Sales and Cigars | Greg Giniel | Mastering EOS in Sales Management | Episode 179

[00:00:14] Welcome to Sales and Cigars. I'm your host Walter Crosby with Helix Sales Development and my guest today is Greg Janiel. Greg is a super smart EOS implementer. You want to comment on that there before we get started, Greg? Like tell a little bit about

[00:00:31] the company and your approach? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know EOS was started by Gino Wickman out of the book Traction that he wrote a while back. So I am one of 772 implementers worldwide. There's 250,000 companies running on EOS. My background is that I was introduced to EOS back in 2019.

[00:00:59] Walter, I absolutely fell in love with it. I've run a business since 2016. I've been a part of a couple of other startups and it just made sense to me. When the implementer that I was introduced to showed me this presentation behind my head,

[00:01:17] I knew that that's what we needed to implement. I had a lot of frustrations of being a business owner. I was a sales guy and so running a sales organization and trying to navigate out of that sales seat into a business owner is extremely difficult.

[00:01:37] So let's start there because that, you know, I've been a sales guy for over 30 years. You've run your sales organization. You ran a company and making that transition from being a producer, maybe managing a couple other knuckleheads, right?

[00:01:55] But actually making bigger decisions about finance and making decisions around the right people and all the things that go into running a business. You know trying to play visionary and integrator

[00:02:08] is a, you know, you got to put your big boy pants on and that from coming from the sales seat that can be a challenge. Yeah, well for sure. When you know, it's interesting because I would have people walk into my office,

[00:02:23] my sales team and they would ask me, well, what did you do? And I quickly realized that because I had no classic training in sales whatsoever. I just talked to a lot of people and really

[00:02:38] presented myself and just showed them hey, this is the product that we have. Does it fit? And so I realized when my team would come to me, they would go well, how did you do it?

[00:02:49] And then I would have to mentally go back and kind of retrace all my steps. And so there was no clear training or process for me to do that. And I quickly realized that even though I may have been a great salesperson, maybe I didn't have

[00:03:07] the documented processes in order to train a team, right? And that was frustrating to me overall. It's also frustrating to the team who's asking for help and can't get the help that they need, right? Yeah, I mean, you know the old strategy of here's some business cards,

[00:03:25] here's a rain sheet, good luck Chuck, we'll slap them on the rear end. Doesn't really work and especially for generations that follow us, you know, I'm a GenXer and so there's just different expectations that

[00:03:41] were from that generation of Millennials on. It's not good or bad, it's just different and so yeah, it did. It grew a lot of frustration from my end because as I'm at the time coming in at, you know, five o'clock in the morning getting all my sales done,

[00:04:04] right? All the things that I had to do and then 9 a.m the team walks in and now I'm dealing with everything that's happening, all the questions, people walking in with their problems, trying to leave their monkey, their problem in my office with me.

[00:04:19] Nope, that's yours. I can guide you on what you need to do and then by five o'clock then afterwards I'm staying until typically eight o'clock to get the rest of my stuff done and so it's very difficult to do that without a system and process.

[00:04:34] Absolutely, it really comes down to, you know, I think having or the lack of clear goals and objectives, you know, was frustrating from that standpoint and then it created poor communication because we didn't have processes in place at that time. So that, I mean, most of the people

[00:04:57] in the audience have some familiarity with EOS so I don't want to go deep dive as to the why. You kind of set up the reasons why somebody would entertain the idea of,

[00:05:08] because it gives you some basic structure to run your business. You still have to go set up a sales process and marketing process and lead gen but it gives you the structure as to who,

[00:05:19] what, and why are going to do that. So I think it's a good transition point for us to talk about one of the mainstay meetings in EOS is an L10 and we can talk about the structure of an L10

[00:05:37] but I think the idea of taking an L10 and applying it to a sales meeting has always been something that I've struggled with. I figured out ways to do it but it's never just,

[00:05:53] it's just not perfect and I think I'd like to talk through that idea for the folks that are listening who do run EOS and are trying to figure out how to get their sales manager,

[00:06:06] their director of sales, VP of sales, whoever is their leader to run an L10 efficiently but give the salespeople the things that they need in a sales meeting. So here's what I think

