The continuous reimagining of your Sales Kickoff: Recipe for success

Setting the Table

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. – Maya Angelou ?

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Like many companies, Pega hosts an annual sales kickoff (SKO) where senior executives share their visions, strategies, and inspirations for the upcoming year. During the pandemic, Pega moved to virtual SKO. My team’s role is to empower our Go-to-Market (GTM) teams to be our client’s trusted advisor of choice. I was super excited as my one-year Pega anniversary approached to plan our global kickoff, our first in-person in over three years!

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While we had GTM enablement topics to cover, this year’s SKO needed to be deeply tailored on the audience. This began with a leadership meeting on the 1st day prior to the official kickoff.?Focusing on leadership and coaching skills, this session set the tone for our collaborative activities later in the week as the field wanted to spend time with their teams and get to know others in similar roles.?With this year’s Accelerating Growth theme, we decided to spend our budget on our seemingly endless supply of world-class creativity. Time to reimagine and reinvent our SKO!????

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Personalizing the Table

Our brainstorming planning sessions reminded me of the magic of my own family gatherings. At a dinner party you set the table, the environment, the atmosphere, and add creative touches to make people feel welcome and appreciated. Then the real alchemy of conversations and sharing stories begins.

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At SKO, we “set the table” so that our clients’ goals and aspirations were at the center. All our workshops and conversations revolved around how we, as a team, build the very best for our clients. To do this we ensured every role was represented in the conversations. We also considered the uniqueness of our clients’ needs based on region and geography.

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To bring this SKO “closer to home,” we decided to host multiple in-person Regional Kickoffs (RKOs), localizing the experience and content. We identified five cities as epicenters for our regional gatherings.

Hosting over 1,350 attendees, across four continents, within four weeks (and creating groups by team, region, and role) was no easy task, but our team is not shy when it comes to committing to delivering a personalized -and delightful- experience.

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We wanted to prime and galvanize the entire GTM team and at the same time, we wanted to openly connect to the larger Pega-wide community. Regardless of their role, everyone was invited to our global online kickoff, in the end, everybody is responsible for selling our client-first value proposition! From a welcome address from our Founder and CEO Alan Trefler to presentations on our solutions, messaging and use cases, to a lively exchange? during our live Q&A, everyone returned to their desks feeling?re-energized and motivated to focus on the needs of our clients.??

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Customizing the Menu

Most sales kickoffs offer a high proportion of one-directional sessions where attendees spend most of their time listening. We wanted to plan a menu with plenty of role play, debate, and the exchange of stories. To create an interactive experience, the resulting agenda emphasized experiential learning.

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Without exposing all the ingredients of our secret sauce, we began by structuring the foundational activities that attendees completed before our in-person workshops. ?We designed custom virtual learning spaces for every GTM role – each with modern, modularized enablement consisting of videos, guides, and virtual-team facilitated meetings. This digital learning provided bi-directional feedback?with a visual tool?that focused teams’ pre-event virtual meetings on mapping their current account plan.?This made it easy to ideate in a fun, visual way.

We leaned on managers to build excitement as we launched the RKO Growth Essentials? pre-work. While pre-work was required, participants viewed it as an opportunity, not a mandate. Virtual workshops helped managers to prepare teams for the onsite events with a focus on topics they had requested such as building high-performance teams, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.

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Onsite workshops were hyper-collaborative and conversational, getting people away from screens and engaged to meet our desired outcomes.?Our hybrid approach ensured that onsite time focused on conversations, peer-to-peer engagement, and role playing – dynamic activities that offer huge advantages when done in person.?As a result, we delivered on our Accelerating Growth theme to achieve in three days together what could have taken us months.?

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Serving Fresh Ingredients

“Sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.”?Nicholas Sparks in the book “The Lucky One”

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The planned hybrid structure was the “back-bone” of the experience, but we also wanted to inspire the team’s creativity and innovation! To bring a delightful experience to your SKO, my advice is “look to your team’s special talents.” I was amazed by how much talent my team has. Everyone brought their whole selves to the table by offering their skills from hobbies, interests, and past careers: artists, writers, musicians, photographers, TV producers, and even a former magician! Although everyone who worked on this project was a bit of a magician – creating a delightful experience through creativity, hard work, and the mindfulness that makes participants feel special.?(More details in my next blog!)

