EOS and the Traction model have been making their way through entrepreneurial circles for years. It has staying power for a reason: it’s an operating system that can help empower teams, create clarity, and drive smart action. While it has the potential to create a cult-like following, there is no need to blindly follow this methodology at the expense of other tried-and-true practices that work in your business and culture. Its data-driven approach dovetails nicely with other methodologies you may follow.
We are asked a lot about how Traction’s approach to marketing maps to ours. The answer: very closely. In fact, we follow EOS ourselves. Things that have worked at Launch Team:
- Scorecards and meeting rhythm, specifically Level 10 and issues meetings
- Right people right seats: accountability-based org chart versus a hierarchical structure
- Identifying and solving problems as a group
EOS recommends four steps to set your marketing strategy:
- Target market (types of customers best served, most profitable, most value)—geography (niche), demographic and psychographic characteristics (persona), values, and drivers
- Three uniques: why work with us? Unique value proposition. Traction of how you deliver product/service. In our work, this is more often technology than process—but after you define the why, you must define the how.
- Proven process: the visual representation
- Guarantee: Derisk the process. This is more important than ever. What can they see and feel before they buy? It’s your promise to the customer.
Can you do it yourself? Sure! But an outside perspective focused on real customer and market intel can help you get it right and get it to stick, simplifying your approach rather than layering on more to-dos.
Launch works with companies every day to define their brand and marketing strategy. Here’s how EOS maps to our marketing strategy and positioning process:
Credit: Traction, Gino Wickman
| Vision |
Brand story, mission, and promise to customers. Customer discovery to ensure a match between core competencies and business plan with customer demand and expectations. |
| People |
Experienced in change management to train, coach, and mentor your employees, elevate the whole team, and improve customer and employee retention. Ongoing marketing retainers, sales training, and sales enablement help embed strategic thinking. Our positioning process and ongoing work improve team alignment around a single, measurable plan. |
| Issues |
Quarterly internal review, with our executive team acting as the internal customer and pushing for improvement across all KPIs. Quarterly external review with frank discussion and customer survey to explore how we can improve our working relationship and outcomes. |
| Traction |
Rocks are your major priorities. We ensure we’ve identified our rocks by starting with marketing KPIs aligned with revenue goals and the business plan and translating those into focused campaigns. Meeting pulse helps ensure we are looking at results regularly and resetting to optimize outcomes. Weekly meetings, focused on the pipeline, help keep sales and marketing on the same team working toward the same goal, while quarterly campaign planning and an annual strategic process help you stay ahead of the market. |
| Process |
Marketing and sales alignment, lead handoff, roles, and responsibilities are critical to revenue growth. We map out the customer journey and touchpoints, look at conversion at every step, and tweak throughout the year. |
| Data |
An abundance of marketing and sales metrics are available; we help set the EOS scorecard for day-to-day visibility to forward-looking metrics that drive results. We have the B2B tech experience to know industry benchmarks and make changes that suit your customers and sales cycle. We work with HubSpot and all other major toolsets to ensure you have real customer intelligence. |
Rocks to consider this year:
- Customer demographic shifts (retirement waves, hybrid work, workforce shortages, high turnover, increased diversity in engineering) are making many companies update their customer personas and market positioning.
- Product launch or relaunch: failed or ‘soft’ launches in the rush after the pandemic and new product availability after supply chain disruption are causing many companies to prioritize product launches.
- Branding: M&A and the customer demographic changes mentioned above are causing many companies to put renewed emphasis on brand awareness.
Implementing EOS and curious how it should impact how you approach marketing? Reach out!
