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

Shari Levitin

It all started in a Colorado living room with a simple question: “If you won $35 million in the lottery, what would you do?”

One guy wanted to start an adventure company. Another? Buy a house in Paris.

Me?
“I’d build a company to help people transform—to sell with confidence, lead with clarity, and actually love their work.”

That’s when it hit me:
💡 I didn’t need to win the lottery to build a meaningful business—or to have massive sales success.
And neither do you.

Since then, the Shari Levitin Group has helped sales teams close faster, sell smarter, and scale revenue—in over 40 countries across 5 continents. We work with scrappy mid-size teams and Fortune 500 legends alike—from Salesforce and Hilton to Microsoft, the NBA, Comcast, and Humana—helping them turn training into action, and action into revenue.

Not just motivation.
Transformation—from the inside out.

Because most sales training:

🚨 Gets applause but never gets applied
💨 Fades faster than a pipeline post-quarter
🎯 Dishes out content but doesn’t build competence

I started my company in 1997 to fix that.

We build repeatable sales systems that stick—so you’re not crossing your fingers for one hero rep to carry the quarter, or pulling people out of the field for training they forget by Monday.

Because let’s be real:
Every hour spent training is an hour not selling.

So whether it’s a keynote, a hands-on workshop, or a session with my AI-powered twin (yes, she’s called SaaSi and yes, she’s a little sassy), it better drive real, measurable results.

That’s why we blend brain science, storytelling, and sales strategy to change behavior—and make it last.

My goal?
To make you so good, you don’t need us anymore. 💔
(We’ll miss you. But we’ll be thrilled.)

So if your reps are still pitching when they should be problem-solving...
If your coaching sounds like a forecast meeting...
If your training gets applause on Friday—but zero follow-through on Monday...

Let’s talk.

Especially if you want to meet my sassier, AI-powered twin, powered by our partners Grw AI. Just don’t blame me if she roasts your forecast.

Passionate Global Sales Leader| Empowering Businesses with the Tools to Increase Profit & Grow | CEO

My passion for helping others transform their business, their relationships, and their outlook on life has truly been the driving force of my career. At the Shari Levitin Group, we help sales leaders, CEOs, sales enablement teams and business leaders empower teams to deliver training programs that produce results, particularly in this new selling paradigm. 

Too many training programs focus on the training process rather than the learning process, and that’s what differentiates the Shari Levitin Group. People love, love, love our content because we deliver it in a funny and creative way that enables me to connect with people’s hearts.

Anyone can make a sale, but selling with heart not only increases job satisfaction, it allows your sales team to be more open, engaged and receptive, which in turn: increases profits, reduces turnover, enhances culture and heightens transparency and accountability. 

Shari Levitin Group offers interactive training workshops and train the trainer programs, along with online learning modules that are:

👉 Effective: Our content engages learners and is retained and built upon over time. 
👉 Scalable: Our delivery system ensures consistency of message, transfers the competency into the field, and can be repeated in diverse environments.
👉 Sustainable: Our information can be measured, monitored and adjusted. We help you track and identify KPIs. What is the goal? Typically, companies have one primary objective with one or two secondary goals.

Thousands of sales professionals worldwide have already attributed their success to our virtual sales tools, including Hilton, Adobe, Dell Technologies, Humana, Cox Communications, Salesforce, Jaguar, Nimble, Comcast, Nuance Communications, and Sprint Communications. Is your business next?

SPECIALTIES: Keynote Speaker | Virtual Selling Coach | Fortune 500 | Virtual Learning programs, consultant

The second a customer starts talking, most of us stop listening.

We're already building our response. We're reloading.

We're not in the conversation.

I call it switching instead of supporting.

Switching sounds like: "That reminds me of..." and "What you should do is..."
Supporting sounds like: "Say more about that."

I hear it all the time when I review call transcripts for clients.

