It’s never the wrong time to start planning your SKO. 2020 was certainly a unique year, and no doubt your team has a lot to share on lessons learned and strategies that worked and didn’t work. And in this “new normal,” you need to reinvigorate your reps to continue putting their best foot forward.
A well-done SKO will align priorities, motivate your sales team, generate energy around offers and products, and celebrate past successes. Planning it in advance is key. At 6Connex, we understand this, and because we’ve hosted hundreds of SKO events for organizations of all sizes and in all industries, we know an SKO is no ordinary sales meeting. Engaging your sales reps by delivering educational content, scheduling motivational speakers, and sharing new tools that will help them improve their efficiency requires planning. We also know that regardless of whether your SKO is virtual or physical, the recipe for success is one and the same:
1. Content, Content, Content
Organize sessions that are interesting and engaging, with information that helps your reps perform better. Review market trends. Celebrate company achievements. Publish customer testimonials. In fact, consider inviting a customer representative to present their business use case at your event. You can also invite your own sales reps to share successful approaches and experiences, and schedule panel discussions with your sales leaders to answer questions, share insights, and reflect on this unique year.
In a virtual event, sharing this content is efficient and easy. 6Connex offers webcasting tools that allow your speakers to engage with your audience, present content and videos, and interact with the audience via live Q&As. You can also launch live polls during presentations, allowing your event planners and content presenters to react to the results in real time.
In addition, it’s important — and easy — to switch presentation formats during a virtual event to maintain engagement. Be sure to mix and match individual presentations with panel discussions, Q&A sessions, engaging videos such as new product introductions, live demonstrations of solutions, etc.
2. Engage and Network at all Levels
Sales teams welcome the opportunity to interact with their peers in open forums, ask questions, provide their thoughts on business processes, and share their experiences in the field. They also love to engage with each other more informally to network and learn. This is an important part of the SKO experience, so make sure your teams have the opportunity to do this with ease.
On a virtual platform like 6Connex, we encourage our customers to create leadership lounges, where sales reps and sales enablement teams can submit questions directly to the company leadership in a fun and purposeful way. We also encourage our customers to build a sales rep lounge, where you can run multiple, moderated chats about either the session presentations or topics you believe will be of interest to your teams. These sessions bring new perspectives and generate ideas that can be leveraged by the entire organization.
It’s also important to remember to encourage colleagues to meet each other. Consider creating a “meet the team” room or wall, where your team members can share videos or pictures.
3. Celebrate Your Team Members
Acknowledgement of individual and group successes goes a long way. Share achievements and shine a light on this year’s “wins.” Make sure you not only recognize those who have met or exceeded quotas, but those who have creatively dealt with challenges — your teams likely had more than their fair share in this unusual landscape!
In the 6Connex virtual environment, you can design sessions to specifically recognize team members or even create an awards room, where you can display team members’ pictures and summaries of their achievements. Including a short video from each team member accepting their award is always engaging.
Plan Your Virtual SKO
If you would like to plan your virtual SKO, contact us today.
Want to learn more about planning a virtual SKO? Read how Glassdoor, one of the world’s largest job and recruiting sites, ran their 2020 SKO leveraging the 6Connex platform.
Originally published at https://www.6connex.com on August 10, 2020.
