Best Practices For Your Sales Kick Off (SKO)

A Sales Kickoff (SKO) is a great opportunity to get your entire sales organization together to realign and reset ahead of the coming year. Not only does it provide the perfect stage for transformative education, it empowers you to inspire and energize your team for the future.

However, that’s only if it’s done well. How many SKOs have ended with the entire team hyped up and ready to take on the world, only for nothing to change six months down the road? 

SKOs require serious investment from an organization, so it’s important to get them right. Here are FIVE best practices to make your next SKO a certified hit that resonates throughout the whole organization, year-round.  

1. Prepare, prepare, prepare

Time at the SKO will fly, so making the most of it is crucial. To avoid wasted time, ensure your team is prepared for what the SKO will entail. Align with key stakeholders when planning the SKO to guarantee the themes and activities line up to what your organization needs. Ahead of certain sessions, you can engage attendees with pre-work – maybe brainstorming ideas ahead of a workshop, or preparing to talk about a deal. This saves time during the actual SKO, and lays the foundation for what will be discussed.

While SKOs can be a lot of fun as the whole team comes together, the educational element is pivotal to your organization’s success in the coming year. That means talks and training sessions need to be effective and efficient. If your SKO schedule is jam-packed with various topics, each allocated 60 minutes, you won’t see the return on your investment in the event. While it can be tempting to try to maximize the time you have available, the brain can only take in so much information. Avoid death by slides and keep sessions short and focused on what your team needs right now. 

Building from the last point, let’s address the obvious: sitting down for hours at a time can be dull. Change things up. Change locations; it’s scientifically proven that memory is tied to location, so learning different things in different places makes them easier to remember. Have interactive sessions. For example, as part of our SKO offering, we include a ‘Shark Tank’-like session where teams brainstorm and present ideas that could benefit the business. It’s both engaging and valuable.

Your SKO should serve as a platform to celebrate your wins. Recognize top performers and call out organization-wide wins. To energize people for the year to come, remind them of what they’ve already accomplished. However, while it might feel like all you can do is win, losing is possible. The market right now isn’t easy. Your SKO should fill the batteries of everyone attending, but it should be tempered with realism. Level with your team about what’s to come, and demonstrate how you can succeed together. Your entire organization will be better for it.

No matter how good it is, no SKO is going to live on forever in your team’s memory on its own. There needs to be follow up. This is made easier when the SKO is tied to the wider goals of the company, as it creates a solid “why” for continued reinforcement throughout the year. To do that, it is best to choose a partner for your SKO who is in it with you the whole way, not just for one day of SKO. Otherwise, you risk wasting your entire organization’s time.

There you have it: five best practices to make the most of your SKO. Learn all about how MEDDICC partners with you for SKOs here.