How to Run a Great SKO

You’ve got your swag bag ready, your new product demo, and go to the market plan in check. Your sales kick-off event is designed to help you showcase and celebrate your sales team’s success, as well as provide training for newly launched products and services while aligning your organization on the goals for the year ahead. It can be a great opportunity to give your teams the tools that they need to reach goals, quotas and to blow their targets out of the water.

What exactly is a sales kick-off and why is it important?

A sales kick-off is an event that happens annually that helps get your organization rallied around accomplishing specific goals throughout the year. SKOs are an important part of getting everyone on the same page about the priorities of the coming year and help boost morale and a sense of teamwork. 

When you are organizing your annual SKO event, then it’s crucial to make sure that you have a clear set of goals and objectives that you want your organization to accomplish. SKOs need to have a good mix of informational meetings, team building, and training activities. However, adding value for your teams and setting up the foundation to help push your team towards your goals is also essential. You wouldn’t want your employees to leave events feeling like they could have spent the time more wisely. 

How to Plan the Perfect Sales Kickoff

SKOs will typically be scheduled for January or February in the new year and can vary in length. The length of your own kickoff should be influenced by the size of your company and the number of challenges that need to be reviewed. If you have a small company with only a few changes on the horizon, then you can probably get away with only a one-day event. However, if you have a larger team or a lot of new content to go over, then you could plan to go for three days. However, any longer than this could end up impacting your team negatively. 

Here are some other tips to keep in mind when you are creating your SKO event.

Announcements

Your SKO announcement can be one of the most important factors when it comes to getting your whole company excited and prepared for your sales kickoff. Making sure that every team and team member is aware of the event should be your very first step. This means you will need to craft an eye-catching internal email. Consider having your marketing and content team brainstorm about how you can get everyone in your organization excited for your SKO. 

You might think about the following:

• Who will be receiving the email? Will you need to segment the emails for different teams across the company? For example, marketing and sales product teams can receive one version while ops, customer service, and IT teams receive another.

• Will you need to send out invitations for any software tools that will be used during the event? Will your teams need to be briefed and instructed on how to sign up, install or navigate the tool?

• What content will be created to inform each team about what they should expect to learn during the SKO?

• Have you given out a central location for every detail of the event? For example full schedule, Zoom links, sessions for specific roles, or extra resources. 

• Have you already sent out invites or calendar placeholders for all participants in advance to make sure that all employees will have time to make plans or reschedule meetings if needed?

As you think about all the details about creating content for your announcement, as well as finalizing emails and sending them out, keep in mind that one email can certainly become lost in the shuffle. Plan to send out a set of emails periodically over the months that are leading up to your SKO which help remind your employees about how they can best prepare and what sessions will be the most relevant for them to attend. 

Clear Objectives

One of the most important things you must consider for your SKO is what you want your company to get out of the event. Having clear objectives to form the pillars of your SKO will make sure that it will stay on track as events unfold and that it gives you and your teams the best value possible. 

Make sure that your objectives are measurable. If the goals that you set for your SKO are not measurable then you could be setting yourself up for failure. Having unmeasurable goals means that it will be hard to prove that they were reached for key stakeholders. When you set goals that are easy to measure and have concrete results, then your employees will be much more motivated to try and achieve them. As your goals are reached, be sure that you are communicating this progress to leaders and throughout your entire company. 

Be sure to also make these objectives specific. Sales goals always need to be specific and clear. Outline exactly what is expected from the sales team for the next year. The goals that you set during kickoff should always be aligned with your company’s overall mission and strategy. 

Double Check Tech

Your SKO events might look a bit different now due to the pandemic. If you will be hosting all or a majority of your events virtually, then you should make sure that you have the right equipment and that it is working, before you go live. 

Here is a rough list of things you might need for your livestream of an SKO:

• Audio mixer, switcher and encoder. These pieces of technology help you capture your audio and video sources so you can broadcast them to your audience. 
• Camera and tripods. A camera is essential to record the video content from your SKO. you can mount your camera onto a tripod to make sure that you get steady footage. 
• Lighting. Good lighting is key to helping illuminate your speakers. Natural sunlight is always the best for this.
• Streaming platform. When you are trying to decide on a streaming platform it’s a good idea to think about how much you want to be able to interact with your audience, and then invest in the platform which can support this. 

Reinforce Your Training

When you are training your employees on new or old products or services in your company, reinforcement is an essential part of information retention. Studies show that 87% of training can be lost within 90 days, if not reinforced. Giving your teams follow-up materials and creating specific resources like a dedicated video library can help them retain information and be able to access the information later on when they need it. You can even implement workshops to refresh these learnings or consider moving your training content onto a gamified training platform such as 1Huddle.

At 1Huddle, we offer cloud-based employee gamification software that can easily adapt to any employee training or gamification strategy you want to implement at your workplace. You can customize your content for a seamless experience and all of your employees will be able to access their training anywhere, anytime, and at the push of a button. You can use our gamification platform to measure their performance and make key decisions on where you should take your gamification strategy next. 

Do you want to learn more about how 1Huddle can help you level up your own workforce? Request a demo today.