[00:06:21] those things are and then we can kind of talk about that structure. We need the basic communication about the things that are going on like we changed the expense policy, we changed this thing so now we do this right? That basic communication component. This is happening over

[00:06:40] in marketing or this is happening over in operations so that information comes through but we need to talk about some sales training, some sales development. Sometimes it's a group coaching situation but if we put all that into one development bucket there's got to be a piece

[00:07:02] of that that we use and I've used this structure in a different way but let's take that traditional sales meeting and talk about how that works in an L10 with four or five salespeople and a sales manager talking about sales or business development. Yeah I've seen it

[00:07:27] implemented a couple of different ways. There's a quote-unquote pure way to do it in EOS but you know let's just be realistic here on what we're talking about because I've seen it happen where either so if everyone's familiar with the L10 the IBS section typically in L10

[00:07:48] is about 90 minutes long right and so there has either been one way of doing it where there is a training component listed in the issue section that is always standing right? So when we're talking about issues we're identifying discussing and solving those issues

[00:08:10] and so that brings up a component where we can get into more training. The pure way of doing it would be you know not all L10s need to last 90 minutes right if we can get through the

[00:08:23] the IBS section of it and say it lasts 60 minutes or 45 minutes and then get into more of a traditional training because at the end of the day no one wants to sit in a three-hour meeting right when we're talking about this yeah no one does especially salespeople

[00:08:40] where our attention spans are very short by nature and so those are two different ways of doing it. I think that it has to really fit to what the sales team and what the sales director

[00:08:56] are comfortable with doing right and that and then it works. The communication portion of it to your point what's marketing doing? What are the things that we need to cover? You know what what collateral is coming out that we can start to utilize making sure that we have

[00:09:13] that same voice you know sales guys if it's left on their own device you're going to have 10 sales guys are going to have 10 different stories for the company or you know yeah depends on the day right and so I think that's important. So the cascading message the

[00:09:32] cascading part of the L10 is where that information can flow from the other departments to the sales team and then we can push out our concerns in that message to those other departments using you know assuming we're using 90 or some other piece of software that

[00:09:51] that helps that communication flow. That's always made sense to me that we're communicating with that group that specific group because operations doesn't care what marketing's doing per se sales cares a lot about what marketing's doing and you know finance we don't care about any of that

[00:10:10] if we're in sales right we just want to make sure the commission checks are on time and clear so that allows us to specifically talk to those people but it it's always I've tried

[00:10:24] different ways of getting the training component into the sales into the IDS part and I think you kind of hit on an important part that we can use we could have it IDS that specifically talks about

[00:10:43] training so can you kind of dig into to that a little bit as to how that how that shows up or how that's run like if we wanted to talk about you know we wanted to talk about a project

[00:10:57] that went well or didn't go well and we're going to use that as a as a opportunity for everybody to learn. How would that be run in an IDS if you and what does that look like

[00:11:09] to have a training component built into it? Yeah if I was running that level 10 I would put whatever it was on the issues list so we had a great success story with

[00:11:26] ABC company and then go okay what made it great and dig deeper right so when we start to identify the key components of what made that great we're writing that down and going let's explore that

[00:11:38] even further and I think that's where the sales director comes in and says okay hey this was this worked well what didn't work well in that and then we're now we're learning together as a

[00:11:49] and I really believe that anytime that we can start to explore and discover together right instead of just being a talking head and going okay guys this is right because there's

[00:12:04] always kind of that barrier of okay he knows his job but how does this really work for me but if we can discover something together in an IDS session where we're identifying oh that really

[00:12:17] worked well why did that work well well because I did x y and z and what was the psychology behind it well I you know they said to me this it made them feel like this or they just said yes

[00:12:28] I want to buy um I think that's important when we can discover that together um because then you're discovering it as a team right and I think your sales team needs to be cohesive

[00:12:40] and really gel well together even though they may be doing independent things to always know that they have that team to come back to and bounce ideas off of each other and come up with

[00:12:53] maybe a solution on okay if that worked well how do we make sure that's done every single time that way hey I want to tell you about a project that I started called sales velocity

[00:13:04] it's a weekly email that comes out early on a Monday before the shit hits the fan and what is it it's just sales tips it's for that for that business owner that CEO that sales

[00:13:16] leader who's looking for a little tip to kind of inspire them for the week an idea that they might be able to try to implement it's very simple it tells a bunch of stories about

