The Transaction

TT - 061 - Brent Adamson - Full Episode
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Brent Adamson: [00:00:00] The biggest opportunity we have in sales is to change the way customers think about themselves.

What would it take to be the one sales professional that customers actually do want to talk to.

If AI is there to remove all the unproductive activities from sales reps and free up human time for higher value activities, What the hell's a higher value activity?

I'm so focused on human connection There's just such a feeling of disconnection in the world that we live in today.

When things like that make you nervous, uncomfortable, don't run away from them, you have to run right at 'em.

It takes bravery. Takes bravery to be alive.

Craig Rosenberg: talk About going off the rails. Um, by the way, Brett, what the other day when I was on your show, I'm trying to remember.

What went off the, oh yeah. You were getting all dark and shit. Remember

Brent Adamson: do every week. That's literally

the weekly, if you. that was like a not, dude.

Craig Rosenberg: I know you do, but like, But if you joined this morning, we were, we were even darker this morning, I think. I don't know. But yeah, so that's what happens when you get 56. You realize you're gonna die soon, but Yeah.

I know. We're I'm Yeah. man. I'm

Brent Adamson: [00:01:00] Uh, well, yeah, I know you are. Trust me. I think about every time I see you. It's like he doesn't have a lot longer.

Yeah. He's

hope he's, Christ. All right. Well, uh, yeah.

I should joke you got, you got young children. That's not funny. I'm sorry. That's, I take

that back. Yeah, on a They will be fine. They're resilient.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. That's just

Brent Adamson: check that life insurance policy. No, they're really not. That's, we were talking about that this morning too. They're so brittle. Oh my

god. true. That is, they they are brutal. Yeah.

Very, and I, I don't think it's their fault, by the way.

I don't think they're like weak or something. I just think we've created an environment that lends to it. It's, but anyway,

what are you gonna do?

Craig Rosenberg: uh,​

[00:02:00] uh, welcome everyone to the transaction. our return guest today because the last show was so fricking good.

Matt Amundson: Gold standard.

Craig Rosenberg: Unbelievable that we're like, um, you know, we were, we're like, why? What stops us, you know, from bringing people back and you look at other successful podcasts, that's, that's what they, you know, once you find someone who can of, uh, groove with the way you want the show to go and deliver incredible content, you bring 'em back.

And

Brent Adamson: And, and when they're not available, you give me a call. I get it. Yeah. So here we are.

Yeah. yeah, you know what I'm gonna say this, Brent, like Yeah. the 15th choice is not bad. You're still in the top 15.

That is true. It's better than being the 16th. I get it. No,

It's

story of my life. Whether it's, you know, playing dodgeball as a kid or dating. Yeah.

That's the [00:03:00] yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like I, I'm like in the podcast friend zone.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh man. That is a new, that's a real thing That is real. That's not, it's not the use case here audience. But that Yeah. That was a funny, uh, uh, riff there. Um, so, um, here's the, the thing I wanted to mention before we go Okay.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. um. The one of the keys beside, you know, you obviously delivered serious V uh, B2B, Go-To-Market value and we will do that again.

Brent Adamson: I hope. Yeah, the show with the maggots on the plane story.

Matt Amundson: Maggots on the plane. Yeah. We

Brent Adamson: hard to beat.

Matt Amundson: the name of the podcast to maggots on a plane.

Brent Adamson: Mag's on a plane. It's not something you're expecting to happen when you get on a plane late at night, after a long day to fly home.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, it, I, I mean, and Matt, I think you've brought it up. Like, so when we're trying, so one of the things that we've [00:04:00] found really interesting, Brent, has been, Yeah, is, is, I. actually struggle understanding stories, how to tell them. Yeah. a, it's a particularly interesting, uh, uh. issue, but thing that happens, which is like, you know, tell us a story Yeah. um, and, uh, and we've, we've actually struggled, right?

A bit to, you know, help. You know, folks tell stories now that not just on the show and like people are like, wait, did I not tell a story? you know what? If you did, you, I'm sorry. Like I'm just laying it out. If you did, you did. And if you didn't, you didn't. And the maggot story was not just because it was provocative, but just the way you set it up and then the way you brought it home.

It's like everyone's watched movies I just didn't under, I still don't get it. They've, they've streamed Netflix. These are like the, the has the most formulaic story build of all time that you could just follow. Um, [00:05:00] and then the maggots on the plane was, uh, an unbelievable story. So Matt will just be like, well, for example, you should watch Brett Adamson's episode on the plane.

I think it confuses people actually, Well, right, right. Yeah. Well, it, it, the reason, one of the reasons, there's a couple of reasons why it works. One, one because it's true. So that, I mean like if I was just making it up, it'd be kind of, oh, that's funny, but what a weird joke. I wouldn't, not, I would've gone there. Right. But it actually happened.

Brent Adamson: So that makes it interesting.

Two is it's got a hook, right? Mag's on the plane. It's hard to argue that. Um, three is, um. It could have been any of us. Right? So it's like every person story. I'm just like a schlub after a long day of work just trying to get home to my kids, right? So you could, it's easy to put yourself in that story.

Uh, it's got a little shock value. And, and the thing is, it's got, it's got a juxtaposition of the everyday life to something that's completely unexpected. So, which is every, I don't know, every good so many good stories. Like as you put two things together that [00:06:00] seem that they're weirdly juxtaposed, that seem like they don't belong.

And you know, so much of meaning I think is. Is created in the contrast. This is the Challenger is based on this idea, the name of our new company. A to B insight is based on this idea that really meaning is constructed not as a thing, but as a thing compared to another thing. So meaning is constructed in the middle of two things and And that's where it's not maggots.

Let me tell you. I get this great story about maggots. No you don't. It's like, I got a great story about airplane. Not interesting. I got a great story about maggots on an airplane. Now it's interesting. Do you see what I'm saying? It's like putting those two things together. That makes sense. There you

go. Yeah. now that's the kind of value that you like to bring to the table. That's right. real question Yeah. is can you top it or come close to it to start the show?

Oh, you want another one?

Craig Rosenberg: one? are you kidding? Where we brought you here? 'cause we can't, we wanted to entertain ourselves too. This All right. about the.

I mean, Matt's had, you had to drive to LA last night. Let's give the [00:07:00] guy one of the, another great story where he is falling off the bed

Matt Amundson: That's right. I'm in my child. I'm in my childhood bedroom. You know, it's Friday. I'm looking to be entertained.

Brent Adamson: yep. You're in your childhood bed. Whatever you do, don't look under the mattress. They might still be there and you probably don't wanna know. Yeah. The, uh, yeah, this like, God only knows, but the, uh, all right. Did I tell you about the time someone almost died on the plane? I was on? Actually, this happened more than once, but the,

Matt Amundson: Whoa. Second

plane story. than bro. More than, okay.

Brent Adamson: oh, did you not want a travel story?

I guess there's other

stories in life, No,

Matt Amundson: Give us a tra, give us a plane.

