Planning Your Sales Kick-off Meeting
Would you like to Maximise your Sales Kick-off Meeting?
Before, During, After
Annual sales meetings, commonly referred to as “sales kick-off,” are more than your average meeting.
Your annual meeting sets the tone for the upcoming year, ensures your sales organisation gets off on the right foot, and is often the platform to launch new products or announce big company news. It’s a chance for your national reps and managers to get together in one place for several days and collaborate with other departments. It’s also a huge opportunity to get your reps to learn about new products, initiatives and strategies that will help your company achieve the business goals you’ve set for the upcoming year.
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But without careful planning and tools to help maximise the time spent onsite, the meeting could be a waste of time and resources for everyone.
before
We do Polls or Questionnaires, One to One with Head of Sales, Head of Marketing, CXO's etc.
This enables us to keep your content engaging, interactive, and condensed. We don’t waste time getting into the nitty-gritty details; instead focus on the most important, timely information that is relevant to them.
during
During the meeting, build off pre-work and thread the main themes into the agenda in a way that feels cohesive.
We take the time to highlight how to use the information that will make the content rise above the noise and ensure it gets applied. Make sure you prepare a user adoption plan to ensure what is covered during the sales kick- off is sustained throughout the year.
after
We send out recaps that reinforce what was covered at the meeting – so people don’t forget everything they learned after they leave.
The amount of time, dedication, rejection, and uncertainty can be overwhelming and demotivating.
Regardless of how positive morale is, there’s always room for improving sales morale and inspiring winning behavior.
Here in lies the biggest challenge, what to do after the sales kick-off meeting? How can you capture all of the ideas, enthusiasm and momentum generated from the sales kick-off meeting and ensure it doesn’t get lost 30, 60, 90 days later.
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In other words, how can Sales Focused Organisations maintain the momentum throughout the course of the year?
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The best way to combat this is to plan ahead with change management. In fact, the first step to planning your sales kick-off meeting should include a plan that answers the following questions:
Behavior
What new behaviors are we trying to drive and encourage?
what more
What do we want your salesforce to do more of after the sales kick-off meeting?
tracked & Measured
How will these elements be tracked and measured?
reinforce
What is the plan to reinforce these behaviors and what role must leadership play?
motivation
What is the plan to keep the sales team focused and motivated on these elements or behaviors?
Actionable sales advice
Maintain Momentum Throughout the Year Through Reinforcement
At a minimum, you will need to proactively schedule check-ins with team members following the event. This may include weekly, monthly and/or quarterly team meetings to review progress.
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We also suggest you incorporate sales gamification including contests to keep your team motivated and inspired. The bottom line here is if there is no follow-up from your sales kick-off meeting than we can assure you that there will be no follow-through by your sales reps.
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What are your plans for your sales (before, during and after) kick-off?
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