About one-third of our clients are using EOS® as a system to manage their business. Have you never heard of EOS® before? It stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System®. It's a management system based on the book Traction® by Gino Wickman. It includes a set of simple business tools and proven business processes that align and synchronize all the pieces of your business, to produce the results you want. Sounds great, right? Well, then how come most Sales departments struggle to adopt this method?
According to EOS Worldwide over 80,000 companies use EOS® tools and there are 356 professional EOS Implementer®. EOS® focuses on the six critical components of every business: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction®. It has documented procedures throughout the company that helps to hold people accountable.
One of EOS®'s signature processes is Level 10 Meetings™. These meetings are the core of EOS® and have a rigorous process for solving problems and prioritizing issues. They are efficient, focused, and have helped hundreds of companies make progress towards their strategic objectives. The agenda layout is as follows:
Everything in the Level 10 Meetings™ revolves around your company's goals and addressing the challenges and obstacles that could be causing a blockage. With strict time frames, you and your team are forced to make points short, concise, and clear to get to the meat of the discussion, resolving problems.
Ninety minutes later, you and your team have stayed within the meeting time limit, focused on goals, and have dedicated the bulk of the Level 10 Meetings™ meeting to resolve problems.
There's a blatant building structure for the Level 10 Meetings™ lead to quarterly meetings, which lead to annual meetings. Each meeting builds on the meeting before, with the same strict conflict resolution element.
EOS Implementer® who are "EOS® Supports," will tell you that you do not deviate from the agenda. But there are a lot of things covered in a sales team meeting, that is not necessarily covered in a Level 10 Meetings™.
For example, there is limited opportunity to share success (5 minutes for company/employee headlines). Salespeople love talking about their wins, and there's a lot of recognition and learning to be had from such sharing. It's an excellent time for a salesperson to share things like "How they got into the account, how they differentiated from the competition, how they were able to overcome a significant objection, etc.
Any sales manager will tell you that giving the salesperson a chance to talk about themselves is rewarding for them and educational for others on the team. They certainly don't want to limit that to five minutes. Other things included in a good sales team meeting might be training, cross-departmental updates, forecasts, etc. These things may be shoehorned into some traditional Level 10 Meetings™ categories, but not neatly.
Some companies have tried to add to the Level 10 Meetings™. The last thing most salespeople want is another meeting. You hear things like, "Do you want me in the field selling, or in another meeting?" Some of that is complaining, but some of it is real. We are big supporters of Level 10 Meetings™, but we like to tweak them to kill two birds with one stone.
A Blended Sales and Level 10 Meetings™ would include the basic structure of the Level 10 Meetings™ intermixed with some sales meeting items, and it might look like this:
Total – 70-90 minutes
Within an organization, salespeople get the freedom to decide who they chase, their level of activity, what to do in order to bring those people through the door, so you as the sales leader NEED more oversight on these people. It would help if you customize certain aspects of the Level 10 Meetings™ so your team can more easily adapt the process and get more out of it.
It would be hard to cover everything you want in a Level 10 Meetings™ and everything you want from a sales meeting, combined into one meeting. Likewise, you don't want to have two meetings each week. So, rotating topics within the Blended Sales and Level 10 Meetings™ meeting helps you address both, while not monopolizing the time of the salesperson and keeps the meetings fresh.
To avoid multiple meetings, we like the idea of rotating topics mixed in with the issues list portion of a Level 10 Meetings™. Below are some topics that you don't have to hit every week. Rotate them to keep the meeting fresh and to cover critical things that need to be discussed relating to sales.
First, we strongly recommend a section to talk about team wins and success. If someone closes a big deal, let them rave and brag about it. It makes them feel good, and the rest of the team can share in their success. It helps to recognize and reward that salesperson.
Second, you'll want to consider adding in a section about team performance against goals. You'll want to go over performance against company goals, forecasts, and pipelines. It doesn't have to be in-depth, but there is value in reviewing.
Third, let them learn something new. This is where you can bring someone in from a different department and inform your team on what they do, or ask any questions they may have. This gives your team the inside scope to something they may not already know.
If you blend these few things into your Level 10 Meetings™ meeting, your team will more likely adopt this method easier. The best part of this Blended Sales and Level 10 Meetings™ is it doesn't have to be an additional meeting. It's just adjusted towards your sales team’s needs.
If you want even more insight on how to run a meeting, check out our blog on "How to Run an Effective Team Meeting."
The EOS Process® works well for most companies and departments. But Sales is a little bit different in its processes and needs more content, more numbers, and more opportunities to adopt the benefits from Level 10 Meetings™. If you and your team adopt the Blended Sales and Level 10 Meetings™, you'll save time and be more effective in your day-to-day efforts.
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