Your 2024 revenue kickoff (RKO) is your opportunity to prepare your teams for the future and any changes you would like to see in your organization. Yet, these programs too often are full of long slide shows and speakers who seem to drone on in monotone. Having an engaging kickoff program holds your teams’ attention and helps them retain more of what you are saying. Creating an engaging kickoff could prove to be valuable to your organization and to your teams’ growth.
1) Make Your Teams Experts on the Buyer Journey
Understanding how your buyers approach purchases can boost your chances of closing a sale and even create repeat buyers. One way to do this is by creating a trade show experience for your sellers at your RKO. In your “trade show”, display your solutions linked to the problems they solve (Value Proposition) and provide a short compelling demo. Your demos should be pithy and highlight the differentiated value capabilities of that solution. This gives your teams a deeper understanding of what your buyers see, what exactly they are selling and what value your solution offers. Creating a trade show segment allows your teams to immerse themselves and avoids the boring slideshow that lists every product and solution.
Another way to understand your buyer is to showcase interactive customer panels. The one person who knows your buyers the best is your buyers — do not be afraid to utilize that! Holding a customer panel allows you to uncover what problems they are facing and assess their competitive environment. This provides situational knowledge to your sellers enhancing their ability to effectively engage and converse with prospects and it helps your teams to understand potential buyer pains and help your organization develop solutions to those pains.
2) Give Your Teams Time to Network
Networking within teams is just as important as networking with strangers! If your teams do not know each other, how can they rely on each other? In your RKO program, set aside ample time for your teams to network with one another. This gives them the opportunity to discuss aspects of their selling strategies such as successful approaches, the resources they have (or need) and how they can lean on each other. Create formal meeting times for sales teams where they can start thinking about how they can apply what they have learned at your kickoff and develop an activation plan, and to utilize newly learned skills. They can choose a time frame to test something, set goals for this time frame and report back to each other with their results.
Another reason to implement these networking opportunities is that many of these teams are no longer co-located. This is a great opportunity for your teams to meet-up, discuss relevant topics and build relationships with one another.
3) Create Your Agenda with Your Teams at the Center
For your program, it is important to build your agenda around your teams. This can easily be done by sending around an anonymous survey before your kickoff to see where they feel confident from a skills application and solution knowledge standpoint. For example, you may ask, on a scale from one to five, how familiar everyone is with a certain product / solution. If you find that most of your teams responded with a four or five on one product / solution, do not spend a copious amount of time discussing it in your kickoff. Another example is to ask how confident they are explaining the differentiated capabilities of a product / solution. If you will likely see much lower answers on this question, then you can reinforce the differentiated value of said solution and ensure your teams can communicate that to your buyers and prospects.
Plan For Success in Your 2024 RKO
The key to having a successful and engaging kickoff is to start with a strong plan. With Mereo’s RKO Planning Playbook, you can gain access to exclusive insights from experts and plan a winning kickoff.