—versus swagger. “Come with me on a learning journey,” not “Do what I tell you.” Word choice and narrative construction matter as much as content for how people feel. That’s how you become a Jedi, not Darth Vader.

Karl: Well said. Jedi it is.

Bob: Hammer never started with reengineering. He opened with three or four real cases—Ford, Mutual Benefit Life, IBM Credit—stories of quantum improvements in quality, cycle time, cost—before ever saying the word.

Brent: Exactly—social proof. Lead with access.

Taking Customers to the ‘Dark Place’

Bob: You’d be 20 minutes in and riveted by examples, thinking, “I want some of this—what’s the common thread?”

Brent: That’s breaking down the A before building the B. We introduced this in “The Challenger Customer” [book] and named our company A-to-B Insight. Many researchers in the back of the room think, “Get on with the finding!” But without context for why it matters, the idea won’t land.

Karl: At peak we had 50+ people on major studies—months of work. Brent (or our headliner) was involved throughout but especially in the final mile—crafting the story to earn attention in an info-saturated world. Audiences came to expect the “rational drowning”—feeling the pain—before the solution. Brent, you call it “Take them to the dark place.”

Brent: Right—bring the pain. I once asked a room of heads of sales to share a story on a “pain” page. One said, “I’m not saying a word—you’ll just tell me I’m wrong on the next slide.” They figured me out. Big takeaway beyond “buy the book”: in thought leadership, narrative construction is as important as content.

What’s Next

Bob: Where are you going with A-to-B Insight? Building the next CEB—a billion-dollar research and consulting firm?

Brent: You’re making Karl tired just thinking about it. Karl?

Karl: There are big ideas here. That’s why Brent convinced me to join. We wrote the book to help people; books aren’t for getting rich, as you know, but for impact. Some help must go beyond the book—keynotes and workshops for early adopters. 

Ultimately, A-to-B will build the next research engine. Decision confidence requires longitudinal data we don’t yet have. Primary research is expensive; we want to get the band back together. 

For now, we’re focused on helping as many as possible through workshops and hands-on work: Where are your customers struggling, and what framing will make the complexity manageable?

Bob: So it’s about here-and-now problems—like Expedient breaking through the mass of huge cloud companies (AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Google). How do we break through the clutter?

Brent: Exactly. And as for Karl and me—there’s another podcast in how we collaborate. We debate ideas a lot, productively. We don’t measure success in dollars—though I’ve got two kids in college. We measure impact. We’re here a limited time. If the things we put into the world have positive, scalable impact—that’s motivating. This book is humanism brought to sales. I hope people don’t reject that; it’s powerful.

Bob: I love that—impact over money. We just played a video clip from a podcast interview we did awhile back with Dave Ulrich, the University of Michigan professor and [chief human resource officer] guru.

Brent: That’s why the name sounded familiar—[the University of] Michigan.

Bob: He said he cares far more about impact than monetizing IP—he wants to know his work has impact.

Brent: You can’t take it with you. The question is what you leave behind.

Bob: This has been very informative. Your book is great. I recommend it to our audience.  And the audience can learn more at your website—A-to-B Insight?

Brent: AtoBInsight.com, and TheFramemakingSale.com. I’m very active on LinkedIn, too. Feel free to connect.

Bob: Very good. Thank you for a great conversation.

Karl: Thanks, Bob—appreciate you. Thanks for having us.