Qoos

Co-Founder

A to B Insight

Skinny Rhino Productions

Founder, Speaker, Advisor, & Researcher

Ecosystems

Global Head of Research, Advisory, and Communities

Gartner

Distinguished Vice President

Principal Executive Advisor

Managing Director, Advisory Services

Senior Director, Advisory Services

Associate Director, Research

Michigan State University

Assistant Professor of German and Applied Linguistics

Brent Adamson is a world-renowned researcher, author, presenter, trainer, and advisor to B2B commercial executives around the world. 

He is the Co-Founder of both A to B Insight, a B2B sales and marketing research, advisory, and training company, as well as Co-Founder of Qoos, providing B2B sellers micro-guidance and AI-guided coaching, seamlessly embedded within HubSpot CRM.

Brent's next book, The Framemaking Sale, is available Sept. 9, 2025.

Known as having the “biggest crystal ball in B2B sales,” Brent is the co-author of the best-selling, industry changing The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.  He is also a frequent contributor to well-known business publications, including the Harvard Business Review, featuring his recent articles, “Sensemaking for Sales” and “Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete.” 

Across the last 19 years, Brent has been privileged to work with some of the greatest thought leaders in B2B and B2C sales and marketing, building and leading exclusive communities of highly progressive commercial executives.  Known as a world-class facilitator and speaker, Brent has presented to tens of thousands of commercial leaders both in-person and virtually all over the world, ranging from executive leadership teams to large keynote audiences.  

Especially well known for his passion for “productive disruption,” Brent served as the “chief story teller” for CEB, now Gartner’s, sales, marketing, and customer service practices from 2003 to 2022.  Across that time, Brent’s research has focused most closely on the critical, boundary-spanning intersection of selling and buying, seeking to understand the rapidly changing nature of effective commercial collaboration.  Most recently, Brent and his colleagues at CEB, now Gartner, have introduced industry-leading concepts such as Buyer Enablement, Sense Making, and Customer Decision Confidence. 

A native of Omaha, Neb., Brent joined CEB, now Gartner, from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business where he received his MBA with distinction. Prior to that, he served on the faculty of Michigan State University as a Professor of German and Applied Linguistics. In addition to his MBA, Brent holds a B.A. with distinction in political science from the University of Michigan along with M.A.s in political science and German, and a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of Texas. Brent resides in Leesburg, VA with his wife, two daughters, and rescue dog.

Brent Adamson

If we think back across the arc of B2B sales spanning the last 30 years (OK, if you're Todd Caponi, that's a short arc), we can trace four critical phases where we've sought to differentiate ourselves in dramatically different ways.

More than anything else, each phase was driven by a need to stand out and drive higher-margin returns.

~1999-2008:

Our products were getting commoditized and we're competing on price, so let's bundle those products into unique "solutions," specifically designed to address a broader set of customer needs. 

How do we stand out? By telling our customers that our 1+1+1 solution equals 4 in a unique and sufficiently differentiated way that we can demand outsized premiums and win bigger deals.

Wait.

~2005-20012:

Now our "solutions" are getting commoditized too, as we all pursue the exact same strategy to drive differentiation. 

How do we stand out now?

Wait.

~2009-2018
Here's a book that tells us, the best possible way to differentiate in this world (circa 2009) isn't what we sell, but how we sell.  We'll differentiate based on the actual insight we deliver as part of the sale itself. More broadly, let's be "thought leaders!" 

And Smartness Arms Race was on!

Wait.

~2020 - today
Now we're all saying really smart things, so "being smart" is commoditized as well.  And worse still, our customers are really overwhelmed and confused by all this information.

How do we stand out now?

Maybe by going back to the North Star that's been there all along. By being helpful. 

But what exactly does that mean?? It sounds good, to be sure, but "helpful" how, exactly??

In world where customers are overwhelmed, the best way to help isn't so much getting them thinking, but *organizing* their thinking.

That's Framemaking.

For a step-by-step walkthrough (and a cool graphic!) of the last 30 years of selling, marketing and differentiation, see Chapter 10.  

Looking for a Framemaking workshop? Let's help your team stand out rather than blend in, by helping customers through Framemaking.  

#framemakingsale #B2BSales #B2BMarketing

Researcher, author, presenter, and thinker with a passion for “productive disruption.”

One of the biggest challenges of conducting high-end research for a broad audience is that the language can get a bit too wonky for popular taste at times.

I can't tell you how many times colleagues have had to talk me out of long riffs on "schema theory" over the years for fears that everyone's eyes would simply glaze over.