Brent Adamson: So I'm down in Miami. Um, it was at a, a Gartner event. Uh, Craig, you might have been there, I don't know, but it's one of these, you know, bring all the managers to Gartner things, and you have the, what is it with Gartner and their masquerade balls. They love costume parties, but that's a

Matt Amundson: They do.

Brent Adamson: And it yeah, it is a different story. Yeah, they do.

Craig Rosenberg: I was never invited to one.

Brent Adamson: I'm so sorry. They, they love having these big rocking parties where everyone with a theme and everyone gets dressed up in [00:08:00] costumes. It's like a. I've never been at any other company that does this, but they, they're totally into it. But,

um, I was never invited.

I think it was, I think it was eighties night or something.

I don't know. But anyway, it's, it's like high school prom all over again. It's like Spirit Week at Gartner, you know, but the, uh, so it was outta Miami. I was flying home. I don't know, it was like a seven 30 flight. No big deal. I think it was un-American. Doesn't matter. Flights delayed. Delayed. Another hour delay.

By the time we left, it was exhausting. The flight plane finally leaves at 11 o'clock at night, so a long delay. Well, I'm gonna get home at two in the morning. This is the worst. Flying up to dc. Somewhere over southern Florida. This isn't funny actually, but I'm, I don't know, I'm in like row 12 or something like that, and I'm on the, on the aisle.

And across the aisle is an elderly gentleman who appears to be a little bit out of it. Um, and clearly not in great health. Um, traveling with someone, a care provider of some kind and, you know, I'm more or less sleeping 'cause that's what I, I'm aero narcoleptic. I can't stay awake on planes. Right. So the uh, um.

And all of a sudden I hear this sort of [00:09:00] gasp and then a, oh my God, oh my God. And then like, and then some, like, clearly some sort of disturbance on the other side of the aisle to my right. And this elderly gentleman has apparently died, uh, and is at least that's what the person next to him has. Uh, he's, he's not responsive.

He is completely out of it and appears not to be breathing. And the woman, uh, who was with him is completely losing her mind. And then he just kind of falls over and just kind of slumps over. And eventually falls out of his chair and is lying on the floor. And it's like, is there, you know, the hole is there, a doctor on the flight and you know, they're going to get the air tanks and all that kind of stuff.

And, and uh, and she's go and one they find some medical person said. Alright. Does he have any medication? I bleep you nuts. She literally pulls out a Ziploc, a gallon size Ziploc bag of pills from her purse and says, well, he's on all of these. It's like, oh, this doesn't end well. Right. And so,

Craig Rosenberg: I, so I don't mean to laugh 'cause I'm

Brent Adamson: no, this is

Matt Amundson: one of them is the adrenaline needle?

Brent Adamson: [00:10:00] By the way, if you're gonna ask me now, does this story have a happy ending? The answer's legit. I don't know, because like, I don't know what, like, so, so, so the, the guy is unconscious or dead, we're not sure which, on the floor. And as they're kind of stretching him out, they say, sir, could you move over? So I move over to the middle seat and he's laying with his head at my feet.

I literally have to have my feet tucked under my chair. So there's room for his head at my feet as I'm looking at what I believe to be a dead man on the flight. And other people are trying. And so now we've gotta do an emergency landing. Um, but I mean, it's really effed up, right? But you can't do an emergency landing in Orlando as it happened, and now it's like one o'clock in the morning.

By the way, we're gonna do an emergency landing in Orlando, but they can't land the plane with the potentially dead man out of his seat. So now they've gotta get him back up off of the floor into his seat, strapped down. And we land the plane. We're in Orlando, it's one o'clock in the morning and they've called the ambulance.

The ambulance meets the plane. The problem is that the team that handles the jet bridge has gone home for the night, and it's [00:11:00] Orlando. It's not a massive airport, so there's no way to get the ambulance, the, the, the. The, the EMTs into the plane 'cause there's no way to get access to the plane. So we sit there for an hour while they try to find someone to get a jet bridge or a stairway to the plane.

And by that time this guy kind of semi recovers. At least he sees his conscious. So it turns out he wasn't dead. Um, and, but he's totally out of it. Um, and clearly struggling. I mean, it's like, this is all joking, but not, this is a serious story and it's like kind of scary. And so, uh, they finally get him off the plane.

They close up the plane and then they need to refuel. And of course, the fuel team's not there either. So then we gotta wait another hour for a fuel team to come and fuel up. And by the time we left Orlando, it was, I think, like three 30 in the morning, and I got home at six o'clock. So I've, I've actually flown a red eye from Miami to dc.

There you go. That's, that's, that's, that's the

story. that is our guest, Brent Yeah. Thank you. transaction.

That's all I got, man, there. Sure. There's,

Craig Rosenberg: I, yeah. you shouldn't do your recording with Matt in the morning before [00:12:00] you come on, man. It was like, oh, I got another story. This guy died. Hey, well he may not have died. Let's hope he did. All right. Didn't. No, we didn't. Right. Yeah, yeah. Oh, did I say did Oof.

Brent Adamson: yeah,

Matt Amundson: you

did. I'm in a dark place yeah. I'm sorry. no, I'm not actually, sorry. That was a, that was a joke. I'm in a totally lighthearted place right it's the Emerald glasses. it is, it helps a lot. Yeah. tell us how's business and then let's talk, uh, go to, let's talk some specific stuff on the Um, love to hear how it's going.

Brent Adamson: the, so I'm, I'm engaged in two businesses right now, so the new book is ready to come out in September. Um, we're building up momentum around that. It is, uh, I think it's gonna be, I hope it's gonna be a big, a pretty big deal. I'm really, really proud of it. Um, it says everything I, I, most everything I wanna say.

I don't, I'm sure there's some things around the margins, but it tells a story of. Um, you know, as someone put it to me the other day, it's like, you know, if, if ai, 'cause everyone's talking about AI and I, I, we actually did a search in the book and AI's not in the [00:13:00] book, which I, I'm kind of. Excited to bring a sales book into the marketplace in this environment that literally doesn't mention AI at all.

Um, and it's, um, and in some ways it's a direct response, this question, if AI is there to, you know, remove all the unproductive activities from sales reps and, and allow them to free up their time and free up human time for higher value activities, what the hell's a higher value activity? What is that?

Like? What does it mean to engage in higher value activities? And I think this book offers an answer to that. So that's, that's, um, it's pretty cool. So. We're, you know, gearing up for, you know, inbound and Dreamforce and sales kickoff season and all that kind. We're building a training right now, so there's, there's a ton of work to be done, but, um,

I'm, I'm hoping we'll change the world, man.

Stay tuned and, you

know, let's, let's get into every one of your companies.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: we, we yeah. I mean, when it comes out too, it's, that should be our third, uh, Brett Adamson episode. Yeah. On his way to being a five time guest.

Yeah.

