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

Victor Antonio

Sellinger Group

Sales Training & Motivation - A poor upbringing from one of the roughest areas of Chicago didn't stop Victor from earning a B.S. Electrical Engineering, an MBA and building a 20-year career as a top sales executive and becoming President of Global Sales and Marketing for a $420M company.     

As Vice President of International Sales in a Fortune 500 $3B corporation at the time, he was selected from over 500 sales managers to join the President’s Advisory Council for excellence in sales and management.  

He has shared the stage with top business speakers: Rudy Giuliani, Zig Ziglar, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), and John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos).  He's the author of 13 books on sales and motivation and recently released his Seminars On Selling course with 300+ sales training videos.

International Experience: Europe, Asia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Latin America, Middle East, United Arab Emirates and South Africa.

Victor Antonio is a globally sought after sales speaker and trainer.  His high-energy keynotes makes him ideal for your next sales conference.  Whether it's a small to medium size company or a Fortune 500 companies, Victor tailors his message to fit the client's concerns.   His client list includes:  Verizon, Citrix, Sprint, Cigna, BAE Systems to name a few.

Get his new book, "Sales Ex Machina: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the World of Selling" (www.SalesExMachina.com)

He is also the host of Spike TV's reality show, "Life or Debt" (Available on Amazon) where he works with families and teaches them how to run their family like a business.

Sales Trainer & Motivation Keynote Speaker

Force, Inc. (Video Transports)

Force Optical Broadcast Systems manufactured a variety of private and public network application products and platforms. Force specialized in optical transport of video, audio and data signals for Satellite L-Band, Wireless Networks, Digital Broadcasting and Cable Service Providers.  A private line of specialty video, audio, and data links offer optical transport for control instrumentation, security and surveillance for commercial and non-commercial application.  After building a sales force, a distribution network of resellers and developing sales training, the company was acquired by EMCORE (Nasdaq:EMKR) in December of 2005.  I remained on for a period of time as a business development liaison to insure a smooth transition.

New World Network - Florida Data Center

FTDC (part ownership to New World Network) was an integrated communications provider offering a complete package of telecom / IT services to commercial, government, education and residential customers. Services include local, long distance, high-speed data transmission, Web Hosting, Internet services, Storage, SMS Messaging (Oracle) and business-to-business services. I negotiated agreements with carriers like AT&T, BellSouth and New World Network.  My primary responsibilities were developing a sales force, designed pricing structures, leasing agreements, and agent contracts. I was also in charge and involved in all aspects of sales training for our team.

President, Sales & Marketing

ADC Telecommunications

Responsible for direct sales and distribution channels for ADC product lines: connectivity products (fiber optics & DSX, E1, E3), xDSL & Cable modems, ATM transport equipment and concentrators, Digital & Analog Video systems, Wireless MMDS, and other broadband technology. Revenue growth went from $14M in FY98 to $98M in FY00. Awards Received: Century Club 1999, President’s Advisory Council 1999, Century Club 2000 and Chairman’s Advisory Council 2000.  ADC was a $3B corporation in 2000.

Vice President of Sales, Latin America

Product Manager and Sales Support for FiberBase Network Management software tool that was used by Telcos and CaTV to document the assets in their network.  The FiberBase System also worked with active devices such as Remote Fiber Test Set to find faults (i.e., fiber optic breaks) in the network.  The system was integrated with a mapping system to provide location of the break, GUI representation of the assets related to the break and also provided the optimal routing information to reduce the cost of truck rolls to the location.  As a Product Manager I was also charged with assisting the sales team do technical presentations and bids both domestically and internationally.

Product Manager & Sales Support

EF Johnson

I started out as an application engineer designing Wireless trunking systems of the 800Mhz Public Safety Market. I was tasked with developing the design for a network, creating a complete inventory of all the components needed in the network along with a bid proposal.  I was eventually moved into a sales role for the Latin American market.

Sales Manager

Honeywell

Software developer and Test Engineer for the Electronic Test Center (ETC).

Engineer

Author, speaker, and sales consultant, Victor Antonio has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, an MBA, and built a 25-year career as a top sales executive and then CEO of a high-tech company.

🔹 Top 100 USA Podcast "Sales Influence - Finding the Why in How People Buy" Over 100,000 downloads per month

🔹 Top YouTube Sales Channel: 207,000+ subscribers

🔹 Online LMS - Sales Velocity Academy with over 50 courses, 500+ videos

He has delivered sales motivation keynotes and conducted sales workshops in Europe, Asia, Latin America, UAE, Australia, South Africa, and the Middle East.    

Victor has shared the big stage with some of the top business speakers in the nation including John Maxwell, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos), Daymond John (Shark Tank), and many other top business speakers.

AMAZON Books:
- Sales Ex Machina: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) is Changing the World of Selling  (AI in Sales)
- Sales Models:  50 Models for Effective Selling (Sales)
- The Greatest Gift (Motivation)

__________

President Ronald Reagan was and is the best storytelling President in my lifetime. One of my favorite stories he told ‘way too many times’ was the Pony Joke, which remains one of my favorites.

Let me share the story with you, and then I’ll tie it back to success in life, business, and sales.
Here it is:



#skospeaker #salesmotivation #keynotespeaker

SKO Sales Speaker, Author - "Future of Selling" (2025) and host of the Sales Influence Podcast

President Ronald Reagan was and is the best storytelling President in my lifetime. One of my favorite stories he told ‘way too many times’ was the Pon

Open article: The Manure Mindset by Victor Antonio • 2 min read

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The Battle

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Victor Antonio

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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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