Five Tips To Hosting A Successful Virtual Sales Kickoff

New virtual meeting platforms provide tools for boosting clarity and engagement

Hosting a successful sales kickoff meeting requires a blend of inspiration, connection, and celebration that is tricky to pull off. When the meeting needs to happen virtually, it gets much trickier.

When planning a virtual sales kickoff meeting, you cannot just take what worked in person and move the same activities into an online space. A radical new approach is needed that employs new online tools to help teams stay motivated and tuned in.
 

While developing our Preciate platform for virtual communication, we focused on creating a space that builds team cohesion and brings humanity back to meetings. A successful meeting requires more than just a successful exchange of information. Meetings succeed when they provide participants with a unique and memorable communal experience. While achieving a fully immersive experience in a virtual setting is challenging, it is possible with the right planning and implementation.

Here are five tips for hosting a virtual sales kickoff that keeps your team focused and engaged.

1. Set Expectations in Advance

Surely, you want attendees to do more than just tune in and spectate. Let them know that. If you expect people to keep their video on, say so. If you are looking for verbal feedback during particular sessions, make those expectations clear upfront. Set expectations in advance so that your team can come prepared.

In addition, plan on reinforcing your expectations throughout the event. As you lay out the day’s agenda, highlight those sessions in which you would like a lot of verbal feedback. Regularly remind your team about virtual meeting protocols like keeping cameras on and muting or unmuting microphones. While most people have come to be familiar with online meetings, clearly communicating your expectations for your sales kickoff will empower them to fully engage.

2. Involve the Right People

The sales team is the obvious main audience for your sales kickoff meeting, but they might not be the only team that should be in attendance.

Customer success leaders, product, marketing, and most definitely executive leadership could all benefit from attending some if not all sessions. If your team is utilizing new technology for online sales, you may need to have members of your technology team online to provide training or answer questions.

If you have never considered including someone from outside of your organization to speak at a sales kickoff meeting, now is a great time to do that. Virtual meetings make it easier than ever to include such speakers by greatly reducing their required time commitment and consequently reducing the cost to your organization.

Also keep in mind that because the meeting is virtual, it is much easier to include a wider group of attendees. With a traditional sales kickoff meeting, travel and other factors often required a commitment to the entire event. With a virtual meeting, participants can join in for just those sessions that apply to them.

3. Choose the Right Platform

A successful sales kickoff event will require more tools than the average virtual meeting. Make sure that the hosting platform you choose provides everything that you need, which most likely will include space for breakouts that allow for smaller discussions and the capability to allow for multiple training sessions to occur at the same time.

One hallmark of traditional sales kickoff meetings is fun breaks during sessions and after-hours events that inspire team building, networking, and engagement. Spending time with colleagues increases team cohesion and is something that should not be overlooked.

If you want to create the atmosphere found in a real-life business social event, make sure to choose a platform that enables attendees to move, mingle, and make conversation.

4. Give Recognition Throughout the Meeting

Saving all the rewards for one big night can be fun, but leveraging the power of recognition throughout your event can bring an energy that is critical for virtual meetings to be successful. Recognizing employees for their efforts is inspiring for them and the rest of the team. Make sure your meeting agenda includes time for everyone in leadership to highlight team members who go above and beyond.

Choose a platform that provides a built-in recognition tool that takes this aspect of virtual meetings to the next level. With the click of a button, every team member can acknowledge any other member's exemplary performance. For virtual sales kickoffs, that type of virtual recognition can be tallied, with prizes being awarded to the “most recognized” at the close of the event. Not only does this reward top employees, but it encourages participant engagement during the event.

5. Make it Interactive

The biggest challenge for any virtual meeting is fostering interaction. Without it, the meeting becomes boring and the participants’ attention wanders to unread email, social media updates, or a myriad of other distractions.

Including interactive activities ensures that team members are involved, as well as absorbing and understanding content. Small group discussions are a great tool for ensuring interaction, provided your meeting platform provides a seamless way to shift from large groups to small groups.

Short session breaks involving fun activities can be another way to keep things interactive and engaging. “Two Truths and a Lie” is a great icebreaker that plays well in a virtual space. Developing a “Product Quiz” that focuses on one of your products can bring in the fun of competition and will allow you to teach teams about products at the same time.

The Covid-19 pandemic has moved most business meetings online. When the goal is touching base on the weekly agendas or discussing quarterly financials, a Zoom meeting usually gives teams what they need to share info, ask some questions, and establish next steps. With a sales kickoff meeting, you will need more tools and a new mindset to make sure that participants are engaged, empowered, and prepared to move into a new season of sales.

Ed Stevens is the Founder and CEO of Preciate. He is deeply committed to helping others build strong, authentic relationships with the power of technology.  Visit https://join.preciate.com/  Connect Ed Stevens