Whether you’re a sales leader or an individual contributor, you probably have a sales kickoff in your future. This is The Modern Seller’s guide to maximizing your sales kickoff experience and making sure that you take away the strategies that you most need to grow your sales next year.
There are 5 goals you should strive to achieve. Watch this video and read below for details.
- Develop a Strategy
Sometimes your sales kickoff seems far into the future, and then all of a sudden, it’s here! One of the things you can do is intentionally plan for your success.
For many of us sales kickoffs will look differently in 2021. Your organization might be conducting something virtual, or you might be trying a hybrid experience. Whatever it looks like for you, take the time to intentionally plan and commit to developing a strategy.
Questions to consider
Take a look 30 days out from the sales kickoff and sketch out the plan that you want to commit to. Think about what you want to accomplish by the end of sales kickoff. What will make it a success? What will you attend?
- Personal Growth
What will be the most important skills or learnings for you personally to take away from your sales kickoff experience?
Questions to consider:
What are your growth areas for the upcoming year? Maybe you have a growth area around building a specific sales skill, or maybe you want to improve your acumen around a product set or solution sets. Whatever is going to help you move forward, personally, capture it in your plan.
How can you stretch your skills? If you are naturally great in one area, how can you stretch yourself to develop those skills even further?
Is this in your development plan? Either create a development plan or work with the plan that’s in your organization already. Commit to where you want to grow personally so that you can focus on that, hold yourself accountable, and move forward.
- Centers of Influence
For many of us, the sales kickoff is one opportunity each year that we get to interact with people across the country, across the globe, or within certain areas of our business. Depending on how your sales kickoff is conducted next year, you may need to adapt how you build those relationships, but the fundamentals are still there. You need to intentionally decide on which relationships you want to build, and then go about putting a plan in place to build them.
Questions to consider:
What are the key relationships that you want to build in the next year for your own growth?
What key relationships are needed for client growth?
Who can you serve in your relationships? Who can you reach out to, to help them along the way and deepen relationships that you have?
- Customer Growth
Exceeding quota will be your number one goal. What are some other customer growth goals that can stretch you? Maybe you are developing a new territory? Or going deeper into a vertical that you’re already serving.
These are some goals that can help you more strategically expand your territory.
Questions to consider.
Where are your greatest client growth opportunities? Where are your greatest risks to exceeding your quota? What sales kickoff sessions do you need to attend to support client growth?
- Accountability
We’ve all been guilty of it. You create a plan, then life gets in the way. A quarter goes by. Two quarters go by. Before you know it, you’ve done nothing to execute on the plan. It has gathered a digital dust, as I like to say.
This goal is all about setting accountability so that your plan stays alive and continues to be executed on– so you really reap the benefits of the investment of being part of your sales kickoff.
Questions to consider.
Who can be your accountability partner? You can do consistent check-ins and provide mutual support for each other.
How can you commit to keeping momentum with your progress? Sometimes our strategies can stall. Think ahead to where those sticking points might be, and put actions into place to ensure you take incremental steps forward.
How can your direct leader support you? Is it with coaching? Is by helping establish your personal development plan? What are those things that he or she can support you with to make sure that you are accountable and that you progress?
When you focus on these five goals, it will help you think strategically about your sales kickoff — and put the pieces in place to help you execute. You’ll be sure to get the most benefit out of the experience.
Create Stronger Sales Plans
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