Sometimes I catch myself doing it when I review my own 😅

And when I do, I remember when my manager back at Marriott walked in buzzing about a rep none of us had ever heard of. He had closed 18 deals in a row.

We all gathered around. What? What was he saying? What products was he selling?

My manager told us, "He just listens so hard that it hurts."

As you go into your calls today, listen so hard it hurts.

Then ask one more question.

Discovery, Story Selling & Gaining Consensus | I train your sales team and your leaders to coach it without me | Author, Heart and Sell (Harvard Required Reading) | Top 50 Sales Keynote Speaker

When I listen to pipeline reviews, I count how many times reps say "they."

"They need to think about it."
"They couldn't afford it."
"They ghosted me."

The more I hear it, the more deals that team is losing.

Early in my career, my mentor made me change that word.

I couldn't say "they couldn't afford it."
I had to say "I didn't show them the value."

I couldn't say "they needed to think about it."
I had to say "I didn't create enough urgency."

When we blame, we lose our power.
When you change the pronoun, you get your power back.

If it's always somebody else's fault, how do we change our life and make it better?

We don't.

I was listening to pipeline reviews last week.
I kept hearing the same pattern: rep blames and the manager moves on.

To break it, have your managers ask "What could you have done differently?"

Otherwise, you lose the deal and the lesson.

Somebody asked me today,
"What’s the definition of mindset?"
My response?
Being intentional about your thoughts instead of getting hijacked by them.

One of the best ways I’ve found to reset my thinking is: 
👉  Get outside.
 👉 Get into nature.
 👉 Get perspective.

Today was a perfect bluebird day at Deer Valley, and wow, did my mindset get a reset.

Midset doesn’t shift by accident.
 It shifts by design.

What’s YOUR definition of mindset?

He told a paying client: 
"You can't have any of our people."

Garrett Blood runs a company in 29 countries. If a client won't treat his people right, they don't get his people. Period.

He spends 15-hour flights reading his handwritten notes about every person in his company. Their spouses. Their kids. What they're working toward. So when he lands he can look every single person in the eye and ask about their life.

108 consecutive payrolls and Garrett has never been late. He’s usually a day early, because he's been on the other side of a late paycheck.

I sat next to Garrett at dinner a couple weeks ago. We'd only just met. And when he pulled out his phone I thought, “Here we go.” Prepared myself for a flashy car, a stunning house, and maybe his growth chart.

Boy was I wrong.

He didn't show me his car or his house. He didn’t even show me his kids.

He pulled up pictures of his team. With tears in his eyes.

I've sat across from a lot of leaders and heard them talk about putting people first.

I've been a sales rep who was given the best perks: cars, President's Club trips, spending accounts. (Which are all nice, don't get me wrong.)

But the companies that hire and retain the best people are the ones where you feel like you matter on a random Tuesday. Where your CEO remembers your kid's name, that she loves dinosaurs, and just won her science fair.

Not the ones with the shiniest comp plan.

Garrett's the first leader who has shown me pictures of his team at dinner.

That's why Brent Adamson and I had him on our podcast.

Listen to the full conversation on Selling Isn't Everything 🎧

His top rep had a packed calendar, full pipeline, and prospects who loved him.
And was about to miss quota for the first time in years.

Mark, a CRO I've worked with for years, called me one morning sounding frustrated.

"I don't get it. Jason is working harder than anyone on the team...but his numbers are slipping."

And Jason was losing confidence.

We all opened Jason's pipeline together.

It looked impressive with dozens of active opportunities, multiple stakeholders involved, and several large deals in process.

But as we dug into each deal, Mark spotted a pattern: every update was the same.

"They're reviewing it internally."
"They just need one more conversation."
"They asked for another version of the proposal."

They were reviewing it internally, but no one introduced the decision maker. 
They needed one more conversation, but never mentioned a timeline.
They asked for an updated proposal, but never talked budget.

Jason wasn't moving deals forward. 
The deals were pulling him along.

