3 Quick Wins for Designing a Sales Kick-Off
Everyone who has helped plan or attended an internal sales kick-off event undoubtedly knows how important they are to a company’s overall business objectives. That’s why it’s so important that it be planned properly and executed effectively in order to achieve maximum results.
Below are 3 quick ideas you can use for your next sales kick off meeting to ensure it goes off without a hitch. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it will definitely get you on your way to pulling off a meeting that will leave a lasting, positive impact on your organization for months to come.
Quick Win #1: Use Live Polling & Q&A to Keep Your Sales Reps Engaged
One of the priority goals of a sales kick-off meeting is to make sure your team has a concrete understanding of what the sales strategy is for the upcoming year, and how they’re going to get there.
This could mean a crash course on sales methodologies, new product training & introductions, review of targets, etc. Alignment from the beginning of the year means that everyone can start working towards the same goal from day one.
One way this can be achieved is by implementing an audience response strategy, which can be leveraged through event app technology. By using tools like live polls and real-time Q&A within the event app, you can test your sales reps’ knowledge and make sure they’re on the same page. It also gets them engaged with the content you and your team are presenting and contributes to a more interactive attendee experience.
You can also get sales reps and other staff familiar with products by making briefings available in your event app where they can be downloaded and used for future reference. You can keep your event app live for months after the conference as well, acting as a knowledge base for your reps to refer to.
And don’t forget about using the live polling and Q&A tools for feedback. They are a great way to get a pulse from your team on their thoughts on the upcoming year’s plan and maintain a 2-way dialogue. This can also be done through surveys and feedback forms distributed through the event app.
Quick Win #2: Use Gamification to Create Mingling Opportunities
A sales kick-off is a great opportunity to integrate your newer staff/team members with the rest of the group! While this sounds like a great idea on paper, it’s hard to ensure that this actually happens. How can you follow through on this?
Gamification implemented through event technology is a great way get your reps mingling. As a salesperson myself, I can admit that we are a very competitive bunch! Gamification is a great way to reward your reps for completing certain tasks and activities during your sales kick-off to make sure they get the most out of the experience.
As an example, you could assign everyone a game passcode and give the group 30 minutes to meet as many new people possible. You could encourage them to exchange 3 facts about themselves in order for the other person to provide them with their passcode. The passcode would then need to be entered into the event app to collect the points. You could then reward the top 3 players at the end of the conference with special prizes.
To add to the above, you could also display a digital leaderboard of the top players in a central or high traffic area of the event to get people excited about the challenge. This will have all of your salespeople buzzing around each other.
Recommended Read: Check out the Ultimate Guide to Gamification ebook to learn more strategies.
Quick Win #3: Test Your Reps’ Knowledge
Sales kick off meetings also provide a unique chance for education and learning for your reps. You can bring in external sales trainers, run workshops, have mini competitions, and even have your team brainstorm in groups on how they can become better sales professionals.
We’ve talked about a number of ways in which event technology can help achieve your objectives at sales kickoffs. In regards to education, we can actually look at some of the previous ideas to help here. Using audience response tools such as live polling and Q&A are a great way to take a temperature check of your group’s understanding and make sure they are engaging with the educational content.
With gamification – why not run another contest that tests their knowledge? You can set up challenges based on the answers to different quiz questions from your training program. It’s also a good way to verify who has actually been to the different workshops (as you can see who completed the challenges and if they got the answers right).
How they answer the challenge questions can also give you an idea of where your reps need additional coaching and more time spent. You can set up different surveys and evaluations to gather all of this data.
Recommended Read: Interested in running a networking game at your next event? Use this implementation guide for a successful execution!
In Conclusion
So there you have it – 3 quick wins on how to deliver an amazing sales kick-off! Thinking about how to integrate these ideas into your event design early on will help you be more successful in achieving your event goals. And as always, we’re here to help with our team of event tech experts.
Contact us to get additional ideas on using event technology at your next sales kick off!