Are you doing enough to harness the buzz from your Sales Kickoff?
Congratulations on your successful Sales Kickoff (SKO)! Now you’re back, you’re midway through Q1, and it's time to harness the buzz and turn it into early sales momentum.
So what’s your plan?
Driving positive sales outcomes post-SKO can be hard. Especially when you know that learners typically forget 50% of what they learn after 1 day and a staggering 90% of what they learn within 7 days (known as the ‘Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve’). And so, it’s important for sales and marketing leaders to have strategies in place on your return that will reinforce the content and learning shared at your SKO. Ongoing communication and coaching all your go-to-market teams (sales, marketing, customer success) on how to apply this new learning is crucial to success.
In my experience of working for B2B tech and SaaS companies for over 30 years, all too often, companies fail to capitalise on the significant investments made in their SKO which can run into the millions of dollars - typical spend of tech companies is between $2.5K - $5K. For example, you may be one of many companies that do not include channel sales partners in the annual kickoff meetings. And, if you do, maybe their presence requires a hefty sponsorship fee to attend which limits smaller companies' ability to participate. That means that as much as half of your customer-facing team is not equally educated or armed with the same message or product knowledge!
This is hardly an optimal approach for a strong start to the sales year. Of course, you may already have your follow up plan in place and kudos to you if you do. But if you’d value a few more ideas on ways you can maximise your B2B sales success this year, here are a few of the practical tips I’ve pulled together that can help you get on the front foot post your SKO.
A post-SKO action plan
TIP 1 - Align all your teams. Ensure your Sales Playbook is fit for purpose. Add all new assets, use cases, new product demo links, processes & tech information. Share with your direct sales teams and channel partners.
TIP 2 - Schedule channel partner training: Prepare your indirect channel sales teams - educate, engage and excite them for the year ahead ASAP.
TIP 3 - Marketing: tailor campaigns and personalise messaging. Customers love personalisation! Create content, messaging, product demos and assets that can be adapted and used by your channel partners.
TIP 4- Finalise & communicate comp plans. Nothing is more distracting to sales teams than ‘flying blind’! Your sales talent is a huge investment so get the most from them by sharing what’s in it for them as early as practical.
TIP 5 - Optimise your tech stack: Ensure the systems and processes you have in place support a frictionless buyer journey and maximise efficiency across all your sales and marketing channels.
TIP 6 - Make ongoing cross-team collaboration regular & easy - Set dates for your direct and indirect sales teams to meet, or get together online to share knowledge and their go-to-market prospect plans.
Align your go-to-market resources
If you’d like your Annual Sales Kickoff to have more than a one-time impact and deliver a great ROI, start by aligning all your go-to-market resources. Empower your sales teams, leverage content marketing, implement targeted campaigns, facilitate collaboration with your channel partners, and track key performance metrics. Taking these actions will go a long way towards helping you maintain your sales kickoff (SKO) buzz and improve your chance of driving new sales quarter after quarter.
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