When Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt sat down with Steve Benson on the Outside Sales Talk podcast, they delivered a perspective on B2B selling that most sales professionals have never heard articulated before - and one that may fundamentally change how you think about why deals are won and lost.

As co-authors of The Frame Making Sale and former leaders at CEB and Gartner, Brent and Karl have spent decades researching what actually drives complex B2B purchases, and the answer isn't what most sellers expect.

What makes Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt sales insights so compelling is that they're backed by data from some of the most rigorous commercial research ever conducted. Their findings challenge the entire premise of modern sales methodology - from Challenger to value selling - by revealing that your real competition isn't your competitors. It's your customers' own overwhelming fear of making a bad decision. The framework they've built to solve that problem, frame making, is practical, teachable, and grounded in behavioral science.

Here are the biggest Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt sales insights distilled from the interview. Listen to the full episode - The Frame Making Sale: Sell More by Boosting Customer Confidence with Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt - on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube.

Brent Adamson Insight #1 - How to Understand Why Your Real Competitor Is the Status Quo, Not Your Competition

"Many times what we're competing against is just the fact that customers are overwhelmed, they're confused, they're stuck, they don't know how to make progress on a decision, so they just choose not to choose altogether."

Most sellers spend the majority of their energy differentiating themselves from competitors. Brent argues this is solving the wrong problem. When 40 to 60% of complex B2B deals end in no decision, the real question isn't "how do I beat the other vendor?" - it's "how do I help this customer make any decision at all?"

• "No decision" is your biggest loss category: Customers who agree you're their first choice still walk away when they can't navigate their own internal complexity. "We agree - you guys are absolutely our first choice, but we've decided to go in a different direction altogether" is one of the most common and painful outcomes in B2B sales.
  
• Overwhelm, not skepticism, kills deals: Customers aren't usually stalling because they doubt your value - they're stalling because the process of deciding feels impossible. The buying experience itself is the obstacle, not your product or price.
  
• Growing the pie beats fighting for a bigger slice: If you can help more customers actually reach a decision - even while keeping your win rate flat - you drive significant growth. Helping customers decide faster is itself a competitive advantage.

Why This Works: Sellers who recognize status quo as the real enemy stop wasting energy on more features-and-benefits conversations and start investing in something far more powerful: helping customers feel capable of moving forward. That shift alone can transform your pipeline.

Brent Adamson Insight #2 - How to Use Decision Confidence as Your Wormhole to Growth

"When customers report a high degree of decision confidence, they're 10 times more likely - not 10%, 10 times more likely - to buy a high quality, low-regret purchase. It is like a wormhole to growth that we're all looking for."

After years of research at CEB and Gartner, Brent and Karl ran every variable they could find through a statistical model to determine what actually produces high-quality, high-value, low-regret B2B purchases. Everything else had modest effects. One thing was on a completely different planet: decision confidence.

• Decision confidence is supplier-agnostic: The attributes that make up decision confidence have nothing to do with confidence in your product, your brand, or your people. Customers ask themselves: "Are we asking the right questions? Have we done sufficient research? Have we examined all the alternatives?" None of those are about you.
  
• It's about how they feel, not what they know: You can't objectively know if you've asked the right questions or done enough research - these are feelings, not facts. Which means the biggest driver of B2B buying isn't rational - it's emotional. Specifically, it's self-confidence.
  
• Solve for their self-perception, not their supplier perception: "What does it look like to go to market in such a way that we're solving not for their confidence in us, but for their confidence in themselves?" That question, Brent says, is what The Frame Making Sale is fundamentally about.

Why This Works: Sellers who compete on product and value are fighting on a crowded battlefield where customers are often already aligned with them - and still can't buy. Sellers who compete on decision confidence are fighting on a battlefield almost no one else is on. The 10x impact on purchase quality makes it the highest-leverage shift available in B2B sales.

Decision confidence starts with asking the right questions! Read Chris Voss's FBI-tested playbook on how to close sales through negotiation for powerful techniques on guiding buyers to confident decisions.

Brent Adamson Insight #3 - How to Use "The Phrase That Frames" to Build Customer Confidence Without Sounding Like a Salesperson

"In working with other customers like you, one of the things that we've been surprised to learn is... So I'm not telling you what you need to do - I'm sharing what we've learned from others. So I'm adopting the role of a co-learner rather than an expert."

One of the most immediately actionable tools in the entire conversation is what Brent calls "the phrase that frames." It's a simple sentence structure that lets you share guidance without triggering the customer's natural skepticism toward sales advice - because it doesn't sound like sales advice.

• Lead with social proof, not expertise: Customers don't want to know what you think they should do. They want to know what other companies like them have done. "In working with other customers like you" signals access, not authority - and that's exactly what customers are looking for.
  
