SALES KICK-OFF EVENTS The Potential to be

Good, Bad or just plain Ugly

INTRODUCTION

Sales kick-off events come in many shapes and sizes. They can be relatively informal affairs, run as an extended meetingfor a domestic sales team, through to extravagant high profile international conferences with big name keynote speakersand blockbuster entertainment.

Whatever the circumstances and the T&E budget, there is one thing that all sales kick-off events share… opportunity costand a sense of potential.

It’s this sense of potential that drives Chief Sales Officers (CSO) to throw energy, money and, lest we forget, sleepless nightsat these events. There is an accepted wisdom that a well-run sales kick-off event can not only be the foundation forbudget-beating sales success for the year ahead, but also be an opportunity to demonstrate true sales leadership.Inspiring your sales organisation to deliver against a new target, sell a new service line, or maximise the company’sfootprint in a competitive marketplace are all part of the CSO’s remit. Sales kick-off events provide the stage upon whichthis objective can be well and truly kicked off (excuse the pun).

The good news is that all this anxiety and pressure truly is worth putting yourself through for the simple reason that greatsales kick-off events can make a huge difference. Yes, the stakes are high…but the rewards from a successful event areoften even higher.

Yet despite the long list of upsides to a sales kick-off event, so many of them fail to deliver on their potential. Not only dothey fail to deliver a return on the (often considerable) investment but they can also inadvertently damage those elementsthat are currently working within your sales team. Too often, poor planning and execution of a sales kick-off can have thenegative effect of confusing a previously engaged and on-budget sales team. Disaster.

Simon MortonCEO - Eyeful Presentations

January 2017

““

It won’t come as a shock to any experienced CSO thatthere is no one simple fix to ensure that your saleskick-off event is a success.

Let’s get one thing straight - it’s not about budget,marketing or the venue. Indeed, we’ve witnessedCSOs and their teams become distracted with the‘look’ of the event (and ensuring everything thatdoesn’t move is branded accordingly, from pens totransport) when the reality is that sales kick-offsuccess hinges on getting the basics right first.

Make no bones about it – success comes from acombination of factors, most of which are based inbasic common sense and damned hard work.

SECRET SAUCE

FIVE FACTOR OVERVIEW

OBSESSING OVER ROI(IN A GOOD WAY)

BEWARE THEEGO SPEAKER

LESS IS MORE GIVE YOURSELF AFIGHTING CHANCE

FOLLOW UP TOMAXIMISE ROI

OBSESSING OVER ROI(IN A GOOD WAY)

FACTOR

FACTOR 1OBSESSING OVER ROI (IN A GOOD WAY)

No doubt someone within your organisation has created a comprehensive spreadsheet detailing every lineitem cost associated with the sales kick-off. Equally there will be no doubt that the final cost is somewhatdaunting. Events like this don’t come cheap.

But what of the opportunity cost of taking your sales team off territory for the duration of the event. Andwhat about travel time? The pre-and post event distraction? The list of hidden costs goes on…

We’re often surprised at how little thought is given to measuring the return on this substantial investment.Too often CSOs feel obliged to run sales kick-off events as an annual event simply because they’ve alwaysdone so. There’s no compelling reason for them to pull everyone off the road and spend large amounts ofmoney on venues, travel and accommodation, yet they persist.

In the absence of a compelling reason, be that a new service line, message or launch of a refreshed salesenablement campaign, the ROI business case starts looking a little fragile. Ask yourself the question – whatwould happen if you didn’t run the event this time around? What are the implications (both positive andnegative) and are they surmountable in other ways?

Assuming, after careful consideration that the event is worth running, we have one over-riding piece ofadvice - become obsessive about the reason for the sales kick-off. If it’s due to a new message, ensure thateach and every part of the event is focused on delivering and then reinforcing this new message. Equally ifthe event is going to rotate around the launch of a new product line, focus your energies on ensuring thatthe delegates leave with all the information they need to make it a success. Anything less than obsession ingetting the required outcome from the event is going to erode your ROI, so tread carefully.

FACTOR 1 CONTINUEDOBSESSING OVER ROI (IN A GOOD WAY)

What is getting in the way of sales teams achieving their objectives? Results from Miller HeimanGroup 2016 Sales Performance Optimisation study.