[00:13:26] me things I've screwed up along the way some successes all you have to do is go down into the show notes and click on the sales velocity link and you can sign up and you'll they'll pop

[00:13:35] into your email on Monday morning just once a week thanks so that's where the that's where the coaching and the training development piece could take place so just make sure I want to

[00:13:46] I heard what you said correctly that the the sales manager and sales leader is going to say all right we're gonna we're gonna IDS project X and and what we did well was A, B, and C

[00:14:02] right and I like to use the model what did we do well what could we do better what should we do different next time right so if we if so what you're saying is that that sales manager

[00:14:16] needs to lead that IDS clarify really identify the the issue which is the I and IDS and then the discussion becomes around it becomes that coaching that training component where the team is involved and that leader has to play that role right where they have to solicit that

[00:14:35] input that interaction from the team and you know then that discussion goes wherever it goes and then wrapping that up with a solve about we can do this better and maybe we can do this

[00:14:50] different and that becomes the the solve portion of it does that does that sound like what you were what you were describing what I just said yeah no absolutely I think that's I think

[00:15:02] that's done on and what it does to do as well Walter is it gives the sales director or sales manager some time to maybe come back if there was deeper training needed that might not

[00:15:15] fit into an L10 you know maybe of something more profound well now now there's that feedback back going okay this is where my sales team is I know that they need work here and this is

[00:15:26] what the feedback we're getting right and then you can you can create training deeper on that subject maybe outside of that meeting or directly after that that would be a shorter period of time

[00:15:40] or what have you but yeah I think that's exactly what would be the best route to go with that is coming up with that solution having the team organically come up with that solution

[00:15:50] and you know as well as I if if they discover that together and it's their solution they're going to buy in more sure it's just like selling to a prospect right we're we're really

[00:16:02] just getting them walking them down the path that we want them to go and letting them discover it for themselves that's what we do with a prospect that's what we do with a customer

[00:16:10] coaching and sales management is very similar to that in in getting getting them to where we want them to go so I think that's a really good takeaway for that visionary who's trying

[00:16:25] to get out of the sales seat and they can they could lead this if there's if they haven't hired that sales manager and they're they're looking for a way to transfer that knowledge they can look for those opportunities to IDS those where they're a coaching or a training

[00:16:44] IDS and it's almost like a different type of IDS and yeah go ahead okay and then the other thing that I've seen in these in sales l10s is that everybody's putting their their own

[00:17:00] ideas in and there's this there's this huge list of issues to be discussed and some of them are more bitching about a problem than they are something that we can solve for somebody just

[00:17:19] wants to get something off their chest so I you know I'm kind of curious about your take on this where that that sales leader or whoever's running the the l10 for sales that there's a there's a

[00:17:35] pretty big responsibility for them to curate that IDS and make sure that the right ones are being discussed and the and the ones that are really aren't aren't we can't dismiss them because it's somebody's thoughts and feelings but how would you deal with the ones where just like

[00:17:56] that guy always puts in two or three ideas that are just complaints that are him complaining not there's really no solve for it because it's just the way life works um how would we as a sales leader sitting in that running that l10

[00:18:12] how would they how would they remove those ideas? Yeah I think that's a that's a great question and it happens all the time even outside of you know just in regular leadership team l10s. The tool that technique that we tend to use is this

[00:18:31] state what the issue is in a sentence or less right sometimes we get into story time and so a lot of times if we start to have that with teams we start to really show them okay this

[00:18:44] is what IDS time is it's so here's an issue and here's not how to bring one up so oh you know the the the ABC company file and oh you wouldn't believe Walter and what they were

[00:19:00] talking about and and then Nancy in in operations of blah blah blah okay stop what's the issue just state the issue clearly in a sentence or less and then they start to do it again stop and so this whoever's running the l10 has to be really comfortable with

[00:19:20] just shutting people off right away so that's really the issue right you got to be comfortable with that uncomfortable that's not how we IDS can you please identify the issue you're trying to

[00:19:33] describe in one or two sentences and then you just keep hammering them on that issue until they realize that it's they they can't do that and say all right well then let's let's

[00:19:45] put that back here and you and I will come and have a conversation like how does that get resolved if they if they just can't identify it yeah if they can't identify it it's just if it's just a