I asked Jason what the customer was doing in return for all this work.
He laughed and said, "Nothing. They just keep asking and I keep giving."

So Mark and Jason agreed to a rule: no major work without a corresponding commitment from the customer.

You want a proposal?
Agree on how you'll evaluate it, set a timeline, and bring the other decision makers to the table.

You want a pilot?
Allocate resources, define what success looks like, and schedule a decision date.

No commitment, no proposal.
No skin in the game, no next step.

Within one quarter, Jason's close rate jumped.

Mark got his best rep back, and a new question to use in every pipeline review: what is the customer actually doing to move this deal forward?

And Jason found himself facing some serious competition for top rep after the rest of the team adopted the rule too 😅

Two out of three investors said "I'm in" before he even explained how the product worked.

Years ago, I coached founders on a reality show sort of like Shark Tank. 
(You can still catch it playing at 2 AM in Beijing on Roku 🤩)

I was working with a brilliant founder named Aaron who had an amazing app to help combat opioid addiction.

He'd been pitching for three years.

Great product.
Great data.
No funding.

I looked at everything and said, "Aaron, this is amazing. But why did you build this?"
His whole face changed.

Aaron's grandfather was a recovering addict. Put Aaron's dad through medical school. On his deathbed, Aaron's grandfather asked for one thing: help my brothers and sisters fight addiction.

So Aaron's dad spent 40 years doing that.

Then Aaron's own brother died of an overdose.

Aaron said he wasn't going to stop until he fulfilled his grandfather's legacy.

I told Aaron to share that story before he got to the data.

Sharing something that personal in front of investors and cameras? Not easy.
But if the investors understood the why before the what, everything would change.

Cameramen were crying.

Two out of three investors said "I'm in" before Aaron showed them how the app worked.

Three years pitching the data.
Funded in minutes with a single story.

How many of your reps are leading with how your product works instead of why it matters?

That deal you've been trying to close in Q1 just moved to Closed/Lost and your forecast was relying on that win.

I know the feeling. I've been there.

A big software company called me to help them with that exact problem. They had a game-changing product, compelling case studies, and solid ROI data.

The CRO could not figure out what was going on.

Before the workshop I went to the hospital where they'd just implemented the software. I wanted to find the real story, one I wouldn't find on a branded brochure.

That's when I met Doug, the lead radiologist with an Irish accent and contagious laugh.

I asked him what had changed since his team started using it. His response ended with: "I used to have a job. Now I have a life."

Not gonna lie, I got a little emotional.
So did the reps when I brought Doug's story back to the workshop.

They started sharing Doug’s story on their sales calls.

What used to take 25 minutes and a deck to close took 3 minutes and zero slides.

You have Dougs sitting in your accounts.
Have your reps ever gone looking?

I landed my first seven-figure deal with two large pepperoni pizzas and a poem.

I'd been trying to reach a VP named Simon for four months. Every time I called his assistant, Lucy, had the same answer: “He's in a meeting.”

So one day I asked her, “Have they had lunch yet?”
She said no.

So I asked, “What’s the best pizza place in town?”
She said Pauly’s.

So I had two large pepperoni pizzas delivered to Simon's office and his assistant with this poem I had faxed over:

Dear Simon, is it sunny or is it raining? 
It's always good weather for online training. 
So when you're done playing businessman and banker, isn't it time we set down our anchor? 
Once you've eaten that last pepperoni, pick up the phone and let's make some money.

He called and we closed the deal.

Your prospect is getting the same emails from your competitors right now.

What are you going to do about it?

I don't send proposals anymore.
Not until I've done one thing first.

Most salespeople assume everyone in the room agrees on the problem. They don't. Half the committee thinks it's a process problem. The other half thinks it's a people problem. One person doesn't think there's a problem at all.

And you just sent them a proposal.

This is why deals die.....not at the close, not on price, not because a competitor swooped in. They die because you had consensus with one person, mistook that for consensus with everyone, and moved too fast.

