Brent Adamson & Karl Schmidt: The Framemaking Sale - Help buyers believe in themselves so they can buy
Inside PartneringShow Notes
Buyers today are exhausted. They face massive information overload, tangled internal processes, conflicting objectives across stakeholders, and creeping uncertainty about whether a purchased solution will actually deliver results. In practice, that means buyers who can plainly name the value of a vendor still bail at the finish line - “no decision” is the silent deal-killer. Brent Adamson and Karl Schmidt call that failure of buyer self-confidence the single biggest drag on growth, and their new book, The Framemaking Sale, is a practical prescription for fixing it. Brent and Karl both cut their teeth at CEB - the research organization whose work later folded into Gartner - where they led large, evidence-driven programs on sales and buyer behavior. Brent co-authored The Challenger Sale (2011), a landmark study that upended conventional wisdom by showing top reps win by teaching, tailoring, and taking control rather than by simply building relationships. Karl’s research leadership at CEB and later work alongside Brent has helped translate that research into practical playbooks for complex B2B GTM motions - a heritage you can hear clearly in their new work on frame-making. Two headline data points kicked off their thinking: * First, a disturbingly high share of even convinced buyers (roughly 40–60%) see deals die to no decision, not vendor preference * Second, about three quarters of B2B buyers would prefer a rep-free experience if they could, reflecting historic sales scar tissue and frustration with poorly designed buying journeys. Those patterns forced Brent and Karl to ask a simple question: what would it take for buyers to feel confident enough in their own decision to act - not just to believe in the vendor? Because we are all partner leaders, I pushed Brent and Karl to translate Framemaking into partner co-sell reality - how two or more sellers align on a single decision frame, share the buyer coaching load, and present a clear, bounded path that reduces buyer anxiety. The conversation landed on practical steps partners can take to coordinate playbooks, capture and share customer intelligence, and jointly guide buying groups so multi-partner deals close with less friction and more confidence. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
What is frame-making? Frame-making is a mindset and set of practices that sellers - and partner teams - use to make complex decisions feel makeable. Instead of only persuading a buyer that “we’re the best,” frame-making helps buyers: * Identify the right question to ask * Narrow the noise to the few things that actually matter * Align internal stakeholders * Reduce uncertainty about outcomes so the buying group can act with low regret. In short: help the customer be confident in themselves, not just in you. Four buyer confidence failure modes Brent and Karl break decision pain into four patterns sellers should diagnose and address: decision complexity, information overload, objective misalignment, and outcome uncertainty. Each of these is a lever you can pull to reduce buyer anxiety - and each is supplier-agnostic, meaning the buyer’s problem isn’t “you” but the buying process itself. That’s why frame-making is as much a coaching practice as a sales technique. What this looks like in practice Practical frame-making starts with curiosity: ask buyers not about features, but about the internal questions that trip them up - procurement quirks, legal concerns, integration unknowns - then build a bounded, repeatable frame that narrows the conversation to the few things that matter. Brent gives a vivid example: instead of drowning buyers in 50 concerns, boil it down to “the three things we’ve seen that actually decide this purchase” and walk them through those checkpoints. That bounded framing prompts action while preserving the buyer’s agency. Why partners should care Partnerships increase
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