Brent Adamson: Awesome. I think I got, I'll have to fly some more. [00:14:00] Get some more stories.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I was gonna do travel stories the rest of the time. Some dark, some light. One of 'em had maggots falling out of a, the, uh, the, uh, container compartment right. Another one had an old man falling outta a seat. Yeah. Yeah. we'll see. Top second one was, well, the, you know, it's a full st. It's a full circle moment, right? It's like

Brent Adamson: I'm, by the way, I'm about,

Matt Amundson: food the

Brent Adamson: yeah, I'm, I'm about, I, I think about six months away from 2 million miles on United. So it'll be kind of fun to see when, when that happens, if they like throw me a party. I doubt it. But, um,

the, um, like, here, have a chocolate. The, um, by the way, the, I do have a point to make on your book, yes. I think, I think that is what you're talking about. with the, the, that you went the complete, you said there's no mention of AI Yeah. because. Of this idea that, you know, the, the AI is gonna wipe away a lot of the mundane, that doesn't allow us to do high [00:15:00] value activities.

Craig Rosenberg: It's really interesting they said, so someone that I work with, uh, not necessarily here at Scale Venture Partners, but it was great 'cause a young guy and Yep. I, and I was gonna have someone come on who was talking about of fundamental prospecting and he's like, well, are you sure people are gonna come? I'm like, why? He's like, because everyone's talking about ai Yeah. yeah, they are, but like, you still have to sell some shit. Right. like, and that, that, that is not, that is a uniquely human thing. Like Yeah. the way, you won't win enough deals if it's not unless you're cursor the, uh, sorry that was for Matt.

Matt keeps going, fuck, did you, have you seen the cursor stuff? But anyway, um, and so I think that's. I think that's a really good positioning on the book, which is, and, and you know, you will get people that will ask about that, but I think you, I think that's right, a hundred percent because you know how we [00:16:00] work in B2B, we over tilt.

Brent Adamson: Totally.

Oh yeah. Yeah. where we over tilt the whole way over Yeah. like, and then we have to go and sort of unwind all this stuff because was telling, uh, someone here the other day, remember when Dave SK was write, was writing all that stuff saying, well, don't talk to me if you have field sales reps anymore.

Hmm. can only talk to me with insight. He was right at the time. I mean, by the way, that's not a rip on him. but it, it was the time we sort of over tilted. A year Yeah. everyone's going out and hiring everyone outta SAP and Oracle because they. Knew how to do big deals, Yeah, and so, anyway, that, that, you know, so we're sort of entering that time here.

Craig Rosenberg: It's important that we spend a lot of time 'cause there are amazing things happening with ai. I have no, a hundred percent. Yeah. overweight over there like the machines are gonna take over yet.

Brent Adamson: You know,

a couple, a couple thoughts on that, Craig. So one, as you'll remember right before you and I departed Gartner, one of the big sort of, [00:17:00] um, headlining headline grabbing statistics that we had just published was this rep free experience stat, right? So the vast majority of customers would prefer to buy a large, complex sale or make a large complex purchase, uh, ever talking to sales rep at all.

You know, so we did it, the last keynote I did for Gartner was, I think it was like 43% of customers said they'd rather buy without talking to a sales rep. And then a year later it was like 73%. Um, and so the heart and soul of this book, we, we kind of start with that story a little bit and some of those data points, but we go in a different direction, which is not sort of, 'cause then 'cause the logical question be like, what does it mean to sell without selling?

You know, how do I sell without using wraps or whatever. But I think the more interesting question for us, at least right now, across the next five to seven years is what would it take. To be the one sales professional or the sales team that customers actually do want to talk to.

What would that look

like? How would you, how would you have to show up? How would you have to interact? How would you have to engage? How, how, what would you, what would you just, what would it look like? And that, and this book, that's the drumbeat of this entire book is what would that [00:18:00] look like? And, and at the heart and soul of this really is something I don't, it may just be 'cause I'm just an old crabby man now, but the, um, something as I, I go into the back nine of my career.

That I'm so focused on is just human connection and just, and I think part of it is because there's just such a feeling of, um, disconnection in the world that we live in today. I mean, so many of us are just struggling with just like, how does any of this work? We're all overwhelmed. And so I think that there's real value in business and in life.

It just finding ways to just improve and increase. Deeper human connection. And, and what's neat is the book starts with the business case where not only why is that just makes the world better, but it actually helps you sell more stuff. So not to be crass about it. So that's, that's kinda where the book's coming from.

And, and it's, I'm finding it's resonating really strongly. I've sent it out to probably about 40 heads of sales now who have, you know, to get quotes and supporting materials and build some momentum. And they're all coming back saying, this is totally different. We're really excited.

Matt Amundson: Awesome. Can, can, would you mind, uh, giving us a [00:19:00] little bit of a sneak peek? Because one, I feel like, um, I always want to have our sales reps out in person shaking hands, especially, you know, when you're selling larger deals. Uh, you said you, you mentioned that you guys pulled together some data that supports that this actually helps you win more deals.

Can we talk about that a little bit?

Brent Adamson: Totally. You know, and some of the, the foundational data is, is data is publicly available, you know, and so site referenceable. So it's, um, from, but work we were doing, um, when, at least when I was still there at Gartner, there's this one data point in particular, Matt, which was so interesting to me, which we featured in a couple keynotes.

I did. The single biggest driver of what we call a high quality, low regret deal. So where a deal where the customer buys the bigger solution with the broader scope and feels good about it. At the same time, if you try to figure out like what are the things that need to happen in a deal to increase the likelihood of that happening, of that outcome, um, it turns out there's one attribute of a deal by far that just completely swamps everything else in terms of increasing the likelihood.

Uh, and that includes all the challenger stuff, all of it, and that, [00:20:00] and that is simply the degree to which customers report a high level of what we call decision confidence. So the, the, the, the degree that customers are actually confident in the decision that they're making, which kind of in some ways stands the reason.

If they're not confident in making this 5, 6, 7 figure purchase on behalf of that company, they're just gonna choose not to choose, and you lose the status quo and good enough and all that kind of stuff. The, the thing Matt, though, that. Led me to, it's like, go all in on this. I, I, I'm joking. I've joke a lot saying, I, I, you know, I quit.

I literally, I quit my job and I said, I'm going to do this and, 'cause I think it's that important. So I'm all in. I just don't know if I'm all in on black or red. I'm about to find out across the next 18 months. But the, um, but the, uh, the thing that's so interesting is when you peel that apart. And you because, 'cause first of all, when you first hear this, oh of course customers have to be confident.

No, duh, and, and you show it to a CEO and they'll say, absolutely right? This is why we have to make sure that they're confident in our people and confident in our team, and confident in our brand and confident in our products. Why we have to be trusted advisors, and this is why we have be thought leaders, but when you peel [00:21:00] back the onion and look at these dimensions of confidence that really matter, what's so interesting about them is it turns out that none of them have anything to do with the supplier at all.