But sometimes you have to run right at the problem, rather than run away.

And in The Framemaking Sale, Karl Schmidt and I run right at a similar sort of wonky term. A term few if any typically associate with B2B sales and marketing. And that term is "agency." 

Even more precisely, "customer agency." 

Does it sound a bit wonky at first?  Probably. 

Is it also critically important for maximizing the likelihood of a high-quality, low-regret deal? Undoubtedly.

So let's talk about it.  

#framemakingsale #B2Bselling #b2bmarketing

April Dunford. Arguably the world's leading expert on B2B positioning.

Writer, thinker, advisor, speaker, and change agent, April's two books, Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch, belong on every B2B leader's bookshelf.

Her work is widely known and even more deeply valued.

So what do you do when April is a guest on your brand new podcast? 

Well, for Shari and me, the objective with Selling Isn't Everything is to find the world's leading experts in building human connection and then explore what they've learned through all their work as a means for making all of us better sellers and better people at the same time. We're looking to apply a completely new lens to the world of B2B sales--a lens tinted with our collective everyday humanity. 

To get there, you have to ask questions few others are likely to ask.

Because the answers are often incredibly illuminating and inevitably take the conversation down a path far less traveled.  

In this week's episode of Selling Isn't Everything, hear April travel this path and explore the boundaries of her own obviously awesome work. 

#SellingIsntEverything #Podcast #AprilDunford

Everyone has a podcast these days, it seems. Especially in B2B sales. 

And while they're all pretty good, they're all pretty similar.

So when Shari (AKA SaaSi Shari) Levitin approached me about starting a sales podcast a couple of years ago, I honestly wasn't very interested.  

"I just don't think we need another podcast on cold outreach, opportunity management, and sales tactics."

But Shari persisted, and we agreed, we'd only make a podcast if we could make it different.  Different angle, different guests, different focus, different vibe.

After two years of experimenting, what we came up with is "Selling Isn't Everything," a sales podcast not about selling.  A podcast designed to refocus the sales conversation on what matters most, the fact that--for now at least--the heart and soul of successful sales is human connection.

At the end of the day, Selling Isn't Everything is a podcast about human connection coated with a thin veneer of sales and selling--kind of like the candy shell of an M&M.

And it launches today with three really spectacular episodes, including the absolutely incredible Don Yaeger and Maria Boulden. We hope you enjoy their stories as much as we did.

Check it out, and let us know your thoughts!

LinkedIn Top Voice | Top 50 Sales Keynote Speaker | Reps Getting Ghosted After the Demo/Presentation? | We Train Sales Orgs to Build Urgency, Consensus & Trust to Close Faster — with AI + Heart | #BeMoreSellMore

View Shari (AKA SaaSi Shari) Levitin’s profile

T’S LAUNCH DAY! 🎉
 After two years of starting, stopping, refining, and building a true friendship, Brent Adamson  and I are officially dropping Episode One of our new podcast, #SellingIsn’tEverything.

And I can’t think of a better guest to kick us off than the formidable  Don Yaeger storyteller to the greats, culture whisperer, and author of 35 bestselling books.

In this clip, he shares a moment I cannot stop thinking about.

A very visible person sat down with him and told the truth about what their success really feels like. Not the magazine cover version. The lonely, heavy, complicated parts that never make it into the story.

❤️ That is the heart of Selling Isn’t Everything.

The first three episodes of Selling Isn’t Everything are live:
 • The Art of the Ask - Don Yaeger on Why Curiosity Beats Tactics
 • Better Humans Make Better Salespeople - Here's How
 • Think in Spreadsheets, Lead with Humanity: Maria Boulden on 40 Years of Sales Leadership

I hope these conversations help you feel seen in ways our industry does not always allow.

🎧 All three episodes are available now.
👇 Here is Don, in his own words, on what it means to be trusted with someone’s real story.


#sellingisnteverything #newpodcast #sales

Matt Dixon

DCM Insights

We exist for one reason: helping organizations better understand the changing landscape of customer behavior. This understanding is used to attract, engage, retain and grow healthy commercial relationships.

We bring to bear several decades of research and data science expertise which results in an ever-evolving, insight-based point of view about customer behavior.

Our insights are applied through a set of compelling services we deliver in a unique way.  We don’t guess. We study, we learn, and we share.  In doing so, we help organizations grow through science.

