Recently, Gino Wickman and I were honored to be guests of Dan Sullivan on his very popular podcast, Inside Strategic Coach. For those of you who don't know Dan yet, he's helped thousands of entrepreneurs improve their businesses and their lives through his Strategic Coach program. Gino has been enrolled in Strategic Coach for nearly twenty years, and credits Dan and his program with helping clarify his vision, and conceive of and then work to build EOS Worldwide with our friend and partner, Don Tinney.

It’s common for eager leadership teams to take on too much in the early years of the business. By trying to get everything done at once and making everything important, they run the risk of getting nothing done. When you make everything a big issue, then there’s never enough time to give each goal the attention that it needs. The EOS® approach teaches leadership teams that by focusing on a few goals instead of too many, you will actually accomplish more. It’s called the Power of Focus, and it’s something that you need to be successful.

Many small business owners are so confident in their vision and so passionate about what they are doing in the business that they are shocked to learn that not everyone in the company shares their vision. This should be a wake up call for business owners who assume that everyone is working towards the same goals. Business coaches, or EOS Implementers™, teach leadership teams that it’s their responsibility to share their V/TO™ and inspire their people with a compelling vision. You may find that when you are sharing your vision, not everyone on the team feels the same way, and that’s ok! Those who understand your vision and who are fully committed to it will be working towards the shared goals of the business every day and their actions will speak for themselves.

Many leadership teams spend thousands of dollars each year on unfocused sales and marketing efforts that end up not being effective because they never really established a clear strategy and goals when they first began the process. One of the most important parts of defining a marketing strategy for a small business is to determine what your “Three Uniques” are. Known in the marketing world as the differentiators of a business or its value proposition, the Three Uniques for a business are what makes your business different. They also determine what makes your business stand out from the rest and who your competition is. If you were to line yourself up against your competition, you may share some of the same characteristics in terms of services and focus, but no one else should have the same Three Unique that your business does. When you’ve defined your Three Uniques, it means that you’ve defined what makes you unique and special to your ideal customer.

There are two key steps that leadership teams must take in order to systemize their core processes. The first is to identify, simplify and document all of the core processes within the business and the second is to ensure that everyone in the organization follows these processes. Business coaches or EOS Implementers™ begin this exercise by scheduling an hour or so with leadership teams in order to identify, define and agree on what their core processes are. These core processes (typically 6-10) are similar in every organization, no matter how big or how small, and typically include processes in HR, marketing and sales, operations, accounting and customer-retention. No matter how many of these core processes leadership teams identify, everyone needs to be on the same page in terms of what to call them and what they consist of. Doing this creates clarity, reduces confusion, and gets everyone speaking the same language.