It’s never too early to start planning — especially when it comes to your sales kickoff. Sales kickoffs, or SKOs, live at the intersection of education and celebration: the goal of any SKO is to prepare and reenergise sales professionals as they enter the new year.
But each new year brings new challenges, prompting sales leaders to rethink what a great SKO looks like in today’s world of work.
How can you ensure your SKO sets up sellers for success? We’ll break down the key elements of any successful sales kickoff including:
A sales kickoff is an annual event that brings together a company’s entire sales team to align on goals, unveil new strategies, provide training, and celebrate successes from the previous year. Sales kickoffs are usually held at the start of a new fiscal year and last one to three days. They serve as a way to motivate and energize your sales team to hit the ground running.
As a sales leader hosting an impactful sales kickoff is one of the most important things you can do to set your team up for success in the new year. But with so many components to think about, planning a sales kickoff can feel overwhelming. In this article we’ll break down exactly what a sales kickoff is, why it’s important, and how to plan a successful sales kickoff meeting that engages your team.
What Is a Sales Kickoff?
A sales kickoff meeting is an annual event for your entire sales organization to come together. Other common names for this meeting include “sales rally,” “national sales meeting,” or “sales bootcamp.”
The overarching goals of a sales kickoff are to:
- Provide inspiration and motivation for the year ahead
- Share company goals and realign on sales strategies
- Offer critical sales training and coaching
- Recognize top achievements from the prior year
- Build camaraderie and strengthen relationships across teams
Sales kickoffs originated as in-person gatherings, typically held at the beginning of January. However, over the past few years, many companies have switched to hosting virtual or hybrid sales kickoff meetings to accommodate remote teams
No matter the format, an impactful sales kickoff serves as the jumping off point to set your salespeople up for success as they enter a new fiscal year. It brings together multiple key stakeholders – sales leadership, sales enablement, product marketing, executives – to make sure the entire sales organization is armed with the knowledge, strategies, tools and motivation they need to hit their targets.
Why Are Sales Kickoffs Important?
Hosting an annual sales kickoff is invaluable for many reasons:
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Reset Focus The new year represents a fresh start, A sales kickoff realigns everyone behind company revenue goals and priorities for the year ahead,
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Unveil New Strategies: Major changes to sales processes, territories, compensation plans, etc. are announced and explained at sales kickoff. This ensures your team understands how to execute under the new systems.
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Impart Critical Skills: Sales kickoffs incorporate dedicated training and coaching sessions to teach sellers the skills they need to succeed based on company objectives.
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Boost Morale: High energy kickoff events get teams excited about goals and rebuild momentum after time off during the holidays. Celebrating top performers also inspires and motivates reps.
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Strengthen Relationships: With field reps, inside sales, sales leadership and other departments all in one place, kickoffs foster greater alignment and relationships across the org.
Simply put, an impactful sales kickoff ensures your team has the strategies, knowledge, skills and energy needed to deliver results in the year ahead.
How to Plan a Successful Sales Kickoff
Planning a sales kickoff requires aligning multiple stakeholders, building a comprehensive agenda, and keeping the experience engaging for attendees. Follow these best practices when planning your next sales kickoff:
Start Planning Early
Don’t wait until December to start planning your January kickoff. Successful sales kickoffs require months of advance preparation. Align with your executive team early on key themes, announcements and priorities to focus the event on. Then work backwards to build out agenda sessions that arm your team to achieve those goals. Starting early ensures you can secure the best venue, speakers, etc.
Define Clear Objectives
Be intentional about what you want reps to know, do or say differently as a result of attending kickoff. Define 2-3 core objectives and align executive presentations, training sessions and activities to those goals. Some potential kickoff objectives could include:
- Reps understand the primary services we are focused on selling this year
- Reps know how to convey our value prop to ABC customer persona
- Reps are motivated and confident to exceed quota
Structure Your Agenda Purposefully
An impactful sales kickoff agenda incorporates a mix of inspiration, education, and celebration.
Inspiration comes from executive vision sessions, motivating guest speakers and announcements about company success.
Education happens through sales methodology training, new product demos and breakout sessions tailored to different roles.
Celebration recognizes top sales achievements and incorporates fun team-building activities to rebuild energy and relationships.
Strike the right balance between these elements based on your company’s current needs and culture.
Make Kickoff Engaging
Between flights and time away from deals, salespeople are giving up a lot to attend kickoff. You need to make the experience worthwhile for them. Some ideas:
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Incorporate interactive elements like contests, games, and group activities rather than just presentations.
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Break attendees into small groups for hands-on practice and peer learning.
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Produce fun videos and skits starring sales reps and leadership.
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Create unique personas and themes throughout kickoff.
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Share live customer testimonials showcasing deals closed by attendees.
Limit Session Length
Sales reps have limited attention spans. Break content down into bite-sized chunks, limiting presentations to 30 minutes max. Break up long agenda blocks into multiple formats – a short presentation followed by small group discussions, for example.
Gather Feedback to Improve
Distribute post-event surveys to capture feedback on what resonated most and what can be better. Kickoff effectiveness directly impacts sales performance, so be committed to continuously improving your approach each year.
Virtual and Hybrid Sales Kickoff Best Practices
Virtual sales kickoffs have become the norm over the past few years. While in-person events may be making a comeback, it’s likely that hybrid or virtual kickoffs are here to stay due to remote and distributed sales teams.