©Miller Heiman Group

10.4

12

12.2

13.6

18.5

19.2

19.6

19.6

19.9

28.2

32.1

41.3

53.3

%

Inability to generate enough qualified leads

Difficult competitive differentiation

Sell cycle too long

Close rates not high enough

Lack of common sales process

Difficulty establishing our ROI

Ineffective sales process

Onboarding new hires takes too long

Poor sales/marketing alignment

Losing existing customers

Inaccurate forecasts

Low sales process adoption

Other

To reiterate, obsession goes far and beyond ‘branding’.Spending lots of money on branded pens and bannersdoes not guarantee that your delegates will take yourmessage on board. It needs to go deeper thandecoration and instead form the core of your entireevent. Remember – your ROI depends on it…

ACTION

Agree your focus and measure success against it. It doesn’t have to be a complex calculation – Eyeful has a well trodden ‘Must, Intend, Like’ model that often fits the bill.

BEWARE THEEGO SPEAKER

FACTOR

FACTOR 2BEWARE THE EGO SPEAKER

This may make for uncomfortable reading but sometimes the CEO, CSO and the rest of the C-Suite are notthe right people to be leading a sales kick-off event. Akin to a wedding seating plan, the running order forthese events are often seen as a political exercise rather than what is of most value to the audience.

Think carefully before adding any speakers to the running order, asking yourself some basic butvaluable questions:

Why am I asking them to speak?

What value can they bring to the delegates?

How will they support the event’s key message (ref. ‘obsession’ in Factor 1)?

Are there better people (internal or external) to get this message across?

ACTION

Take responsibility for the agenda early on, approaching speakers who you believe would add most value to the sales audience. Manage any bruised egos early in the process.

BEWARE THE EGO SPEAKER

Simple questions, but when asked honestly, they are likely to shine a light onsome peculiar casting of speakers. Should the CFO really be given 90 minshalfway through the first day to talk through financial performance? Why is theCEO giving a keynote on a topic they have little or no experience in? Why is theCMO responsible for the awards session (and do they really need so much timeand so many props?). We’ve seen potentially powerful and valuable sales kick-off events slowly wither under the weight of ‘ego speakers’ who are on stagemerely because of what it says on their business card rather than the value theyare adding to the audience.

Eyeful has a reputation for obsessing about the connection between presenterand audience, building stories and visuals that maximise the unique opportunitypresentations bring. Using tools like Audience Heatmapping, we’ve becomepretty adept at knowing what works and what doesn’t work for differentaudiences. One thing we can say with total confidence is that a typical sales kick-off audience are more interested in what they can personally get out of the eventthan listening to a leadership team meandering their way through a series ofgeneric presentations.

In short, any great sales kick-off event is underpinned with a respect for theaudience – this respect starts at the point of choosing the right speakers toreinforce a carefully crafted message. Make the most of your time together byhaving the most appropriate presenters on stage, no matter what their job title.

FACTOR 2 CONTINUED

LESS IS MORE

FACTOR

FACTOR 2LESS IS MORE

There is a well-worn phrase in the world of presentations – “no-one ever complained about a presentationbeing too short”. The same applies to sales kick-off events.

There is real sense that, for sales events to be taken seriously, they need to extend across a number of days. Thisthinking is supported by the very understandable view that if you are going to get the sales team together from allcorners of the globe, you might as well make the time and expense worthwhile by extending the time of the event.

Understandable, yes, but our experience shows it rarely pays off for one simple reason - your delegates, no matterhow smart and hungry for information, only have so much capacity. The net result of cramming too much in is oneof diminishing returns – no one really remembers much of anything, including the important stuff.

Much the same can be applied to the presentations made by each of the speakers. The audience at a sales kick-offevent is an important one – after all, sales people are the lifeblood of a business. They bring in the deals that keepthe business moving forward or, at the very least, afloat. The temptation for any speaker given a slot at the eventwill naturally be to try to squeeze as much information into their allotted time as possible. This means theimportant and valuable content can get quickly drowned out by the inane and irrelevant.

This takes us onto the eternal bugbear of sales kick-offs - Death by PowerPoint. Sales events don’t need to becomean exercise in PowerPoint mastery, searching for new animations, transitions and video inserts to keep youraudience awake. Look to a more ‘blended’ approach to presenting to ensure that your key message is delivered inas an engaging way as possible – the use of whiteboards or by bringing interactivity into the presentation can reallyresonate with an audience.