[00:19:56] bitch session and that needs to move on to a one-to-one you know type of situation and so what i've done in the past is that you know what hey uh tim i i understand what you're

[00:20:06] saying with that i don't know if that's really appropriate for this conversation here but let's take that offline because i i understand what you're getting at and it's important but let's take that after the meeting and then we take that offline and talk about whatever

[00:20:21] that issue may be because ids is not a bitch session it's not a pipeline meeting right it's it's these are things that hey what pertains to the whole team and so when i would run an

[00:20:33] ids session i would say hey guys uh i was in the mortgage industry still am but i would say okay let's not get file specific where we're really getting granular into an issue that

[00:20:47] really doesn't involve the rest of the team here um let's take it offline we can talk about that and then that would be it and so what's amazing about that is is when you start to go

[00:20:57] hey um sentence or less or you know two sentences or less let's really identify the issue as it continues to happen over and over again the whole team will then start to go hey bob

[00:21:09] hey sentence or less man you got a you got a storybook over here right you know and they start to razz each other a bit and i and i love that about you know teams i think that's

[00:21:18] a healthy team uh but that's that's kind of how we we work that and believe it or not even implementers uh when we get together we have to be reminded the same thing um because

[00:21:32] eventually we get into story time and some of our best implementers go all right hey so what's the issue what's the i love the idea of story time right it's like hey this that

[00:21:46] this is you're getting into a story identify the real issue we need to discuss or we're going to move on right where you you start off and you layer that you amp it up a little

[00:21:56] bit right where you know you consistently do that anytime anybody does it um right and then that that trains everybody to to start to realize it and i and i love the idea that because i

[00:22:09] think a sales meeting should be loud there should be a lot of back and forth people calling each other out and i think of it like this um in an italian family uh dinner table

[00:22:24] on a sunday they have sunday dinner together and those people i had privilege of of uh being invited into a an old school family um italian family to be invited to their dinner and they never invited people that weren't related right it was just not something they did

[00:22:43] and the old man um took a shine to me because i did something his daughter was being harassed and i kind of stepped in the middle of it and stopped it and um he found out about it and

[00:22:57] thought it was like you didn't have to do that and like i did because 17 year old girls shouldn't be being harassed by somebody so i got invited into a couple of these so i

[00:23:06] incited to this and that that table was loud there was yelling at each other sometimes roles would be thrown at at somebody across the table but the minute that somebody somebody outside of the family like they would just converge right they could talk

[00:23:25] shit about each other all day long to each other but not nobody else from outside the family could jump in and i think the sales meeting should run like that where the team is really um after each other trying to make them the better better sales people

[00:23:41] supporting each other but really pushing them um and if we can relate it to that then they start like you say start policing each other hey mike that's a it's a freaking story like would cut to

[00:23:53] the chase what's the problem we're trying to discuss here we don't have time for this right when that happens outside of the sales leader then you know you got it going really well and

[00:24:02] i think that's a great point you made that that that becomes the barometer but it takes that sales leader to be consistently disciplined to call out that ids component otherwise it just becomes unwieldy yeah and that's what's great about that you know when you have a team that

[00:24:23] comes together and they are protecting each other what that also does too is it creates open and honest communication in that where you know they feel like hey i if i have an issue

[00:24:34] or i'm not understanding right that we we could really work that out but i know at the end of the day walter you got my back right like we could razz each other but if it's out in the sales world

[00:24:44] or what have you and say hey you know i met so-and-so and and he's you know what the hell's the matter with that guy you know you're not bashing him you know that walter's not

[00:24:55] going to be bashing me right and we're protecting the culture right it's become we have a company culture but we have a sales culture and and this this l10 format will allow us to build

[00:25:08] that culture and in and sort of the we'll police that one person doesn't want to accept the same standards as everybody else we'll put that pressure on them to either get involved in

[00:25:20] the way everybody else is or get the hell out right that's that's where i think it really makes a big difference absolutely it's it's all about culture at the end of the day you know culture

[00:25:32] each strategy for lunch right and when when those guys come together or team if you will and they start to police each other and this is how we roll you get the people that don't fit

[00:25:44] they get out they get out quickly and they they know that they can't be a cancer because hey we don't put up with that here right we're not going to politic so i think i really think

