A sales kickoff (SKO) can help sales teams succeed in an evolving landscape by rallying the revenue organization around the latest company strategies, initiatives, and best practices. It also allows salespeople to share their own learnings with peers and build a sense of connection and community with the broader team.
But how do you execute on all that virtually? We’ve gathered some tips for hosting an impactful virtual sales kickoff on Zoom Events, and see how our all-in-one events solution can help you deliver education, boost engagement, celebrate wins, and foster connection with your team.
What are the benefits of a virtual sales kickoff?
Virtual sales kickoffs can meet all your business objectives, and with Zoom Events, this medium even delivers a few additional benefits.
Cost savings: You won’t need to pick up the tab for travel, lodging, and venue fees. All you need is a Zoom Events license.No loss of productivity: With a virtual event, your reps can take calls or schedule meetings before or after sessions, so there’s minimal disruption to their schedule.Fewer difficulties with production: Keynotes and main stage sessions can be pre-recorded, edited, and added to Zoom Events, allowing you to mitigate the risks and stress of producing a live event.Opportunities for engagement: Through the use of Breakout Rooms, thoughtful agendas and sessions, and in-meeting translation, you can enable your teams to engage with each other in ways they may not have been able to in person. Greater involvement: Get more people involved in planning, building, and creating session content. Zoom Events allows you to assign alternative hosts and co-editors to sessions so you can delegate tasks with ease.Post-event analytics: Know who attended what sessions and how engaged your sales team was throughout the event.
Best practices for your next SKO
Let’s break down a sales kickoff into three stages: before, during, and after the event. See what technology is needed, and how you can design an event your sales teams will be excited to attend.
Pre-event: planning & building
Start envisioning what your event will look like, articulating what goals you want to achieve, and putting together an amazing agenda:
Decide on a clearly defined theme to serve as an anchor point for content, messaging, and activities.Launch a pre-event survey or poll of attendees to understand what they hope to get out of the kickoff.If you have a global team, make sure your agenda is designed for audiences around the world, with region-specific session content and replays of important sessions like keynotes in different time zones.Start building your event assets, like your agenda, session content, and visual elements. Choose an events solution that will support these foundational planning activities by making it easy to design, create, and customize event details.
Pro tip: Zoom Events allows you to host multi-day, multi-session events with a video experience your employees are already familiar with. You can create branded event hubs on Zoom Events for organizing your event sessions all in one place, so your salespeople can easily find and join sessions that align with their interests and goals.
During the event: interaction & engagement
Once your SKO is underway, make sure there are plenty of opportunities for interaction to keep engagement high:
Play into the competitive nature of your sales teams with a friendly game.Set up happy hour sessions for networking and connection.Provide different options for developing product knowledge and skill sets so your salespeople can leave with something they didn’t have before.Involve your customers in your sessions so they can give sales teams insights into what their prospects think and feel about them.
Pro tip: Zoom Events has lots of ways to engage participants. The Event Lobby provides a persistent space for attendees to connect and network, and attendees can browse live sessions in the Lobby before choosing which one they would like to join. Each session also has a chat component for conversation and engagement. Hosts and other designated people can monitor the chat and answer questions from your sales team.
Post-event: reinforcement & feedback
According to G2, up to 84% of sales training is forgotten in the first three months. If you want your sales kickoff to have a lasting impact, you need to have a solid reinforcement plan:
Host recorded sessions on Zoom Events for salespeople to revisit whenever they need to. Recommend the most insightful sessions as “required watching” so new employees or those who weren’t able to attend can learn from past events.Collect feedback and event data to determine ROI and improve the experience the next year.
Pro tip: Zoom Events provides comprehensive reporting capabilities, so you can track and measure the number of registrants and attendees, as well as compare data from individual sessions. Set up post-event surveys, broken down by region, tenure, segment, and many other levels, to help you surface areas of improvement and take those key points into planning for next year.
Virtual sales kickoff ideas
To recap, here are a few ideas to get you started planning your virtual SKO:
Survey sales teams before the event to discover topics of interest and understand what they want to take away — refer to these insights as you develop your sessionsCreate a global agenda with region-specific sessions for your international teamsUse an all-in-one event solutions platform like Zoom Events, which allows you to create, design, and customize online events with multiple sessionsPlan interactive sessions with elements of competition, networking, and fun to keep attendees engaged throughout the event Record sessions and make them available on demand so salespeople and new team members can access them laterGather data and feedback after the event to measure attendance, engagement, and effectiveness
For more tips and ideas, check out our Zoomtopia 2021 session featuring best practices for hosting your sales kickoff.
Want to learn more about Zoom Events and our Conference solution? Join us for a webinar on Nov. 18 to get an overview of Zoom Events and how it will enhance your virtual events, or view pricing and licensing here.
By: Michelle Dotson
Title: How to Host Your Sales Kickoff Using Zoom Events
Sourced From: blog.zoom.us/how-to-host-your-sales-kickoff-using-zoom-events/
Published Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2021 23:48:54 +0000