It's questions like, how confident are we that we even ask the right questions? How confident are we that, that we've done enough research? And particularly now we could bring in AI if we want to in a world where it's a wash with the research and a wash with tools that can tell you anything you think you need to know, but you don't really know if it's right.

How confident are we that we've, you know, uh, thoroughly that we've even like looked at the right alternatives. And so, and, and by the way, this, what's so interesting about this is this isn't just like a B2B buying story, it's a human story. Think about. Buying your first home, buying a car, choosing a college, choosing a career, choosing an employer, you know, like choosing a mate.

You know what I mean? It's like all the, the different things that we do in our lives that are a high involvement decision. These are the things we're always wondering about. Have I, have I even asked the right questions? Have I, have I brought in the right advice? Have I have I involved the right people?

And once you put this into a B2B setting for a seven re deal, the whole thing becomes really, really fraught. [00:22:00] And, and so. Particularly in a world where I think there's multiple sources of, uh, or challenges that customers face undermining their confidence. There's decision complexity, which you guys have talked, we've, we all talk about, right?

The B2B buying decisions become fraught. There's so many different people, all that kind of stuff. So there's decision complexity, there's information overload, there's objective misalignment where. I love you. I love your solution. I just can't get my three colleagues to agree that that's even the right problem to solve.

And then there's outcome uncertainty. It's like, I know you did this for four other companies, but I don't believe it's gonna happen for us. Not because I don't believe you, it's just because I believe we'll screw it up, right? So there's all these different challenges that are undermining customer confidence.

You put all that together in a pot and which you get this as really interesting perspective. And the interesting perspective is this. What if the biggest thing that we're all walking past right now in sales isn't to change the way customers think about us? Not to help them feel more confident in who we are and what we sell and what we do.

The biggest opportunity we have in sales to drive more business is to change the way customers think about themselves. It's not their supplier perception, but their self perception. [00:23:00] How could we help them feel more self confident? And that just opens up this really interesting set of questions around what would that even look like?

What does it look like to engage customers in a, in an, in a sale or in a marketing approach that is specifically and very purposefully designed. To change the way they think about themselves. And that's, and the answer is this idea of that we introduce called frame making. So if challenge is all about being frame breaking, this is all about being, frame making, taking something's big, hard and overwhelming and putting a frame around it such that I can more easily navigate the decision.

Feel like I've got guidance, but still it's my decision 'cause it's my confidence I'm worried about. So we talk a lot about agency and ease and a bunch of other different concepts here, but that's at a high level what we're onto.

Craig Rosenberg: Huh. Damn. uh, yeah.

Brent Adamson: I, I dunno what to do with that on a Friday afternoon. That was a lot.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, for a minute there you were getting like, I was like, you know, they like, sales teams should hire like Dr. Melfi from The Sopranos and just go in there because you were talking, you're like, you know, tell me about [00:24:00] yourself. Like, Yeah. I. biggest fears and challenges?

Um, get that. And actually, you know, some of the data by the way we just got back on, um, I was, Matt and I were talking about it on a quick hit show Yeah. really interesting, which was, you know, when you're selling AI products that we, we, we ran some data and, basically the, the sales cycles on an AI product are three months shorter, uh, than traditional software.

I know you don't just focus on software. Yeah. But, but by the way, that there, there's, you know, one of the things the AI vendors have done well has been like, less friction, right? You could Yeah. Right. any way you want. Um, the interesting thing was the win rates are seven. You know, basically it's like, uh, think it's 34% for, me look here.

Uh, it was, yeah, thir [00:25:00] 34% average for. Uh, other vendors as we called it, you know, Yeah. Yeah, ai, and AI was 27%. So that's like what a 20% something difference? yeah, it, it's a, it's a much more difficult sale. I think there's a lot of things that go into it, but that end up with indecision like you're talking about, yeah. confusing It's overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. And you have these factors that push you to go look, because You hear and you read about it, you're like, well, we gotta look into ai. Or it comes from the top and then there's thousands of vendors. Yep. There's so much indecision, we're gonna screw this thing up. And so anyway, I, I was tying those things back that, you know, that was one of the things, you know, we do a lot with tech folks, obviously.

And so, and Matt's a, a tech, CMO, um, and as you were talking, um, you know, and I think that data was from a couple years ago. [00:26:00] Still it, it might even be more relevant today, which by the way is an acknowledgement of how important your book is, like I think that's really interesting. I didn't even tackle that when I started to look at that data on our side, that is like, we haven't dug deep enough to find out, you know, it.

We just sort of take that one point of view, which is it's really crowded Right. of. Holy crap. What has to happen with the buyer on their side, and how is that affecting them and their decisions and creating that kind of indecision, uh, lack of confidence in themselves and Yeah. Well, you know, and it's interesting Craig, because the answer to that sort of challenge, say 10 years ago would've been. As any marketer, we know that, you know, it's like, well, we need to map the customer buying journey. We need to make sure that we're selling the way that they buy. So let's go out and spend a lot of time understanding their buying journey and ask 'em about the steps they go through.

Brent Adamson: Really, the the starting point of, of this body of work is what if your customer doesn't know? It's like, how can you go map the customer buying journey if the customer themselves, I don't [00:27:00] know who I'm supposed to talk to, who do I get involved? I, I've got, I literally was talking to someone the other day who was selling tech and they said, and we're talking about CISOs and the fact that CISOs didn't even exist two years ago and now I've gotta, I've gotta figure out how to sell to a ciso, right?

And they said, Brent, I, this is literally two story. They said, I got one better. I said, what's that? He said, we're selling the deal. Right now, the company we're selling to has two CISOs. They don't know what to do. And I said, what do you mean they have two? They said they got two of 'em. They said, why? They said they don't know.

They can't explain why they have two CISOs and they can't explain how they make decisions together, but they've somehow gotta get this decision past them and they don't. So how do I map that customer buying journey? Right? So.

so right. It's like, what do I do now? It's like, so, and everyone goes like, this is why we can't have nice things.

It's just because you're already overwhelmed at home. You're already overwhelmed at work. It's like, I don't need this bleep. You know? It's like, yeah, I want nice things, but not at this cost. And so what happens is things kind of just grind to a slow crawl or you just give up. It's like commerce still needs to happen, but at what cost, and it just made, makes me often wonder just how much more commerce could happen if things just felt a little bit [00:28:00] easier.

That's really what we're, we're trying to solve for. And so the, um, and by the way, just to give you a, a sense of what this looks like, it feels like, 'cause you know, one way to solve for this is to make your product really scale it down. This is where I think PLG, remember like, we all used to talk about PLG, like it was the thing, right?

Like a year and a half ago.

Um.

Matt Amundson: to this show.

Brent Adamson: Right. Well, there you go. It's like everything's product led and the whole idea is if I skinny it down and sell it, you know, Craig, you just mentioned sell it as an easy thing. It's like land and expand and all that kind of stuff. And so I'm gonna solve for this just by making the thing I sell really easy.

