When you’re getting ready for your sales kickoff (SKO) meetings, building a meaningful agenda is one of the essential parts of preparations. This helps prioritize the topics you want to cover and will keep the discussion on track. It would help if you positioned your sales kickoff to build team cohesion, generate enthusiasm about your company’s products, services, and roadmap, and align on goals.
If part or all of your sales team is remote and you’re planning a hybrid or virtual sales kickoff, the next important part of your preparations is selecting the right virtual venue for hosting a hybrid event or virtual meeting. Preferably one with state-of-the-art event tech integrations and engagement tools to encourage interactions and keep your team motivated from opening to closing remarks.
Creating an Effective Sales Meeting Agenda
What goes into a great sales kickoff agenda? The best way to build an agenda is to establish concrete goals for your meeting and then align the agenda to these goals. For example: What does everyone need to learn? How will you motivate the team? What products or services will you showcase, and who will present them? Do you have new team members, and if so, how much networking is necessary?
Here are a few tips for hosting a great SKO:
- Create a theme: Building your SKO around a theme can be fun. A theme will provide creative ways for you to encourage engagement, tie the agenda together, boost content value, and increase entertainment opportunities. Themes can center around superheroes, sports, the company’s slogan, or a tagline.
- Incorporate breaks: You’ll want to break up your agenda to keep people engaged. Giving too much information at one time can cause information overload and fatigue. Make sure attendees can take small breaks between sessions to keep them from losing focus.
- Build an interactive environment: Virtual event products that allow the crowd to socialize and engage are very effective. Play games, host different breakout sessions, create opportunities for attendees to mingle, host Q&As, offer live chat features, and more.
- Make the keynote inspirational: There’s nothing more exciting than listening to a dynamic keynote speaker, and compelling opening remarks can set the tone for the rest of the event. Secure a relatable speaker capable of telling a story that will not only resound with the audience but also inspire them to achieve their goals.
- Highlight top customers: Customers are the lifeblood of the business. Consider scheduling virtual roundtables or videos where customers discuss why your organization was the best fit for them and offer perspectives on how best to represent the company.
- Showcase top performers: Awards recognize your top performers and foster a positive, goal-oriented culture, which can increase employer loyalty.
- Make networking a priority: SKOs are the perfect opportunity for everyone in the company to get to know one another. From virtual icebreakers to virtual coffee breaks and even virtual dinners, distributed teams can become familiar with each other on a more casual level.
Create a Realistic Schedule
Create a clear, realistic schedule for the entire event. Ensure you’re accommodating time zones and not removing people from their day-to-day responsibilities beyond what’s practical. You may even want to consider hosting half-day events across a more extended period. This gives employees time to catch up on emails and other activities.
Determine how much time you need for a welcome, a year-in-review session, training, networking opportunities, a keynote speaker, competitive reviews, closing remarks, and entertainment. Then decide what the best schedule format is. If the kickoff must take place all day over multiple days, try to limit the number of days to two. A two-day session is usually the sweet spot, providing enough time to cover your agenda without burning employees out.
Manage Your Next SKO With Our All-In-One Event Platform
Is your organization hosting a virtual or hybrid SKO in the near future? Contact the team at 6Connex and request a virtual event platform demo today.