• "We've been surprised to learn" removes the sales pitch feel: Adding the element of genuine discovery - "here's something we didn't expect" - makes the framing feel collaborative rather than prescriptive. You're a co-learner sharing an observation, not a rep pushing an agenda.
  
• Leave the decision with them: The phrase works precisely because it doesn't close. It opens. You share what others have experienced and let the customer decide what to do with it. That preservation of agency is what makes the guidance land as coaching rather than selling.

Why This Works: Social proof is one of the most powerful persuasion principles in existence - Robert Cialdini's work has established this extensively. But in B2B sales, most reps deploy social proof as "look at our great customers." Brent flips this: deploy it as "here's what customers like you have learned." That reframe makes the customer the beneficiary of the insight, not the audience for a pitch.

Brent Adamson Insight #4 - How to Spot the Four Warning Signs That a Deal Is Headed Toward No Decision

"The four worst words you can hear in sales is when your customer calls you with: ‘It turns out that…’ You know it's going south, right? It's like a relationship conversation that starts with 'I need to talk' - it's all downhill from there."

Brent lays out a set of warning signs that a deal isn't stalling because of competitor pressure or price objections - it's stalling because the customer is losing confidence in their own ability to decide. Recognizing these signals early is the difference between saving a deal and finding out too late.

• Customers keep asking the same questions or adding new ones: If a customer keeps circling back to topics you've already covered, or keeps raising new concerns out of nowhere, they're likely stuck in an information loop - overwhelmed and unable to move forward, not genuinely unsatisfied with your answers.
  

• Slipping timelines and disappearing contacts: Deals that keep pushing right and contacts who go quiet aren't necessarily cooling on you - they may be paralyzed internally. "Customers disappearing on you. Cycle times getting longer - which they all are" is a diagnostic signal, not just a pipeline management headache.
  

• "It turns out that..." calls: When a customer reaches out to tell you something unexpected has come up - procurement has questions, legal wants a review, the new CEO has different priorities - they're almost always genuinely surprised. The seller usually isn't. That asymmetry of information is the frame making opportunity: run at the obstacle before it appears.

Why This Works: Sellers who recognize these signals as confidence gaps rather than objections stop responding with more product information - which makes the problem worse - and start responding with coaching and framing. The goal isn't to answer more questions. It's to help the customer feel capable of stopping the questions and making a move.

Brent Adamson Insight #5 - How to Align on Strategic Objectives, Not Just ROI, to Close Deals That Stick

"You wind up being your customer's number one choice to their number three problem. That's a painful place to be."

One of the most common - and most avoidable - late-stage deal failures happens when a champion loves your solution, the ROI math works, and the deal still dies because it doesn't map to what leadership actually cares about right now. Brent calls this objective misalignment, and it's one of four core challenges addressed in The Frame Making Sale.

• ROI alone doesn't survive the executive conversation: A champion who can show a positive return but can't articulate why this purchase matters strategically will hesitate to bring it upstairs. "If I can't articulate why this is important not just in terms of ROI but in terms of strategic objectives, it's still me showing up in a way that says I don't get it."
  
• Help your contact ladder the decision upward: Brent describes an Objectives, Tactics, Results framework from the book - the idea that any tactic ladders up to an objective, which ladders up to a higher objective. A seller's job is to help their champion connect those dots all the way to what the CEO or board cares about.
  
• "If it were just up to me" is a red flag, not a compliment: When a champion says this, they're signaling that they see the value but can't carry it internally. That's not a win about to happen - it's a deal about to die. The frame making response is to coach them on how to have the right conversation with their boss, not to show them more evidence of your value.

Why This Works: Sellers who help their champion become a more confident internal advocate create deals that close and stick. Sellers who stop at ROI leave their champion alone in the room with leadership - and that's where most complex deals actually live or die. Understanding B2B CRM dynamics and stakeholder mapping can help sellers prepare for exactly these conversations.

Helping champions carry a deal internally requires deep relationship-building skills. Read Janice B. Gordon's strategies on scaling sales through customer retention and referrals for a complementary framework on stakeholder trust.

Karl Schmidt Insight #1 - How to Apply the Frame Making Mindset to Help Customers Decide Faster

"The role of sales needs to be helping the customer make the best decision they can in as little time as possible."

The frame making mindset, as Karl defines it, has two equally important components - and most sellers only practice one of them. Yes, help customers make the best decision. But the "in as little time as possible" half is where the real competitive edge lives.

• Helping customers disqualify you is a feature, not a bug: If a customer's best answer is actually the competitor, the status quo, or "not yet," the sooner you know that the better. Karl is explicit: "Much like Tara - if you're going to lose, we all want to lose faster." Speed up the disqualification cycle deliberately.
  