But I think the world we live in today, in some ways, we've hit this critical master where it almost doesn't matter. And the best example I can think of is something that happens to me all the time, which is like if you guys ever like bought a pair of socks on Amazon, like how hard could that be? Right?

And you think like. Now, by the way, there, there's kind of, there's two kinds of people in the world. There's what are called maximizers and satisfiers. And, and so like, if you're a satisfier, what I'm about to say will make no sense to you because you are like, dude, I go on Amazon to buy socks. How fricking hard is it?

But here's what happens to a lot of us, is you go on [00:29:00] Amazon think, I don't know, let's say you need some wool hiking socks, but you want, you want some, some wicker wicking and all that kinda stuff. So you go and you put in your, your, uh, criteria and Amazon says, no problem. Here's 1500 different examples, and you're like, oh crap, I don't, I don't know what to do with that, so, so you've already feel a little overwhelmed, like, you were just like, 10 minutes, buy socks.

How hard could it be? And you're like, well, I don't know what to do with 1500, but Amazon's like, that's okay. I know it's a lot. So here's Amazon's choice. We'll give you some guidance. You know, here's the top pick or the critic's choice or something. Like, see, pick one. One of those. You start looking through it.

Okay? Yep. It's got right length, the right materials, wicking, whatever, you know? Okay. Sounds good. And you think, all right, let's just get this and be on my way. Right. And then well, just real quick, let me take a look. Couple of reviews. Good, good, good, good. Lots of stars. Cool. All right. Put 'em on the cart. But you know, right before I hit by, let me, let me just take a minute.

'cause there's a couple of one stars. Lemme just see what that's all about, just to make sure I'm not a chump, right? And so they just like look at the one stars like fell apart in the 30 seconds, you know, arrived like destroyed. You don't buy, you're an idiot. If you buy for this and you like freak it out, it's like, oh my God, this is [00:30:00] a disaster.

I'd be nuts to buy these socks if go dodge a bullet there. Let me go look at another one. And you see like, okay, this one's got 4.78 stars instead of 4.8 stars, but they look pretty good. And three hours later you're still fricking looking for socks and now you're getting really. Pissed off and kind of frustrated, but you're not mad at Amazon 'cause they didn't do anything wrong.

But you're kind of mad at yourself because you can't just fricking make a decision and it's two o'clock in the morning or whatever, and you've got other things to, it's like, yeah, well I got sucked into this again. And you get really kind of mad and frustrated and you think, oh, this is just so annoying.

And then at that point you kinda wanna give up. And at that point, Amazon has got this. Button and if you press the button, all the pain stops and the button says, save for later. And if you press save for later, you don't get socks, but you don't feel like crap anymore. And, and this absolutely true story is, you know, last time I checked, my wife had 582 items saved for later on our Amazon account.

And this is kind of the world we live in today, right? It's like you just like, and so the next time's like, so now I know I wanna buy a dongle or a pair of gym shorts or a pair of shoes. Like, oh, I remember what happened with the socks. Ugh. Forget [00:31:00] it, man. I, I don't have time for that right now. And this is kind of where we're already all exhausted from the headlines and everything else is going on.

And a I rewriting a rule book and I just wanna buy a pair of fricking socks. And that's exhausting too. I mean, I don't mean be over the top, but this is kind of the world we live in. It's like, how can I be the sales rep that shows up in that environment since I got you, I got you. This is gonna be okay.

Let me help you out. That's the human connection, right?

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Brent Adamson: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: Well, it's a, the, it's, this is interesting. This is second straight show where we talked a little bit about the psychology of sales, right? Which is a, a topic that no one's wanted to talk about in forever, right? Like. People have wanted to talk about either sales methodology or they've wanted to talk about ai.

They wanted to talk about, you know, before that, you know, sales acceleration platforms, et cetera. But like, this is one of the things that people are not talking about, but they need to talk about

Brent Adamson: Well, particularly if we're gonna offload all that crap to AI anyway and leave the only, you know, for humans for the higher value. This is the higher value stuff, man. This is like [00:32:00] engaging with each other on this emotional level and with empathy and understanding and help. You know, it's, it's really interesting, Matt, because you look at these dimensions of confidence that the single biggest driver of a deal, and again, remember I mentioned it's.

How confident are we? We asked the right questions. We did sufficient research. You start peeling those apart. Well, you don't see interesting. I won't do the whole riff, but, alright. Which questions? So, okay. I gotta be confident I ask the right questions. Awesome. So, um, here's a question. Which questions are the right questions?

Are those the right questions? Are these the right questions? Right. And you get in debates, so if I ask you, you think those are right? It's like, well, okay, that one's too hard. Let's move on. Next one. Okay. Sufficient research. How much is fricking, what does sufficient even mean? Right. You know, it's like, and so it's like, I'll tell you what sufficient is.

If it turns out to be a good purchase, that was sufficient. If it goes south, that was insufficient. Right? So the point of all this is none of these things, these, all these drivers of, of the biggest driver of a high quality, low regret deal, they're all subjective. Every last fricking one of 'em is subjective.

And, and yet, and so what that tells you is that. The way you solve for things that are subjective, I can't know them because they're not knowable. I can't know. Those are the [00:33:00] right questions. I have to feel that those are the right questions. I gotta believe it. And what we're solving for as a result is not what you know.

It's what you feel. It's what you believe. And so I'm solving for confidence. And so we spent all of our time training our sellers and our marketers on conveying information. I'm so focused on what I want you to know. I want you to know this about our company, this about our product, this about your product.

I mean, even Challenger and no, no knocking against Challenger, but it was very much an information focused approach. I need you to know this and what I'm really interested in now is not to say that stop doing that, but what I, but the big opportunity we're all walking past is. I need you to feel this and that.

That is, in some ways, you could say, it goes back to the very beginning. If Todd Caponi were here, he'd say, well, Brent, I can show you a book from 1892 where that was the number one, and he'd probably be right. In some ways it's not new, but it's something we've kinda lost sight of, and that's, that's what I think is so interesting about all this work.

Craig Rosenberg: That is, uh, Matt, does that help you with the psychology of, [00:34:00] it's just Matt Brit. It does. to react when you, when you're done talking. I'm honest, like, because sometimes Matt and I are sitting

Brent Adamson: you're like, you're like sitting there. What the hell do I do with that? God, this guy ran a lot. Why is he so angry?

Craig Rosenberg: we want, we want the rants. We want the rants. intense. And so like when you're doing other interviews, as you know, 'cause you do Yeah. Yeah. thinking about how do I keep this thing momentum

Brent Adamson: How, what do I

poke him here? Yours, has like a start and an end and then it's like, alright, so uh, So you watch any baseball? is. I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, I, I'm, uh, but I am thinking about, uh, you know, the, just so help us, 'cause we help Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's a couple things that, um. That I think are interesting that we should try to figure out here for them using your, [00:35:00] I Yeah. think we need to incorporate a lot of the things you're talking about.