[00:25:54] that you know our our listeners who are running eos and they're running these sales tons the big piece of this is whoever's running that meeting sales manager the visionary whoever that is got to be comfortable with calling people out holding to a certain standard setting

[00:26:13] that standard and making sure everybody's living it every time and they got to make sure that they give them the the rest of the team permission to call them out if they go into story time and i think the story time is something that everybody can relate to

[00:26:29] how do you feel about so the visionary still sits in the sales seat they're working themselves out but they're still there should they run that meeting or should one of the salespeople

[00:26:41] run that meeting i think it needs to be whoever is the most comfortable keeping the team on track i really think that should be the case if the visionary does visionary things and they

[00:26:55] get into story time on a regular basis i think that they i think they have to give permission to the person that it feels comfortable being the jerk right quote unquote cutting people off

[00:27:09] that's overall even at a leadership team level i didn't run i didn't run rl tens in my company i had zero interest and as a visionary i want to hear everyone in what was going on and

[00:27:22] actively listen so i can keep a pulse on the the culture right instead of doing that and doing some of the technical stuff of making sure so i whoever is really good at facilitation

[00:27:35] i think can do that so typically it would be the the sales manager uh is a visionary it could be your integrator whomever uh whoever you feel is comfortable with facilitating those conversations or does it need to be somebody on the sales team to be there to

[00:27:50] do that or does it just mean somebody that's good at facilitating now i think it needs to be someone in the sales team whoever is supposed to be in that meeting right uh because the other

[00:28:00] thing is is maybe that person uh is not in that department but there's issues that need to be discussed that may pertain to them we want to open an honest and healthy

[00:28:16] relationship and so we don't want to hold back if we you know if tim from accounting's in there we are having accounting issues or what have you exactly okay that's what i thought and i

[00:28:28] think that's another big issue i mean in the last couple of minutes that we have i think that has to be the start of this and reminders have to be there if somebody's using an l10

[00:28:39] format to run their sales meetings open and honest and highest priority those are the things that um are important and i'll tell a quick story my first time going into a leadership l10

[00:28:53] right i was with the visionary the integrator another partner i mean like it was the leadership team and i sat through a couple of them and one of the integrator came to me he's like

[00:29:06] you know we're not sure you're being open and honest and i'm like i'm not and they're like well that's what you got to do i'm like i don't think you want me to be open and honest

[00:29:17] and he's like you can you need to be open and honest otherwise this whole system doesn't work right and i'm like but i'm gonna i'm gonna call out people that you know are the ones

[00:29:28] that hired me because i was doing fractional work at the time he's like you know you just can't be a dick about it but you you know keep it professional but you gotta be open and

[00:29:37] honest about it and it was amazing how that made a huge difference for me i felt productive because i would write meetings at a seven or an eight all the time because i didn't feel like

[00:29:50] there was a that we made progress and i didn't realize it was me holding things back because i wasn't being open and honest and once that started to work um it really it opened things

[00:30:04] up and the conversations changed um and things got done so i think that's an important part um in especially in a leadership meeting but in a sales meeting that's got to be like hey i need more

[00:30:17] support from you as a sales manager i need support from you as a leader when i when i when i'm trying to get something closed and i'm meeting with a ceo i need you to help show up

[00:30:27] like everybody's got to be willing to have those open and honest conversations yeah i if everyone realizes and sometimes we have to remind people we're in this meeting for what's best for the team right what's going to advance the ball down the field

[00:30:46] it's not a a meeting just for me or just for you it's how do we get better if everyone has that mentality of how do we get better this is for the team i that creates that open and

[00:31:00] honest conversation and we can eliminate the the me hat and put on the team hat i looked at perspective it's about the team and we're trying to we're trying to

[00:31:09] get everybody to elevate um their game so the team does better i love it um so one of the one of the questions i always ask a guest um is a pastor present relationship with cigars

[00:31:24] and i know you well enough to know that you're uh you've recently gotten into uh cigars and and you're you're you've you've taken to it quite quite nicely in my humble opinion but can you

[00:31:40] talk a little bit about how that how you how you use a cigar that you take that time how does that help you um because you're you're not just smoking a cigar while you're riding

[00:31:52] around in the tractor you're smoking a cigar when you're having tent to do something can you talk a little bit about that yeah uh i've had two are written today my my helix um uh