Founding Partner

Tethr

Tethr’s vision is a world where every company listens, and every customer is heard. Tethr is a cloud-based conversation intelligence platform that combines powerful AI, machine learning and decades of customer experience research to surface contextual insights from phone calls and other customer interactions. Customers are using Tethr to quickly, easily and accurately turn large amounts of unstructured voice of customer conversation data into insights that fuel smarter decisions and improved business performance, enabling them to become Listening Enterprises.

As Chief Research & Innovation Officer, I am responsible for Tethr's data science-based research agenda, content creation, public thought leadership and representing the company with customers, prospects, investors and partners.  I am also responsible for spearheading new research-based product innovations that support Tethr's continued differentiation in the market.

Chief Research & Innovation Officer

Chief Product & Research Officer

Advisory Board Member

MedLion Management, Inc.

MedLion is a first-of-its-kind subscription-based primary care provider that helps companies reduce their healthcare costs while at the same time enabling their employees to accomplish more at work and in their lives.  As an advisory board member, I work with MedLion's founders and executive management team on the firm’s strategy and go-to-market approach.

Korn Ferry Hay Group

I was responsible for working with the firm's leadership and partner team to further develop and grow Korn Ferry Hay Group's global sales effectiveness solutions business.

Senior Partner & Global Head of Sales Force Effectiveness Solutions

In addition to my responsibilities leading the Financial Services and Customer Contact practices at CEB, I added the role of Head of New Product Development for the Best Practices & Decision Support Division of CEB.  In this role, I worked with our New Products team as well as our firm's executive leadership team to build and execute new business platforms and products to extend the CEB model into new corporate functions, industries and markets.

Group Leader, Financial Services and Customer Contact Practices & Head of New Product Development

I had management responsibility for CEB's Financial Services Practice, whose more than ten research programs serve a variety of executives and teams across both front office and back office functions in financial services institutions--including those in retail banking, business banking, wealth management, capital markets, insurance and operations.  In addition, I oversaw CEB's Customer Contact Practice, which serves leaders in the customer service and customer experience functions from a wide range of industries in both the B2C and B2B spaces.

Group Leader, Financial Services and Customer Contact Practices

From February 2007 until April 2014, I had management responsibility for the Sales & Service Practice of CEB.  In this capacity, I lead our Sales Leadership Council, Sales Leadership Council for Mid-Sized Companies and the Customer Contact Leadership Council, which together serve more than 1,000 customer service and sales organizations globally.  This role included setting and executing strategy for the Sales & Service Practice, working with our research teams on original quantitative and qualitative research studies of customer service and sales and presenting our research to senior executives and management teams around the world.

Executive Director, Sales & Service Practice

During this period, I was responsible for the day-to-day management, operations and leadership of one of CEB's research programs, the Customer Contact Leadership Council, which serves heads of customer service and contact centers at corporate and government organizations around the world.  In this capacity, I directed the Council's research team to execute against an annual agenda and product plan that he created in partnership with senior firm leadership and partners in the commercial organization.  I also served as one of the primary research presenters at Council events around the world and was the primary product specialist supporting commercial conversations with Council members and prospective members.

Practice Manager, Customer Contact Leadership Council

I served as Senior Director of New Product Development for CEB from January 2004 to December 2005 and, prior to this, as Director (from January 2002 to December 2003) and Associate Director (from May 2001 to January 2002).  In this capacity, I was responsible for working with the CEO and Executive Committee of CEB to set and execute against the company’s annual domestic and international new product exploration and launch plan.  

During my 4.5 years in New Product Development at CEB, I personally managed or lead the NPD organization in bringing more than 18 new product offerings to market, resulting in substantial topline growth and new market expansion for the firm.

Senior Director, New Product Development

I began my career with CEB as a member of the CIO Executive Board, CEB's research program for Chief Information Officers.  As a member of this team, I was a contributor and manager on numerous studies designed to help CIOs tackle their most pressing business challenges.

Research Consultant, CIO Executive Board

Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Effortless Experience, The Challenger Customer and The JOLT Effect; Frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review; Founding Partner at DCMi

Co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, The Effortless Experience and The JOLT Effect; frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review; experienced advisor to senior executives on business development, service and customer experience.  Co-Founder of DCM Insights.

Awesome to hang out with my friend and former colleague, 🧭Zachary Gropper of Insight Revenue tonight in Barcelona. 

Also, amazing Japanese-Catalan fusion cuisine (thank you, Zach)!

Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Effortless Experience, The Challenger Customer, The JOLT Effect and The Activator Advantage; Frequent contributor to HBR; Founding Partner at DCMi

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The Battle

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Matt Dixon

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brent Adamson's LinkedIn Performance

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