Craig Rosenberg: So Yeah. you know, this, um, from the data and so I'll just give you our sellers. Don't get much time with the buyer at all. Right. stop. Yeah. if I, let's see. Matt's just knowing his average deal size, they maybe get it. An hour and a half to two and a half hours total in the sales process with the buyer.

Matt Amundson: Um, yeah, I think that's fair. 'cause we, we run like a, we run like a three or four call, uh, deal cycle. It's about Yeah. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: And then the first call is, this is where I think we might be able to do some damage. 'cause I do think, well, we do have this interesting thing, which is the buyer does come in and wants to see the product right away. Hmm. Um, and um, now do we ask the right questions to figure out what's happening on the buyer side?

I think probably on like [00:36:00] a high level medic perspective, but like, this is what I'm thinking. It's like, I remember we used to do this with Topo early, which was like, have you ever bought advisory services before

Brent Adamson: Oh, that's a great question. Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: how did it go? Because yeah. help us a lot. Yeah. because it didn't, as, you know, selling that kind of stuff, it did, you know, if, if it, if it went really bad and they haven't bought it in a long time, it actually was just not gonna be a great that there, it was just a lot to overcome.

Brent Adamson: Yeah. What we would look for there is if they were already serious decisions. Or CEB customers. 'cause that Yep. they bought it and they had value. And the Yeah. was, oh great, how long have you had it for? Yeah. done CE, B for four years, we're like, okay. So like this is good. They know how to buy it.

And renew it. to get value from it. Now Yeah. all the things, but like is a new set of questions that our AI sellers should take in consideration [00:37:00] here to understand what's happening on the buyer side. And I think that data. Will help them help their buyers and increase, and help increase win rates Yeah. I think we're, if you're on the I. and you've found had interest in, you know, whatever it is you're selling.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, of course. I think a lot of the questions are gonna keep the ball moving in that short phone call that you have. actually that doesn't tell you anything. And so maybe, maybe part of this, Brent, would be like, you know, what's the discussion we want to have early Yep. Yep.

what else? I don't know.

I, I just want to sort of riff on that for a minute.

Brent Adamson: Well, so, uh, and, and we spent, we tried really hard and feedback so far has been pretty good. To get really tactical in the book. So there's lots of, I dunno if you call 'em best practices, but lots of examples. Lots of frameworks and ideas, um, and tactics. What's really cool about this is these are just ideas of things you could do.

They're not the way, one of the things I'm pretty excited about this is not, it's not a methodology. It's not like. Here's a new way to sell. Follow these instructions. It's more like, [00:38:00] here's a new way to think about customer engagement. Here's a new mindset. Here's some examples of ways you might enact it, but go knock yourself out.

Would come up with other ones as well. So the, uh, um, but, but one of the things Craig, we talk about is, um, we break it up into what we call three Es. Establish, engage, and execute. And this, the establish is to figure out essentially, where are customers most? What are the, what are the ways in which customers are likely going to.

Um, struggle with confidence in the first place. And that depends on whether it's decision complexity or information overload or, uh, outcome uncertainty and objective misalignment. And so trying to figure out like, where does this go sideways? Where does it go wrong? And particularly where does it go wrong in ways customers themselves haven't fully anticipated?

Um, because then you can. Turn that into guidance, you can essentially become a buying coach to your customer, right? So in, in your situation, you know, like coming up with the questions, you know, so I, I always love this phrase and working with other customers like you, I've been using it since the day I got a CEB and there's a long story why, but mostly 'cause I was a German professor working with sales leaders and I [00:39:00] didn't know what I was talking about, so I just said.

Whatever the person, the c, the csso I just talked to said to me, I just said, back to this other csso, I just talked to another C SSO and here's what they said. And after, while I realized that's actually a really great tactic. So the, um, so in working with other customers like you, you know, one of the things we've learned is that if you're gonna go down this road, it's really, really important to bring in these three people.

Have you had a chance to talk to them yet? I, I, I wonder if you guys are aligned on the problem that you're trying to solve. Because we find that oftentimes when companies aren't aligned on this, as much as you and I might get excited about this, it can go sideways in ways that are unexpected. I hate to see that happen. What's interesting, Matt, is you can, all of this can be done through content, right? It doesn't have to be a sales interaction. This can be done on your website. It could be done. So I think very much like Challenger, this has potential to rewrite marketing strategies around content for guidance as opposed to, as opposed to content for thought leadership, right?

Is like what's content for confidence look like? I think that's super interesting, but, but it's, but by doing that, Matt, what I'm doing is I'm establishing like, where are they, what are the sources of. Confidence erosion as it were. [00:40:00] What are the, what are the ways in which confidence is likely either not gonna be there or under attack?

And then I can gauge them just the second E around this social proof idea. What's the one thing every one of your customers wants to know? They wanna know what other businesses like them are already doing, right? They don't care about, you know what you're doing, Craig? You remember the work we did on sense making and it's really interesting, compelling data that if you show up and take the role of an expert, you actually do damage, right?

So I've been doing this for 30 years. Let me tell you what you need to do that actually does harm because. What you're doing with an expert posture is you're solving for their confidence in you, which is what we all wanna do. It's like, Hey, I've been doing this for a long time. Trust me, is, you know, it's like again, it is like feel confident in me.

But if the, if the thing I'm solving for is customer's confidence in themselves, then I, then I'm less interested in them believing I'm an expert. I'm more interested in them believing themselves and what's the best proxy I have for themselves. It's not me. It's other companies like them. And so I show up with social proof as in working with other customers like you.

Here's a challenge they ran into. You might not be seeing, and here's how they handled it, or working with other customers like you who were equally excited. [00:41:00] Here's where they, they, you know, here's how they managed to get the most out of the solution. Um, and, and, and here's how it could go wrong. Uh, and one of the things we've learned in doing that, so, and that's, that ultimately leads to an execution strategy around, right?

So let's put a plan in place to make sure that you're on the right path. So that's the engage, uh, uh, establish, engage, and execute.

Craig Rosenberg: Wait, on the plan. Let's talk about that. Yeah, yeah. Um, so you're not just talking about our product, you're talking about helping them with a plan so that they feel comfortable. Yeah, this, when do you do the, is this to help them navigate their buying process or, or navigate the, uh, adoption and success

Brent Adamson: it's, it's actually both. So we, we, we posed the same idea twice in the book. So, uh, you know, and by the way, this idea has been around a lot of what we've done is we've taken ideas of, been around in different ways and repurpose them into this idea of con confidence, which I'm excited about. I don't feel, I don't, I'm not embarrassed about this's, like, y'all have the [00:42:00] tools you already needed.

It is just that. It, it's like these tools could be repurposed for solving for customer self-confidence. So one of them is this idea of a sequence of events which we first learned about at CEB in 2000, I don't know, three, four in the tech space, which is let's actually build a a sequence of events that is a step-by-step buying process.

Who needs to be involved? When do they need to be involved? What are the dates? Who's the owner? And let's co-create that together and let's literally sign off on that. And that becomes what we call a customer verifier, right? So I know that the customer's serious about buying because they've literally just sat down with us and mapped out the buying journey and signed off on it.