A sales kick-off event should be viewed on the impact it has on the audience, not how many PowerPoint slideswere created to fill the time…

FACTOR 2 CONTINUEDLESS IS MORE

Brief your speakers in advance on the key message of the event and ensure that they understand this needs to be their total focus. Reiterate that you retain editorial control of all presentations and will tweak as required to ensure maximum impact and value from the event.

ACTION

GIVE YOURSELF AFIGHTING CHANCE

FACTOR

FACTOR 4GIVE YOURSELF A FIGHTING CHANCE

Great intentions are quickly forgotten when panic sets in. As with many events, sales kick-offs areprone to last minute ‘headless chicken’ moments – final changes to the agenda, speaker materialsbeing tweaked/completely re-worked (apparently on a whim) and a woeful lack of rehearsal time.Some people seemingly relish these last-minute panics – the adrenalin kicks in and they celebratethe all night PowerPoint and pizza parties that are required to get the changes put in place. There isan almost perverse pride that seems to come from turning up to the event blurry eyed but with therespect of your immediate boss for ‘pulling an all-nighter’.

Put bluntly, any CSO who allows this to happen is both dangerous and disrespectful. Dangerous asany last minute changes mean that presenters are less prepared and the fresh content runs the riskof negatively impacting the message. More worryingly, it is disrespectful to the audience who couldpotentially have their time wasted and future success impacted by an ill-prepared presenter.

There is never an excuse to not have presentations written, reviewed and designed in advance of animportant event. It is important that the CSO ensures that the ‘last minute all-nighter’ culture doesnot pervade their business – it has a hugely negative impact on the event and delegates, potentiallyrendering the entire process a waste of time, money and energy. It’s that serious…

Remind all speakers that presenting at this event is a huge privilege – they should see it as a wonderful opportunity to share useful information to an influential audience. Flying by the seat of their pants is not acceptable and should never be tolerated.

GIVE YOURSELF A FIGHTING CHANCE

FACTOR 4 CONTINUED

ACTION

FOLLOW UP TOMAXIMISE ROI

FACTOR

FACTOR 5FOLLOW UP TO MAXIMISE ROI

Too many sales events are seen as a single moment in time – once the awards dinner is complete and the tablestidied away, life very quickly goes back to normal. What a depressing waste of time, money and effort…

CSOs should spearhead a year long follow up/reinforcement program to ensure that the investment made at theevent is maximised. This might be in the form of regular updates (online meetings or shared success stories,using the insights gained at the kick-off), a regular drip feed of valuable sales collateral (not just PowerPoint decksbut case studies, testimonials, ROI calculators) or, ideally, a combination of both.

Your sales kick-off message should also be communicated outside of the sales team – sharing an executivesummary of the focus through other parts of the business so that the message becomes part of the vocabularyshared across the organisation.

ACTION

Put a communication and reinforcement plan in place at the start of the process to ensure that the sales kick-off is not viewed as a discrete event. It should act as the catalyst for a series of ongoing support activities.

Sales kick-off events are a high stakes moment in anyCSO’s year. So much can hinge on the event being asuccess yet equally a false move can have long-termimpacts on the focus and morale of a sales team.

For too long, CSOs from organisations of all sizes haveploughed the same furrow with diminishing returns. Thecommercial reality is that this is no longer tenable – thesales kick-off of old needs to be rethought and refocused.The upside of approaching these events in a new way isconsiderable. Equally, doing the same old thing year in,year out is unlikely to deliver the results you or yourbusiness demands.

Eyeful are here to help. Our experience of working with awide range of companies, both in terms of size andsectors, means that we can act as the ‘critical friend’ thatso many CSOs miss when preparing a sales kick-off event.We go deeper than simply ensuring your slides look great– we work alongside your teams to validate your message,maximise its impact and then sustain its value throughoutyour organisation.

SUMMARY

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

““

Our event was very slick and a roaring success.We were very pleased and I’m sure we will be working together again

Sales Director,Multinational Technology

Distribution Company

Through the amazing work that you do, our people’s great

stories come to life…

SVP, MultinationalTechnology Company

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