• Ease alone isn't enough - agency is the missing ingredient: Research from Daniel Kahneman's work on decision-making shows two primary drivers of decision confidence: making the process easier, and preserving the customer's sense of agency. Most sellers focus on ease and accidentally undermine agency by being too prescriptive.
  
• "I've been doing this for 30 years" is a confidence killer: When sellers adopt an expert posture and tell customers what to do, they solve for their own credibility rather than the customer's confidence. Brent puts it bluntly: "You actually undermine customer self-confidence rather than boost it. Because you're solving for your confidence, not theirs."

Why This Works: When customers feel they've arrived at a decision through their own reasoning - guided but not pushed - they're far more likely to commit, advocate internally, and follow through. Agency turns a tentative "yes" into a durable one.

Karl Schmidt Insight #2 - How to Use the ‘Tara Story’ to Practice Frame Making in the Field

"How do you make something that feels hard and difficult - something that they really are going to struggle with - feel a little bit more manageable? In this case, it's just a very simple suggestion."

Karl walks through a real story of a star field seller named Tara, whose simple, proactive nudge to a client became a masterclass in light-touch frame making. No complex framework required - just one well-timed suggestion rooted in experience with other customers.

• Tara invited procurement in early - on purpose: Rather than dreading the procurement conversation, Tara encouraged her main contact to involve procurement from the start. Her logic: if there's a fatal flaw in this deal, she'd rather find out early than after months of investment. And if the deal is viable, procurement knows better than anyone how to navigate the purchase internally.
  
• The insight came from pattern recognition, not a playbook: Tara hadn't read a methodology book - she'd just watched enough deals get killed by late-stage procurement surprises that she reverse-engineered a better approach. That's frame making: packaging lived experience into guidance that makes a customer's journey easier.
  
• One rep's insight became a team-wide practice: When Tara's manager heard the story, it immediately became standard practice for the entire sales team. A single observation, turned into a simple suggestion, created a scalable competitive advantage.

Why This Works: Frame making doesn't have to be a complex maturity model or diagnostic exercise. At its simplest, it's just a well-timed, experience-backed suggestion that helps a customer navigate something they haven't navigated before. Every rep has the raw material for this - they just need to package it.

Getting the right stakeholders involved early is just the beginning. Read Joanne Black's strategies on referral selling to learn how to never cold call again and build warmer paths into complex accounts.

Steve Benson Bonus - How Giving Customers Tools to Decide Empowers Them to Buy

"Giving them that tool - even though it's not really a tool, it's a spreadsheet - but doing things like that empowers the customer to deal with their own organization."

Steve Benson shared a practical example from Badger Maps that illustrates frame making in action: a downloadable ROI spreadsheet that lets prospects calculate the value of the product in their own numbers, on their own terms. The insight he drew from Brent and Karl's framework, however, is what elevates it.

• Self-directed tools build agency: When a customer fills out a spreadsheet themselves and arrives at a number, they own that number. It's not your claim - it's their conclusion. That's the difference between telling someone your product pays for itself and helping them prove it to themselves.
  
• Karl's addition: pair the calculator with the cautionary tale: Karl pushed back gently on ROI-only tools - customers discount optimistic numbers because they assume they'll be the company that screws it up. The upgrade is to segment outcomes: show where things went well, and show honestly where they didn't and why. The latter is what builds real confidence.

• Help your champion have the conversation you can't be in: Steve's point about the CFO or CEO asking "why another sales tool?" is exactly the objective misalignment problem Brent describes. Tools that help champions make the internal case - without the seller in the room - are one of the most underutilized assets in B2B sales. This connects directly to sales enablement strategy.

Why This Works: Giving customers structured tools to work through their own decision - whether it's a spreadsheet, a buying guide, or a diagnostic - does exactly what frame making prescribes: it makes the hard thing feel manageable, preserves their agency, and builds the self-confidence they need to move forward. The best sales tools aren't the ones that sell for you. They're the ones that help the customer sell themselves.

Final Takeaways

Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt sales insights add up to a single, quietly radical idea: in modern B2B sales, your most important job is not to convince customers to buy from you. It's to help customers feel confident that they can buy at all.

The research is unambiguous. Decision confidence - specifically customers' confidence in their own ability to ask the right questions, navigate their own organization, and reach a sound decision - is 10 times more predictive of a high-quality purchase than any supplier-centric variable. And yet almost no sales methodology is explicitly designed around it.

Frame making is the answer. It starts with empathy - understanding where your specific customers get stuck and lose confidence. It continues with social proof - sharing what other customers like them have learned, using "the phrase that frames." And it extends through the entire sale: coaching champions to align on strategic objectives, helping them navigate internal complexity, and giving them tools to carry the decision forward without you in the room.

So give it a try and reap the rewards! If 75% of B2B buyers say they'd prefer to buy without ever talking to a sales rep, the opportunity isn't to accept that - it's to become the rep they actually want to talk to.