 Here's what I do instead: before any proposal goes out, I get as many stakeholders as possible on the phone. Not to pitch. To listen. To find out whether they agree on the problem.....let alone the solution. Then we work through the hard stuff together, so nobody's raising objections in a room I'm not in.

If they don't, the proposal won't save you. But the conversation might.
What are some of your non-negotiables for sending proposals?

Your champion is fighting for your deal with a deck and whatever they half-remember from a 45-minute demo.

Right now they're in a room with the CFO, the CTO, and what I like to call the Chief Glum Officer 🥴

That's where your deals are stalling. And your dashboard will never explain it.

What if your rep had given them a story instead? One your champion could actually retell in that room without pulling up a single slide.

Decks sit in inboxes, unopened or barely skimmed.
Stories travel.

Your reps need five stories to move a deal forward. Each one goes at a different point in the buyer's journey. Most reps have one... maybe.

I've recently taught story selling at two Fortune 500 companies. And it's never been more relevant.

Join my free virtual session at the Sales 3.0 AI Summit tomorrow, February 26 from 1-1:30 PM ET.

You'll leave with a framework, an AI prompt, and a cheat sheet your team can use this week.

Early in my business, I closed a six-figure deal I had no business closing.

We do sales training. We don't do top of funnel, prospecting, or pipeline training.

But when a client asked me for sales and outbound, I wanted the deal. So I figured I could stretch what we had and deliver something close enough. How different could it be, right? 😅

Sales training was a 10. They loved it.

The outbound piece? A disaster.

The client looked at me and said, "That is not what we asked for. We didn't just ask for middle of the funnel. We asked for email cadences, phone scripts, and outreach."

I lost that customer forever.

It became a running joke on our team. Anytime someone wanted to say yes to something we didn't do, we'd go, "Oh sure. We'll make a cat video."

You want cat videos? We love cat videos. We make them all the time.

We don't make cat videos.

I should have just said, "We don't do that."

Then: here's what we do. 

Or: let me connect you with someone great, like Lauren Bailey, Becc Holland, or Brynne Tillman for LinkedIn strategy. 

Or even just: let's adjust the scope.

Your reps are doing this right now. Saying yes to things they can't deliver because they don't want to lose the deal.

And you won't know until the renewal doesn't come.

Remember this: 
Saying no to the wrong deal is how you win the right one.

I watched a VP of Sales spend $400k on an AI tool.

Three months later, adoption was at 11%.

Not because the reps didn't know how to click the buttons.
Because nobody taught them how to actually SELL with it.

There's a difference.

And it's costing you more than the subscription fee.

I asked a room full of top producers to tell me the first word that came to mind when I said "record a video for a prospect."

"Scary." "Gulp."
"Why?" "Hard pass."

Nobody said "I don't know how."

The problem isn't the technology.

It's the four barriers nobody's talking about. And only ONE of them is actually about the tech.

Read the full breakdown in my newsletter 👇

Last month, I was in a virtual room with 40 top producers at a major healthcare company. Smart people. Seasoned. Some had been in the business longer 

Open article: They're Not Using Your $400K AI Tool. Here's Why. by Shari Levitin • 3 min read

They're Not Using Your $400K AI Tool. Here's Why.

The most expensive lie in sales is "it wasn't the right time."

Years ago I was on a panel for a company that studies why deals don't close.

They go back after a lost deal, interview the customer, and find out what really happened. Then they interview the salesperson on the exact same deal.

The typical responses from salespeople:
“They don’t have budget.’
“It’s bad timing.”
“It’s not the right fit.”
“Venus was in retrograde.”

Basically, not my fault.

The customers: 
"They didn't uncover our needs.” 
“We didn't feel heard."

Same deal. Every time.

How many lost deals this quarter say "no budget" or "bad timing" or "not qualified"?

Nobody's putting "I didn't ask good enough questions" in Salesforce. But that's probably closer to the truth.

