Planning, Rewarding and Engaging Your Sales Teams

It’s hard to believe we are already 12 weeks out from the end of the year, for many sales teams, this means looking ahead to end of year events but also the planning stages of Sales Kick-Off events. 

By planning unique team activities specifically for your sales team, you can help build the core skills your salespeople need to succeed!

We all know that engaged teams are productive, successful and profitable teams, and after the 18months we have all had - sales teams could benefit from time together to finish the year strongly and to set themselves up for a successful start to the new year. Activities could include a team away day or a series of team-building activities (virtually or in-person). 

Alternatively, it is now that you want to start planning and preparing for your Sales Kick-Off event early next year. For your sales team to do their job, their actions need to be aligned with company goals. Your sales kickoff meeting is a unique opportunity to communicate those goals or higher-level strategies that might not be trickling down for leadership.

These activities allow the team to:

1. Celebrate! Reward your team for all their hard work. You want to make sure your team feels recognized and appreciated for all the work they put in. Your event, team activities, and speakers should all be about entertainment and keeping people excited. The outcome of a meeting like this is the enthusiasm that will carry through the rest of the year. 

2. Get Motivated. A sales kickoff meeting or end of year event is all about challenging and inspiring your team. Consider inspirational speakers who can drive home the motivational message and set up group activities and sessions that are relatable and personal to your team members to get reps to dive deeper into what moves them. 

3. Think differently. Are there changes ahead in the market or at the company? Are you going to change the way you sell or bring in new sales tactics? Are there internal side projects that are taking off and need a fresh sales strategy? Bring in industry speakers or use executives and senior leads who can shed some light on the situation with data and create events around team assignments and exercises so your reps get used to coming up with creative solutions to new problems. 

4. Be educated  To sell effectively, your sales reps through and through. They need to be up-to-speed with the latest sales strategies and initiatives and know what marketing messages are in the pipeline. With the amount of communication that happens in the workplace, it’s easy for sales reps to miss some of this key information, which is why bringing everyone together for a dedicated education session like this is so important.

The planning of your Sales Kick-Off should be where you create your strategy for the upcoming year, including setting goals, aligning your team on growth initiatives, or new initiatives and creating training and development opportunities. Overall, the event must be built to excite and inspire the sales team to create their best year yet. 

That’s a lot of ground to cover in just a couple of days of the event, which means every minute of your sales kickoff must be carefully planned to maximise the impact of your investment. To ensure your efforts are landing effectively and that your team is getting the training they need, ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want to accomplish with your SKO?

  • Think about: strategy, tools, key initiatives, organisation/incentive structures

• How are you measuring the success of your SKO?

  • Think about: training content engagement, rep feedback, revenue impact

• Which tools will help you achieve these goals?

  • Think about: virtual event platforms, sales enablement platforms, social/communication platforms 

Your answers to these questions will lay out the “what, why, and how” of your SKO. Together, they will create a framework for how you approach your SKO event to ensure it is an event that both educates, excites and brings your sales team together to create a strong start to their sales year.

Let us help you kick off your new sales year with a bang with our sales kickoff and end of year meeting ideas to energise your team. With the right sales kickoff agenda, you can be ready for growth in the new year.

Thinking about hitting reset and rebuilding your events calendar? Download Sleek’s whitepaper Rebuilding Your Events Calendar Into 2021 & Beyond to help you know where to start, implement innovative planning ideas and know-how to safely bring your audience together again. 

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