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It’s that time of the year again where everyone is starting to plan the new year’s sales kickoff(SKO). You’ve got new goals to make, product updates to launch, and new sales processes to explain. You might be asking, “What do my reps really want out of this year’s kickoff?” “Do we even need to have a SKO this year?” “How can we make it enjoyable and keep the team engaged while also being productive?”

If you make your SKO one big celebratory party, you are missing out on an opportunity to jump start new sales strategies and have a fresh perspective for the new year. If you keep it too serious and have meeting after meeting, your reps won’t be engaged and will most likely forget what they are learning. There is a healthy in-between where you can spend some days on training and others on celebrating the past year’s success.

Why It’s Important

When looking at the training days, there’s one area that needs serious attention. According to Forrester Research, while 88% of key decision makers feel that salespeople can speak knowledgeably about their own products and services, only 24% feel like they understand their business needs. Even worse, only 15% believe their meetings or calls with salespeople are valuable.

The consequence results in focusing too much on products and services and not enough on the business outcomes prospects and customers expect. With that as a backdrop, it’s important to equip everyone for the next year, with clear goals and a solid understanding of your business and how to have valuable sales conversations.

Hiring a Sales Trainer

One way to mix things up is to hire an outside sales trainer for a day-long workshop. Sometimes it can be hard to get through to your reps when teaching new concepts if you’ve been the one training and managing them all year. An outside perspective and authority can help them absorb concepts that they may not have been open to hearing previously.

What to Look For

When talking with other sales leaders about the goals of their sales training events or annual meetings, we hear that they want their reps to engage with the content and walk away equipped with skills to lift their sales performance.

However, sometimes outside resources are brought that have a “flavor of the month” approach that is viewed with skepticism and often unhelpful. The result is ultimately a waste of their team’s precious selling time and a missed opportunity to impact revenue.

You need a sales trainer that teaches relevant content that is tailored to your reps and company. Salespeople are always looking for fresh, relevant content and techniques. The content the sales trainer goes over needs to be interesting and backed up by current, up to date research.

If you want all of your reps to be engaged, the training also needs to be accommodating to diverse sales roles and experience levels. Refract explains that a sales kickoff workforce presents you with a mixed-ability challenge: “Fresh-hired rookies need firm direction and careful monitoring; struggling reps need careful evaluation to determine areas for development together with incremental targets; and your star performers need acknowledgment of their success, encouragement to contribute their insights and take on ‘buddy’ roles, and as much help as you can give to remove any barriers which inhibit further performance.”

You want to make sure that your reps, from the most inexperienced to the most tenured, not only connect with the content, but adopt the skills necessary to meet your future revenue goals. The key is to partner with a sales training firm that understands recent discoveries in behavioral psychology and leverages techniques proven to help prospects see maximum value.

We’ve also found that learning to do something is better than learning about something. According to Forrester, practicing a presentation, learning a whiteboard, or anything that involves doing something and receiving feedback about it will have a much longer-lasting effect than passively listening to a speaker.

After the Event

Imagine that you have had a great kickoff where your team has learned valuable sales techniques and are ready to put them to use in the next year. The unfortunate part about training is that it’s human nature to forget a portion of what you’ve learned. So how do you make sure it is reinforced and your team is able to continue to utilize the concepts they’ve learned?

CSO Insights suggests that sales training events need to be connected by a continuous stream of interventions that extend, expand and sustain learning. This can be accomplished by short bursts of learning aligned to assessed gaps.

Microlearning is a bite-size training technique that helps sales teams increase their expertise and sales performance. It helps with memory, is interesting and intriguing, and is structured and consistent. Any time you teach something new, microlearning is a great way to make sure the concept is being reinforced. We’ve enjoyed using a program called Qstream to quiz sales teams on the content that they learn during our workshops.

Your next sales kickoff is an opportunity to reunite your team and teach valuable techniques that will help you stand out in the marketplace. Investing in a SKO and hiring a sales trainer shows your reps that you’ve got their backs and want them to excel. What are your goals for this year’s kickoff?

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If you have a training date on your upcoming calendar, we would love the opportunity to be a part of the discussion on how we can partner together to help you and your team achieve your goals. The content of our training workshops is taught by a 35-year sales veteran who specializes in elevating value by understanding the science of decision-making. Every rep will walk away with mastery of a conversation framework scientifically proven to communicate high value in every conversation they have with prospects and customers.

Let’s talk.

Call: 678-561-6260, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.