Sorry, this one hurts, but losing deals is more painful!

My friend Allison Shapira gave me one of the best compliments a speaker and a friend can get.

At a recent National Speakers Association conference she told someone, “Shari is my person.”

If you’ve ever had "a person," you know exactly what that means.

It’s the one you call when you feel like you completely messed something up. 
The one you ask when you’re trying to figure out pricing, or whether you handled a situation the right way. 

The one you go to when you’re wrestling with the moral thing to do, not just the convenient thing.

Allison is also my person for the fun stuff.....talking about family, work-life balance, our values, and lately all the crazy possibilities with AI. And of course, how to design a better workshop.

Today we met in New Jersey because she’s bringing me in to work with one of her biggest clients.

All I can say is thank you, Allison.

Everyone should have a person like you. And I’m lucky you’re mine.

All things being equal, people do business with people they like.
All things being unequal, people still do business with people they like.

I learned this the hard way. We had just signed a new client. My team had built their entire digital training program, onboarding, training manual, all of it. We were proud of our work for them.

I see their CEO, David, at a conference and say, "I have your training on my laptop. Let me show you what we built!"

At that same conference, the CEO of a competing training company — who happens to be David's best friend — had vodka and caviar delivered to his hotel room. This guy doesn't even offer what David's company needs. But he's got a 20-year friendship. And suddenly David's entertaining the idea of switching.

I went back to my team and said, "We've got a problem. We've only been selling to number one. We haven't been talking to two, three, or four."

So we started building relationships with the people around David. The ones who also saw the need for the training we built. And they went to bat for us when David floated the idea of switching training partners once our contract was complete.

We did keep the client, but only because we stopped relying on one person.

The average VP of Sales stays in their role 17 months. Your rep's one contact could be gone next quarter. And when they leave, your competitor doesn't need a better product. They just need to be the first one to buy the new person lunch.

How many of your accounts right now are riding on one relationship?

Every stalled deal in your pipeline has something in common: 
Discovery happened once.

Your rep did the disco call, logged the notes, and moved the opp forward ✅

Then two new stakeholders showed up.

Different problems, different politics, and sometimes a completely different reason for buying.

But nobody went back.

The business case still reflects one person's pain.
The deck still uses language from call one.
The proposal is built off half the picture.

Every CRO tells me some version of the same thing: Deals are stalling and we don't know why. Reps are doing the work. But nothing's closing.

So I ask: how many of those stalled deals still have discovery notes from one conversation?

Discovery is a discipline you maintain, not a stage in your CRM.

Are your reps asking a few questions and then jumping straight to "here's a bit about us"?

That's likely why your buyers are tuning out.

Your buyer may not be convinced they need to change yet. Sometimes your reps haven't even convinced them they should listen.

Every buyer makes five commitments before they say yes, in this order:
Why listen
Why change
Why this type of solution
Why your company
Why now

And there's a story that unlocks each one.

If your reps are launching into the company story before your buyer is convinced they have a problem, the conversation is going to go cold.

Watch what telling the right story at the right moment looks like. 👇

It's easy to say, "That training didn't work."

It's harder to say, "I didn't put in the work to make it work."

I've worked with companies where the head of enablement is there, the training budget is there, and the follow-through isn't.

Sales leaders cycle in every 18 months, and well-intentioned methodologies cycle out even faster.

We tried Challenger. Now let's try this one. Now let's try that one.

Sound familiar?

Lisa Magnuson has spent 20 years leading $30-40M deals and 14 straight years in President's Club at Xerox. I refer to her book at least once a month when a client is stuck. It's not the kind of book you read and put down.

She knows this pattern so well that she made a rule for herself: she won't run a training unless a manager is in the room every time.

Because if leaders aren’t present and involved, the change won't occur.

Brent Adamson and I spoke with Lisa in this week's episode of Selling Isn't Everything, available now 👇

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