How to Use Your Annual Sales Kickoff Meeting to Fuel Engagement

Annual Sales Kickoff Meeting

Increasing engagement within your sales team not only means you’ll be in charge of a happier, more satisfied group of people, it’s also good for business. According to Demand Metricthe majority of organizations that have high employee engagement rates retain over 80% of their customers. That’s because when employees believe in what they’re doing, they become more invested in their own contributions.

Your annual sales kickoff meeting is a great chance to define your organization’s purpose along with the strategies and tactics you’ll use in the coming year to meet it.

Use this event to increase engagement within your sales team and they’ll come away feeling connected to the mission and motivated to contribute to the success of the company. Check out these 4 ways to increase engagement at your annual sales kickoff meeting.

Build In Plenty of Networking and Socializing Opportunities

Salespeople commonly rank the networking and collaborative aspects of a sales kickoff meeting as the most valuable part of this type of event. Sales reps can become much more effective by sharing best practices with one another, but rarely do they get the opportunity to interact with their peers.

When given the chance to get together, your team will be able to share their common challenges and frustrations, along with their own strategies and best practices. As a leader it’s your job to purposefully create opportunities during the event where your team can network, exchange ideas, and learn from one another. As a result, individual contributors will feel more connected to their peers and to the common goal and will return to work with a greater sense of comradery.

Help Your People See How Their Efforts Align with Your Organization’s Purpose

People need purpose (other than just commission), so each and every member of your team should know exactly how their work positively contributes to the company’s mission.

Every sales kickoff meeting is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how individual performance correlates with company success. Use the event as a platform to emphasize your organization’s mission and connect the overall strategy with how each member will contribute.

Aligning individual efforts with your organization’s purpose will keep everyone motivated to hit their own goals throughout the year—doing their part to add to the success of the team. Lay out the strategy and exactly how each player will be expected to contribute so your salespeople can clearly see where the company is going and their role within it.

Bring Marketing to the Party

Sales and marketing alignment is an important topic of discussion these days due to the fact that a truly effective sales effort hinges on the proper content pieces, website, and overall organizational positioning. As a consequence, a lack of alignment with marketing can kill your sales effort. So, what better place to bring the teams together than at your annual kickoff meeting? Yes, this is a sales event; however, by inviting marketing to participate you’re going to accomplish 3 objectives:

• You’ll foster a sense of shared goals between these 2 crucial departments

• Marketing will have yet another chance to appreciate the sales effort and the challenges your reps face

• Marketing will have a better understanding of the tools sales needs in the field to succeed

Imagine how much more success your entire organization can achieve in the coming year if sales and marketing are in lock step as of January 1st!

Provide Your Team with Tangible Tools to Use in the Coming Year

Once you’ve established your organizational purpose, you can engage your team by equipping them with the tools they need to serve that purpose. Keep the meeting interactive and valuable by including training that your salespeople can use immediately to contribute to their own success.

Because annual sales meetings are often used to present company goals and strategies to the team, it’s the perfect time for salespeople to create their own personal business development plans for meeting goals in the new year.

The Brooks Group’s Sales Territory Planning workshop allows team members to develop individual plans that can be implemented immediately. Reps can present their plans to the team and come away from the meeting feeling supported in their contributions and prepared to execute. Make sure that your team walks away from your annual sales kickoff meeting feeling prepared to hit their numbers in 2016.

The Sales Territory Planning Workshop coaches salespeople on the best strategies for developing sales plans they can implement, track, and measure for success. Learn More.

 

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How to Align Sales & the Rest of the Organization to Drive More Revenue

We just finished an eye-opening research study which revealed that 47% of salespeople do not have confidence that the sales department is respected by other departments inside of the company. The fundamental truth is this: sales believes that the rest of the company wouldn’t have jobs if not for them… and the rest of the company feels sales wouldn’t have a job without them.

Written By

Michelle Richardson

Michelle Richardson is the Vice President of Sales Performance Research. In her role, she is responsible for spearheading industry research initiatives, overseeing consulting and diagnostic services, and facilitating ROI measurement processes with partnering organizations. Michelle brings over 25 years of experience in sales and sales effectiveness functions through previously held roles in curriculum design, training implementation, and product development to the Sales Performance Research Center.
Michelle Richardson is the Vice President of Sales Performance Research. In her role, she is responsible for spearheading industry research initiatives, overseeing consulting and diagnostic services, and facilitating ROI measurement processes with partnering organizations. Michelle brings over 25 years of experience in sales and sales effectiveness functions through previously held roles in curriculum design, training implementation, and product development to the Sales Performance Research Center.

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