And then each step in that buying journey becomes a verifier in itself. Are we, are we where we said we're gonna, does that person get involved? And so this map goes back again to, you know, Hey, marketing, you need to map the customer's buying journey. It's not, it's more like, Hey, sales, we need to co-create the buying journey together.

And coach them and, and we need to play the role of like, almost like a Yoda or something, like coach them on. It's like, now I noticed that, you know, I know you said this is the next step in working with other companies like you. We've learned that when that happens, this can go wrong. We'd actually think procurement needs to come a [00:43:00] little earlier and here's the questions we probably want to ask them.

You know, we'd suggest maybe that might be a good way to go just based on what we've seen elsewhere. Um. Do you see what I'm saying? It's like a lot of this is goes back to positioning and language choice as opposed to, Hey, here's what you do. Oh, you don't got procurement involved. This is gonna go south, or, or just like, not say anything like, well they, I, I thought they should get procurement involved, but they didn't bring it up, so I didn't wanna say anything.

Right. It's, it's, all of those things are just really unlikely to help you as strategies.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, I used to, I, I mean, I'm, I, I'm, I've never been an analyst, but you know, I've spent a lot of time with one in particular. Um, and I, I used to always refer to this as like, at Oh, farmer. Alright. Once an analyst, always an analyst. Craig, come

on. man.

Brent Adamson: Do you think

of yourself as an I don't think of Craig as an analyst. I don't think of myself as an analyst either. I

Matt Amundson: well, I only think of, I only think of you guys that way because you always bring the data, right?

Like you never just operate on feelings. Um, so researcher is probably the right way [00:44:00] to, to frame it, but I always used to say like, this all comes down to the power of suggestion, and this is what I would train like BDRs on in the past, especially when I was in businesses that were in a novel space, or like a category was like fledgling, maybe not even created yet, which is like, these people don't know how to buy, they don't know how to evaluate.

But the way around that is to say, Hey, look, you know, I deal with dozens of companies like you on a weekly basis. Here's what they would do, and based upon that, this is what I suggest we do. And most people are really open to the power of suggestion Totally. they get to the end of a phone call and they're like. Well, what should we do next? You know, or the sales rep will say, what do you wanna do next? And they're like, I have no idea what comes next, because I've never bought something like this before. Or I've thought about buying something, but never actually, you know, came all the way through a sales process.

And so suggesting what comes next, suggesting what the process would look like. And I think to your point, especially in enterprise deals suggesting when to bring in procurement. [00:45:00] Super helpful, and most of the time these people are willing to do it Yeah. they don't know themselves. What's the right Right. Let me ask, let me ask you something real quick. 'cause the way you just said, it's like, you know, I've worked with a lot of companies and I suggest you do this. Let me ask you to do that same riff without using the word I. How, what does

Brent Adamson: that sound like?

Matt Amundson: Uh, well.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh God. This great role play, Sam. Oh shit. That was my calendar. Just beat in my air. All right, keep going.

Sam Guertin: Fuck.

Matt Amundson: Uh,

um,

Sam Guertin: doing this for a long time.

Matt Amundson: well,

Brent Adamson: So you could see, see, so you, you can absolutely go to plural. I think plural, first person is better than singular first person. Absolutely. Um, you know, working. So whether there's working with a, a, a bunch a, a number of customers like you, one of the things, um, they've learned is, or they've taught us, is, do you see what I'm saying?

So, so. Right, right. So in other words,

you're putting, you're placing the expertise and I'm not being critical at all. This is what you just did is

what we're all, and [00:46:00] by the way, this is like the false positive. I think everyone's gonna read this book and they're gonna go out and say the words you just said, and I think there's just a, like a, a graduate level version of this, which is to take the eye out of it completely and put all the expertise outside of you.

Right. I, and this is kind of some ways, just my upbringing from being a, from Nebraskans, we're very humble people that, you know, so that's just the way I'm trained as a human being. But give everyone else the credit. Right? It you. 'cause you're not in it for credit, you're in it for the win, right. You're in it for the deal.

And it's like that, that's what I want. I wanna go to, you know, like Cancun, so, so get, it's like, you know, working with other customers like you. One of the things they've taught us that's really interesting is that procurement can really be a problem of when they come in late. Do you see what I'm saying?

I literally said the same thing you just said. Right. Isn't that cool?

It just, but it feels, it hits different. It hits, it hits

totally different, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, Craig interrupted. Yeah. I was inter I, oh, you interrupted me. Interrupting you. That's awesome. I love that. Let's go. yeah, I, I love that. And by the way, I'm gonna give you credit [00:47:00] real Yeah. of making fun of you. Um, this is a, you, you are handling this book different than the Challenger.

Craig Rosenberg: You guys are giving really specific examples. Yeah, Not, you know, not just the story. 'cause we know the RFP turnaround story of the Challenger ad nauseum, right? But like, this is like, no, Matt, here's what you say. You even corrected him. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. dude, I'm gonna give you credit for that.

Okay? Now I'm gonna bring up something that was said earlier by Matt.

Brent Adamson: Okay.

Craig Rosenberg: Or was that by you, Brent? yes, I don't consider, I don't run around going Nomina, but I definitely do not call myself a researcher. Do you view me as a researcher? 'cause that's a, mean, I can't think of one that like less like, I mean that, you know, I'm

Brent Adamson: to be totally fair, Craig. No, no, I don't.

Craig Rosenberg: To be fair. you are. [00:48:00] I, I mean, like, by the way, Brent was a kidding. He was a professor like the this, but, Oh, the data thing I do, I, topo did addict me to looking at data, um, and then looking deeper. Um, and um, and it's actually a lot of fun. So, but that doesn't yeah. Can, can, can I,

Brent Adamson: I think that's, that's a fair point. I think of you as, as a friend, Craig. That's what I think of you as the,

um, ah, and that's, yeah, that's beautiful, isn't it?

Craig Rosenberg: It it's really nice.

Brent Adamson: Yeah. you know what, like this, this turned once again, you know, these shows with you are an emotional fucking rollercoaster man. That is

Alright. Alright. Alright, well let, but, but can I tell you why? There's a reason why. So, so this goes all the way back to storytelling. And this is, this is also in the book, but it's, it's in the book because it's lived experience. It seems to be really work. It's work. So effective storytelling, maybe, I don't know how long you wanna do these shows, but I, maybe this will be the thing I we land on.

But the, um, so it goes back, Matt, to something we were talking about before. It's not, it's not just imparting information, it's creating an [00:49:00] emotion, right? And, and so. One of the very practical, tactical techniques that you can use in making that happen and telling greater stories or just having better sales conversations is to, to connect to your customer on an emotional level.

And if you're thinking like, how do I do that? It's literally to use the vocabulary of emotion. So the way this works in storytelling, the book, and I've told this many other places too, and it's all true, is back, back in the old CB days, um, and Craig, this is before you guys got there with Topo and this, which is more of Gartner, but.