Moving kickoff to a virtual format presents new challenges. Salespeople are easily distracted and may multi-task instead of actively engaging. Here are some best practices to help you plan a successful virtual or hybrid sales kickoff:
Incorporate Interactive Elements: Polls, Q&As, chat, breakout rooms, whiteboarding and gamification make virtual kickoffs more engaging. Have attendees turn cameras on as much as possible.
Leverage Speakers Carefully: Keynotes that energize teams in-person may actually disengage virtual audiences. Look for speakers who make content interactive.
Shorten Sessions: Attention spans are even shorter in a virtual format. Break content into smaller 15-30 minute chunks with breaks in between.
Add Small Group Time: Schedule meet and greets, topic discussions, and informal gatherings for teammates to connect. These relationship-building moments often get lost in remote kickoffs.
Send Swag: Mailed swag bags with branded items make attendees feel more connected to kickoff and each other.
Take Breaks: Give people time to move around between sessions to avoid Zoom fatigue.
Sales Kickoff Checklist
Use this checklist to help plan a successful sales kickoff:
6-8 Months Before
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Set dates and secure venue/platform
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Define objectives
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Start building agenda
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Book external speakers
3-4 Months Before
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Send “save the dates”
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Build internal hype through emails, contests etc.
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Develop content for sessions
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Start planning logistics like travel, meals, AV
1-2 Months Before
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Send pre-work materials to attendees
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Finalize agenda and session content
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Complete rehearsals and slide decks
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Confirm logistics and do walkthroughs
1 Week Before
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Send final kickoff details to attendees
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Rehearse with speakers and session leaders
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Print handouts and gather giveaways
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Set up tech and do final walkthrough
During Kickoff
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Capture feedback through surveys
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Take lots of photos and videos to share
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Celebrate wins and high-performers
Inspiring Sales Kickoff Themes
Choosing a compelling theme is one of the best ways to add energy and engagement to your sales kickoff. Here are some unique sales kickoff theme ideas to inspire you:
- Havana Nights
- Hollywood or Awards Show
- Carnival or Circus
- Destination like Hawaii or Italy
- Decade like the 80’s
- Superheroes or Comic-con
- TV Shows like Game of Thrones
- Spy or James Bond
- Vegas or Casino Night
- Olympics or Sports
- Super Bowl
- TV Game Shows
- The Amazing Race
- Back to the Future
- Star Wars
- Karaoke
- Beach Bash
- Masquerade Ball
- Murder Mystery
- Speakeasy or Prohibition
- Camping or Bonfire
- Tour of the World
- Cruise Ship
- Holidays like Halloween or New Years Eve
- Willy Wonka or Candy Land
Key Takeaw
After Your Sales Kickoff Event
- Buy tools your team needs to succeed: Ensure your team has a good CRM system, workflow automation process, and sales enablement tool to smash quotas and meet next year’s goals.
- Provide follow-up training: Reinforce skills with ongoing sales training and coaching, ideally delivered via your sales enablement platform. Here, it is also essential that you prepare managers with specific guidelines on how to inspect and coach against new skills.
- Offer just-in-time learning: Not everything your sellers learn will be used all the time. To ensure that knowledge isn’t lost, offer just-in-time learning via your enablement platform so sellers can access training when they need it.
How to Plan for Your 2024 Sales Kickoff Meeting
- Align with stakeholders: SKOs typically require a big investment. By aligning your sales kickoff agenda to your leadership’s top priorities, you’ll maximise your ROI. Tight alignment requires knowing what pain points salespeople are experiencing, and the specific sales skills or product training you’ll offer at SKO to help them overcome said challenges.
- Prep your SKO play: Leverage the sales play format to help your sales reps get up to speed on all things SKO. Build a single source of truth that tells them what to know, say, show, and do in preparation for the event.
- Engage sales reps with pre-work: Avoid a multi-day lecture by assigning SKO attendees pre-work before the event. Pre-work builds foundational knowledge so you can focus your live event on practice and peer-to-peer learning. We recommend using your sales enablement platform to manage pre-work assignments.
- Incentive participation: Make sure your salespeople are bought in before your event. Take time to “pitch” your SKO to your team — emphasise what’s in it for them and clearly outline the benefits they will receive by attending. Offer fun participation prizes or unique events to build hype.
Corporate Bro Speaks at Sales Kick Off
What is a Sales Kickoff?
A sales kickoff is an annual meeting (usually in January) for your entire sales team. The main objectives are motivating your reps, managers, and leaders; laying out your strategy; and celebrating wins. You’re setting the tone for the next 12 months and getting the entire organization — from the top to the bottom — fired up to hit their goals.
Why should you plan a Sales Kickoff?
Sales kickoffs help boost morale, build team trust and rapport, and ensure that the entire organization understands the priorities and roadmap for the year ahead. Below are our specific tips for planning kickoff — so keep reading. The pandemic has changed the way companies do business and virtual events are becoming the norm.
What is a Sales Kickoff agenda?
Common agenda items at sales kickoffs include inspirational keynotes, fun team-building events, awards celebrations, panels, and volunteering. Creating a sales kickoff agenda is a huge topic, so stay tuned for an upcoming post in this series for a closer look at the right kickoff agenda. Your sales team is a smart, savvy group.
How do you start a Sales Kickoff?
Divide salespeople into teams. Over the course of the kickoff, hold several “challenges” to test their product knowledge, selling skills, engagement during sessions, etc. The kickoff’s emcee can play Survivor host Jeff Probst. At the end of the kickoff, give the team with the most points a prize. 2. Create a sales kickoff agenda.