[00:32:07] churchill yeah no i've had two today already and you know the way i use it in a couple of different ways you know today i was sitting out on the deck and and it's morning and the rain's

[00:32:19] falling and you know there's something we have in the os called clarity breaks right and and it's a time that you can just relax and maybe reflect on you know what's going on uh how

[00:32:32] just overall taking that time and it really what i like about it walter is is that it slows you down i everyone in business we're all going 200 miles an hour and i use this in uh

[00:32:44] this analogy all the time i'm not a nascar fan okay but i know that those guys go 200 miles an hour around oval track they're all trying to go as fast as possible but every nascar driver has

[00:32:57] to do this one thing they have to pit they have to go they have to stop they have to refuel they have to adjust they have to calibrate right and i really believe that that's what

[00:33:06] a scar does it slows you down depending on the size of your your cigar right if you're smoking a toro you're probably going to sit there for an hour and and really take time to go

[00:33:20] okay what's going on right the other thing is when you're just networking with people it's a great way to have a conversation if you're talking to another and i don't care you could

[00:33:31] be the ceo of a billion dollar company or the guy who cleans the tiles if you're sitting at a cigar bar and you're enjoying a cigar you have something in common already and it's a great way

[00:33:45] to just break barriers and and just enjoy your conversation with those people yeah i love it i call that being you know brothers or sisters of the leaf right where we have that common

[00:33:57] bond and i've never walked into a cigar shop like i'm on the road or whatever and i i'm in a weird little town and i find a cigar shop i go in people like they look at you like he's new

[00:34:10] he's not one of the guys what's what's this about and then you know you go grab a cigar and you sit down and you look like you know what you're doing and you know they're all

[00:34:20] engaged with you um maybe not to the level that they are with everybody else but you know they make you feel comfortable um i think that's a great point and the the other thing

[00:34:31] it i've never thought about it as a clarity break being able to take a little bit of time i've always thought of it as a contemplative cigar where i'm gonna i'm gonna focus on one

[00:34:42] issue that i need some time with i'll take a cigar a chair maybe turn on some music but i've got a journal and a pen and i'm going to think through some problem that's been bugging me

[00:34:53] um and you know maybe that takes more than one cigar depending upon the size um or the size of the problem but i love that tying tying the clarity break to the cigar

[00:35:05] that's a great great tool because it justifies you going going to the local cigar shop and sitting there and having a having a cigar and enjoying yourself or sitting on the deck

[00:35:16] you sent me a picture the other day you were smoking a cigar and sitting on your deck reading it's a you know one of those things that you get you get to do

[00:35:25] when you when you enjoy a cigar so i appreciate that um so you said a bunch of smart things we're going to have all of your um your connection your your links and everything in

[00:35:37] the show notes uh for somebody that's looking for an implementer that somebody that that that needs a little help um what's the best way for them to reach out to greg yeah they can

[00:35:48] either reach me uh through my cell phone which will be provided or email would be fine and we can just have a conversation the one thing is is that i just present what we offer

[00:36:03] and if it works for you great and if it doesn't that's great too that's one less thing that you have to worry about that um and so i just love more than anything walter i just love talking to other entrepreneurs because there's a brotherhood in that as well

[00:36:17] because when you're an entrepreneur there are things that you just can't talk about with your staff right um if you're in previous to eos i sat on the ceo island often and so you know being able to talk to another entrepreneur and go hey i'm struggling with this

[00:36:38] i i'm more than happy to right yeah they get that idea and they're they're not judging they're actually you know like i got the same problem or like i had that problem and here's

[00:36:47] what i did um you know whatever that whatever that situation is sometimes you can't even you know you're not even comfortable talking about certain things with your spouse and that other that other entrepreneur having a cigar doesn't suck with when you're when

[00:37:01] you're doing that so i appreciate it greg um thank you for taking the time um and i look forward to we've got a cigar event coming up i'm looking forward to it

[00:37:13] so am i absolutely and uh yes i i have taken to the cigar world uh pretty well so uh my wife keep not you have a thing you can just tell your wife you're going out to

[00:37:24] have a clarity break that's right you know how many clarity breaks do you need in a day five at least three maybe five yeah that's awesome all right man thank you appreciate it thank you walter