Measuring for Success

Proof of success is not measured by how we perceive the experience, but rather through the perceived reality of our audience.?The food critic reviews are in and our NPS scores were the highest since we have been keeping score for a sales kickoff event.?In fact, many not only desired more energetic, collaborative enablement sessions going forward, but many are also willing to participate in future sessions to share best practices.?The bar is now set higher, and our team is already planning how to shift gears and go into franchise mode for 2024.

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Food for Thought

So, what did I learn that you could use to make planning your own SKO more effective? Here is some food for thought when you’re setting your table. In my next blog, I’ll discuss what happened when we brought all the voices to the table.

1. Create the right climate for innovation – The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety that promotes creative thinking. We created an atmosphere where everyone felt accepted and respected. We launched a new method to facilitate the opportunity identification and prioritization in a very consistent way across all industries and geographies. This Forbes article provides a deeper understanding of the behavior that creates high-performance teams.??

2. Give people a choice – We planned multiple networking activities to let attendees build their own path. This Business News Daily article details how an increase in autonomy increases productivity. While running at dawn is not my idea of a good time, many attendees loved this team-building option. Whether that meant Executive Mentoring, a DEI&B breakfast panel, giving back to the community via PegaCares , or indulging in games, attendees designed their own experience.????

3. Everything is personal – The easiest way to create a positive experience is by focusing on a GTM team’s role- and region-specific needs, interests, and challenges. The agenda should resonate with all attendees, regardless of role. Tailored experiences keep attendees engaged in the present and motivated for the future.

#lifeatpega

Alan Trefler Leon Trefler John Higgins Jeff Taylor Karim ZEIN Kieran Tarrant Rajen Sanggaran Joanne Taylor Diane Clark Diane (Lucchese) Paulenich Catherine Dutton Rob Walker Steve Rudolph Marc Andrews Venessa Azar, CMP Walter K?hler John Niblett David Wells Pat Dwyer Mark Ryan Steve Gross Benjamin Baril Luis BAYANO Richard Beard Sofie Bjorksten, PMP Deborah Bianculli Laura Bolsover, M.Ed. Michael Brenner Morgan Broadaway Keri Burnett Shania Chia Rupy Chana Ed Chase Chastity DeLorme Hillary Dostal, MBA, LPD Abhi Falcao Joel Fleet Daniel Couto Aaron Fromm Helen Gallick Tracy Gallagher Carly Underwood Smerz, CMP Jessica Genatossio Oscar Grobbenhaar Karsten H?jberg Carol Hopke Anna Kaiser Kana Katsumata Wasim Khan Ayako K. Melanie Wong Denis Lacassagne Jonas Lim Brian F. McCabe Tomás Mac Seáin Anna Maitland Asrina M. Peter Margolis Lisa Mattivi Liz Monroe McCormick Kylie McCue Jackie McLemore Maureen B. McShane Paula Milton Don Schuerman Kikelomo (Dayo) Oshunkentan, MD, MPH, MBA, CPHIMS, CHCQM Eric Musser Keisuke Muto Sandra Nangeroni Cathy Nelson Chris Nittle Christy Wezowicz Rebecca Oddsund TJ Oleksiak Delphine Ormus Samantha Paquin Julia Pic, CAPM Hannah Rawsthorn Rosely Powell Jamil Qureshi Colleen Stanley, CEO Anne Renehan Jo Richardson Evan Sarmanian Mitsuru Sasanuma Robin Schmieden Kylee Souders Christian Stiller Danielle Tambini, CMP Liz Thaler-Barger Don J. Michael Tocci Marc Van Baar Rene van der Laan Jason Wilhelm Chris Young Howard Robinson Sheena Morett Helen Anatogu Olivia Christmann Judy Buchholz Ileana Honigblum Kerolos Morcos, MBA Michelle Gaertner Marco Rondelli Colm Daly Jon Rowlings Stu Smith Mark Guthrie Philip Knoetze Gayle Allard Brooke Halloran Steven Maginel Robert Bry Kristine Stevens Lauren Deignan Jake Akin Eric Ryan Makenna Arnold Cedric Vallette