Next Year’s Sales Kickoff Must Look and Feel Different
In-person SKOs were declared forever dead at the start of the pandemic. But now they’re back with a vengeance. Across industries and markets, our clients are heads-down planning their kickoffs for Q1.
Now is the time for new thinking when it comes to sales kickoffs.
If you’re not planning a fundamentally different experience, you’re missing the mark. Done right, the SKO is the launchpad for the year’s revenue strategy. It rallies the team around the vital few priorities. And it anchors the annual enablement plan.
Getting this new SKO model right requires a solid strategy and flawless execution. It means more intentional planning and collaboration across product, marketing, and sales. And now more than ever, it demands strong leadership by enablement.
There are five actions high-performing sales organizations are taking to optimize their upcoming SKO:
Strategy 1: Adding through Subtraction
Bringing the team back together after nearly 3 years means lots of pressure to fill every minute. But endless mainstage presentations and breakouts running from breakfast to dinner are the last thing you want now.
Less is more when it comes to your next SKO. Go into the archives and open the agenda from your last in-person SKO. Then, delete 40% of it. We’re seeing draft agendas with about 60% of the available time being filled.
Utilize the open time for loosely structured networking and informal collaboration. For many, this will be the first time they’re meeting their colleagues in person. Others haven’t been face-to-face in years.
Be warned, this addition-through-subtraction approach presents challenges. It means some executive or function or pet topic won’t make the final cut. Feelings will be hurt and political capital might get spent. Hold the line and stay focused.
Strategy 2: Getting Everyone on the Same Page
Marketing, product, HR, finance, corporate strategy. So many needy constituents with so many things to say to sales. In the past, it wasn’t unusual to slot-in different groups and cut them loose on whatever they wanted to cover. The result? Disjointed, fuzzy, and often conflicting messages.
All commercial teams and related functions must be on the same page. Each should deliver a part of one interconnected story. Easier said than done, right? The best enablement teams are driving this alignment by:
Strategy 3: Balancing Participant Intake with Application
Next generation SKO agendas dedicate significant time to real work. They allocate large chunks of time and mental space so teams can bring concepts to life. This likely involves breakouts of account teams or like customer segments, verticals, or sales motions.
It starts with SKO branding. Position the meeting as a “workshop”. Set the expectation that actual work will take place (not just passive information intake). In the same way, it’s not a “role-play” but a “real-play”. Any practice needs to be realistic and contextualized to participant roles and accounts.
While quick table activities are good, larger agenda blocks give participants time to really struggle with a new concept. In other words, don’t let participants off-the-hook with superficial understanding. Make the most out of the application aspects of your SKO. Participants will need structure in their learning ‘walk’ from awareness to critical thinking.
Strategy 4: Initiating a Wave of Enablement
The goal of any SKO is triggering actions that extend beyond the event. SKOs should be the starting point – literally, the kickoff – of the annual enablement plan. As logical as that sounds, too many treat SKOs like the point of arrival vs. the point of departure.
This approach means utilizing the full enablement toolkit:
Measurement is key – it’s necessary for continuous improvement and expected by leadership. But there are practical limits to the results any single event can achieve. Define the team behaviors to focus on over the year.
Consider how you will measure those changes, starting with engagement metrics all the way to full revenue impacts. Set 2-to-3-month milestones across the post-SKO timeline. What’s sticking? Where are the disconnects? These insights will guide content refinements and additional programming needs.
Strategy 5: Mixing in the Fun
You already know emotion is a big component of adult engagement, learning, and retention. Now overlay this with the pervasive emphasis on authenticity and informality triggered by the pandemic.
Embrace the new business atmosphere. Make sure your agenda is light and fun. Find ways to infuse humor and less serious activities beyond just the evening or social events.
Break down the formal dynamic of a mainstage presenter and the passive audience member. Don’t let any presentation go more than 10 minutes without a point of interaction. These interactive elements can run the gamut in complexity and timing:
Next year’s SKO is an unprecedented enablement opportunity. Don’t buy into the myth that SKOs can’t drive real results near and long term. They can – and this year – they must.
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Executing an impactful SKO requires strategy, collaboration, creativity. Contact us to set up a virtual workshop to validate or ramp-up your SKO planning. We’d love to share more ideas to make this year’s SKO the best ever.