Flushing Money Down the Toilet: The Truth About Your SKO Being a Super Expensive Dopamine Hit

Sales Kick-Offs (SKOs) can be fun, right? The energy, the speakers, the parties, the food, the travel and seeing your team—it’s all great… until you realize you’ve just invested a huge chunk of your budget for what amounts to a fleeting movement of motivation. Fun? Sure. But are you actually setting the foundation to move the needle for the year ahead? Or did you just pay for your team to feel good for a couple of days and then they forgot all about it?

Here’s the kicker: unless your SKO is aligned with your 2025 goals and metrics, you might as well be flushing money down the toilet.

HOW DARE SHE (yes, I said it!)

Why can I say that?

I've been to plenty of conferences, tradeshows, witnessed speakers and kickoffs where most of the information was forgotten as soon as I got home.

Secondly, now in a sales seat where we get inquiries for speakers, I can say that many of those conversations peel back the onion layers and reveal that companies are putting the cart before the horse.

The horse being - they do not know what they are "kicking off".

Avoid the SKO Trap and Drive Results

While I know many of you are going to do what you are going to do, I compiled a list of what I'm seeing on SKO discovery calls and the internal misalignment.

You want to rock 2025 and see the metrics move - do not pass go and send someone in HR to find a speaker if they cannot answer the below questions....

1. Do you have your 2025 goals and objectives laid out? If not, why not? Go do that. Seriously. What metrics are you trying to move? Get specific. Win rates, pipeline coverage, new markets—what’s the granular data you need to shift? You can’t hit a target if you haven’t even defined it.
2. Is your leadership team aligned? If the answer is no, stop everything and get on the same page. There’s no point in running a big ole expensive event if half the leadership wants to focus on revenue growth and the other half is obsessed with what field in the CRM the team is missing most. Get aligned. Get focused.
3. Who’s going to own the follow-through? It’s great to talk about big goals, but who’s responsible for making sure these metrics get hit? From what I've seen on LinkedIn and all of the Sales Enablement layoffs - not them - so who? Figure that out. And more importantly, who’s going to reinforce the behavior changes needed to move the needle? Without ownership, everything you say at the SKO is just rah-rah.
4. Does your speaker address your specific metrics? Don't get me wrong - a motivational speaker can get everyone fired up, but that’s not enough. Heck, I'd pay to listen to David Goggins speak - but if I do not channel his words every single day while I'm working out, write down my progress or chart it, set goals to hit weekly and monthly or having my husband yell in my face "what would David Goggins do?" I may not actually lift heavier or change my behavior.

If the lessons they’re teaching don’t tie back to the outcomes you want, then congratulations—you’ve paid for a really expensive dopamine hit. You’ve got to make sure that your speaker and workshops address the actual metrics you want to move. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and money.

Put in The Work Now To Get Aligned

I see it all the time: teams come to us looking for a keynote, but when I ask them about their objectives and metrics, they don’t have a clue. They don’t know their win rates, they haven’t mapped out pipeline growth, and they’re not clear on where they want to go. Worse yet - VPs or CROs send someone in enablement, HR or an admin to gather info and they can't answer these questions. Without a direct understanding of what problems you are having, what they are stemming from and how you plan to hire someone to kick off HOW to fix them - aren't you just burning cash?

Pick a speaker who can drive your message home, and reinforce it with training throughout the year. That way, your SKO isn’t just an expensive party —it’s the start of real, measurable progress.

PS: Our team (me included) specializes in SKOs that move metrics. Hit us up if you want to get it right.

And honestly, if your team’s crushing it and all the metrics are on fire… why even bother with an SKO?

Hi. I'm Celeste and I'm a Certified Gap Selling Training Partner. In a nutshell, I help teams change they way they sell by understanding the unique business problems they solve for customers and finding those during discovery and the sales process to be able to make a case for change.

Off LinkedIn, I'd love for you to give me a follow for quick dopamine videos (that are free) here on Youtube.

And if you want to chat about an SKO and what our team can do to move metrics - get on my calendar.