I used to do what we call, we called masterclasses, which is help the, you know, the 20 somethings, learn how to do a really effective job at presenting research on stage and in front of executive teams. And so we do these all day events. I won't go into the details, but the high level lesson was this is, they'd get up, it'll be like eight or nine of us in a room and it was really nerve wracking.

Like presenting to your friends or colleagues is so much harder than presenting to senior executives. But they'd get up and they'd present a bar chart or, you know, piece of data, whatever, and a page. And it would be fine. It would be great, and, [00:50:00] but it would always kind of fall just a little bit flat. It would always feel just a little bit canned, do you know what I mean?

Like a little rehearsed. And so I would often, whenever that happened, I would simply ask 'em, sorry, so, so what do we want them to know on this page? We'd go through the teaching points and we'd make sure they were hitting all the right teaching points. This is great. Okay. And then I'd ask 'em this. I'd say, all right. What do you want your audience to feel when you present this page? And they'd often say, what do you mean? I'd say, well, is the page meant to be scary? Is it hopeful? Is it exciting? Is it like, do I look and say, go, oh crap. Do I look and say, oh my gosh, you know, do I lean in? Like, and, and so we'd kind of figure that out depending on where it sat in the, in the, the narrative flow.

And they'd say, all right, give me four words that capture that emotion. and and so if it was like scary, awful frustrat or whatever, and so we put the words on the whiteboard and I said, awesome. Now present the slide to me one more time to all of us exactly the way you just did. But as you do it, I want you to use three of those four words.

That's it. That was the only instruction. And they would do it again. And almost inevitably, Craig, at the end of that moment, yeah, the [00:51:00] end of that sort of second trial or third or whatever they, they'd stop and then the room would look at each other and they'd look at that person and they'd all look at me, and then they look at each other again.

They look back at me and they say. What did you just do? And I said I didn't do anything. But that felt so completely different. I said, I know it did, didn't it? It's like all we did was we added some emotion, we connected on an emotional level and, and you know, so I, this is a lesson I learned really early on.

So when I present the outta the old Challenger stuff, like 43 per 53%. It's not what you sell, but how you sell. You know, all that kind stuff. You, you look at this, it's really kind of scary because you first think this, but then it's like, then it's kinda confusing. So in other words, you know, I'm just, I, I do it now with just muscle memory.

Baking in the words of feeling. And so what I'm doing is I'm essentially prompting emotions. I'm teaching the customer or the audience how to feel. And this is for storytelling. It's for selling, it's for confidence creation. But this, it's, you know what it is? It's about human connection. I think if you sit down and think about the people you enjoy being with the most in your life, whether it's a spouse, a friend, someone tells great stories, you like to go out and they [00:52:00] just, man, that guy tells great stories and you, you really listen next time they tell you a great story and just listen for the language of, of emotion and I think you're gonna hear it.

And it's really power. It's an incredibly powerful tool. And we never talk about in sales 'cause we're so used to like ROI and a value analysis. And, you know, long lifetime value and all, you know, it's like you show 'em that you, you know, the, the calculations and the features and the benefits, all that stuff matters in context.

But like, what do you want them to feel? And that's, that's where you start making real powerful connections.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, Matt, I thought, you know what we could do if we, if we highly produce this show, would end on that and then it would be one and a half million minutes of silence. It would just Do you want me to add that in?

tail off. Then the show would just end. No, I mean, it's fine. Now.

Brent Adamson: And, then there, then it'd go to black and, and then there would be like, uh, dates like Brent Adamson 2025, rest in Peace, or something like that. Yeah,

Matt Amundson: I like, I like the big, [00:53:00] like pullout, like at the end of a, a good movie, pullout. And then it's like the, you know, where he is and then it's the state and the country and the globe, and then the universe and then that, Yeah. that, would be, that would be it.

Brent Adamson: Uh, that's

good stuff. love it, man. You know, I, I, but, but you know. I have a, if you guys have two more minutes, Yeah. emotion thing, this is not part of Brent's book, but there are these little things that you remember from years of doing deals and selling where, uh, colossal fuckups allow you to connect with the.

Craig Rosenberg: Buyer or the partner in a A hundred percent. Yep. yeah, you know, my biggest deal, I walked in with a bloody eyeball. I was in Reno with

Brent Adamson: In your hand or in like your face?

Yeah. Wait.

Craig Rosenberg: my eye, my,

Brent Adamson: your eye. Your eyeball was bloody.

Alright. so hammered at the Silver Legacy that weekend that my blood vessels and my eyes Oh geez. Oh God. sales call on Monday with the entire executive team.[00:54:00]

Craig Rosenberg: I show up. And I've got two bloody eyeballs, and I'm just going, what the fuck am I gonna do? I start the meeting and I have everyone do an intro, and nobody could take their eyes off my eyes, right? And so I just had to stop the meeting and go, you guys, I could tell that I should let the elephant in the room out on the table.

I have two bloody eyeballs and I blood, vessels in both of them. And IAII apologize for

Brent Adamson: Did you tell him what happened? Did you, did you say, because I got so hammered over the weekend, or No.

All right. the woman next to me, literally, I'm not kidding. Goes few. I appreciate you telling us

Please. Thank you for acknowledging it.

Craig Rosenberg: I, and then I was like, and, and by the way, I was, I, when I sort of went through that, 'cause we ended up getting the deal.

I'm not saying that was the reason, but it could have it, it was like, it just allowed us to joke a little bit It did. It did. and, and, and, to, she like, let out this [00:55:00] noticeable like relief. Like it was just like what? She was probably sitting there going, wait, does that dude know? Is this guy healthy?

Right.

Brent Adamson: Yeah. Right. Like, what's wrong with this guy? And

it, it, it becomes the conversation. That's not the conversation, but it overtakes the real conversation.

Right. You know, you know, you know what you learn. It, it's, it is the, it's the lesson, Greg. I mean, you're not as advanced in age and I am, but, but you're getting there.

Um, but the, um, it's the lesson we all learn in life, which is. Over and over again the hard way. When things like that make you nervous, uncomfortable, or just think, you don't run away from them you have to run right at 'em. You're always better to run right at it. It's like, look, you're all staring at my eye.

This is why, you know, it's like, this is it. It's, and, and the, the stuff with sales is like, oh my God, they're gonna screw this up. Don't bring that. I, once, the, the very first call sales calls I did is like, whatever you do, I was with a sales rep who said, whatever you do, don't bring this up. 'cause they never get that.

Right. It's like, how about that's the first thing we bring up? Do you know what I mean? It's, it's like you just gotta run right [00:56:00] at this stuff. Whether it's marriage, sales, kids, any of it. I don't know. It's easier said than done. It takes bravery, it's takes bravery to be alive. Hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Bam. That was the transaction, But that was, that was like 10 seconds. I have to go to a fucking meeting, man. Anyway, Brent, that, that was amazing.

[00:57:00]