Here's what we routinely see at Funnel Clarity: B2B sales leaders who get hypnotized by frameworks and forget to ask whether their team will actually use them.
Walk into any selection process for a sales training provider and you'll witness the same theater. Three vendors present their "proprietary frameworks." Each claims research-based origins. Each promises transformational results. And the decision team, although smart, experienced people, fixates almost entirely on comparing the models themselves.
SNAP versus MEDDIC. Consultative selling versus Challenger. Solution Selling versus insight-based approaches.
It's a reasonable instinct. After all, if you're investing significant money and asking your team to change how they sell, shouldn't the content be... good?
Of course it should. But here's the paradox: content quality is simultaneously important and almost impossible for buyers to evaluate accurately.
Forty years ago, choosing a sales training provider was straightforward. A small handful of pioneers had genuinely different approaches backed by rigorous research. Their solutions were revolutionary because they brought real science to professional selling.
Today? We've got hundreds of providers, most offering variations on the same themes, dressed up in different acronyms and slick decks. The language has homogenized. Everyone claims "research-based methodology." Everyone promises "consultative frameworks."
So decision-makers do what seems logical: they evaluate the content itself. They sit through demos. They compare frameworks. They debate whether their team needs BANT or MEDDIC or whatever twelve-letter acronym is trending this quarter.
And then, predictably, they make their choice based on two factors that have nothing to do with content quality:
Neither approach correlates with outcomes. Both lead to the same frustrated phone call six months later: "We did the training. Nothing changed."
The brutal reality is that distinguishing genuinely research-based content from clever derivatives requires expertise most buyers don't have and time they definitely can’t invest.
Did the provider conduct statistically valid research across thousands of sales interactions? Or did they read a few books, remix someone else's framework, and call it proprietary? Unless you're willing to demand access to their research methodology and have the statistical background to evaluate it; you simply can't know.
Most executives have been burned before. They've sat through engaging workshops that produced zero behavior change. They've watched teams forget the acronym by Tuesday.
The truth is mediocre content delivered with excellent adoption infrastructure beats excellent content delivered as a standalone event every single time.
Results don't come from clever models. They come from:
Of course good content matters. But obsessing over frameworks while ignoring adoption infrastructure is like comparing engine specs on cars that have no transmission.
Most B2B sales leaders will never know whether they chose "the best" methodology. What they will know (usually within ninety days) is whether their team is actually using it, whether managers can coach it, and whether deals are moving differently.
That's the only research that matters.
This entire article argues that experiencing the content matters more than reading about frameworks. So let's do that.
We're offering free access to a practical lesson from Funnel Clarity's Fearless Prospecting© training: 3x3 Research©, a fully functional training module you can complete in fifteen minutes and apply on your next prospecting call.
3x3 Research© is pre-call prep where you find 3 unique pieces of research on the contact or company in 3 minutes or less that the prospect is surprised you know. This single, focused lesson reinforces our core belief: change happens by mastering one measurable behavior at a time. Mastering this research helps solve the common challenge of low-curiosity, one-sided outreach, providing a coachable, measurable behavior you can use immediately.
Whether you're a sales leader looking to improve team performance or an individual looking to refine your prospecting skills, our free preview is the perfect starting point. Please remember that Fearless Prospecting© is just one of the libraries that Funnel Clairt can draw from for a customized solution. If your team needs to:
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