Kicking it at SKO

Brought to you by Jody Geiger, Jenna Bugiardini,?Isaac Smith, Darian Hooshi and Klue

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Volume 16

It’s 2003, the Rugby World Cup Final. England vs. Australia. The game is chaos—momentum shifts back and forth, and every play feels like it could decide the match. With the clock winding down, captain Martin Johnson steps up in the huddle. His message? Simple yet powerful: Stay focused, take control, and seize the momentum. What followed was rugby history—Jonny Wilkinson’s legendary drop goal in overtime that clinched England’s victory. That moment didn’t happen by chance. It was the result of a rallying cry that turned jitters into execution and execution into unstoppable momentum.

That’s exactly what a Sales Kick-Off (SKO) is all about. It’s the locker room moment when you rally the team, shift the focus from the big, daunting season ahead to winning the first call, the first demo, the first engagement. It’s not just about new techniques or tools—it’s about igniting the energy and resilience to take on the year and set the tone for success.

This month, we’re diving into what makes an SKO the ultimate pregame huddle. Let’s harness that championship mindset and kick off 2025 with unstoppable momentum.?

How to SKO Right

Align and Collaborate Created by: Elizabeth Italiano?

Link to Original Voice: Tips for SKO

Elizabeth recommends using your SKO as a launchpad into the new year by sharpening strategies and creating a seamless customer experience.

Quote: “Your SKO is the launchpad for a truly aligned GTM strategy. Use this time to tear down silos, innovate, and align teams on what really matters: driving sustainable revenue growth.”

Takeaways:

• Unify messaging for consistency and trust. SKO is a critical moment to refine value propositions and messaging across Sales, Marketing, and CS teams. Aligning on a consistent story ensures customers receive a cohesive experience, building trust and driving revenue with the right audience.
• Enable resilience, discovery, and strategic differentiation. Equip teams with the tools and insights to adapt to change, excel in discovery, and sharpen competitive strategies. By fostering collaboration on competitor insights and upskilling teams in nuanced discovery, organizations position themselves to win more deals, renewals, and customer loyalty.
• Optimize buyer and customer journey alignment with live mapping sessions and cross-functional collaboration help uncover process gaps and refine handoffs across the Marketing, Sales, and CS continuum. The result? Enhanced customer satisfaction, retention, and a competitive edge in the market.

Experimenting at Klue:

We’re focusing on aligning our teams and strategies to drive long-term success and create lasting value for our customers. This includes investing in a messaging workshop led by Jen Allen-Knuth to unify messaging across all teams supporting the customer lifecycle. We’ll also dedicate in-person time to refining and presenting ABM pyramid strategies for our Enterprise selling model, covering stakeholder mapping, account research, rules of engagement, and actionable plans for SDRs, AEs, and CSMs to better serve key customers and engage ideal prospects. An SLT "Ask Me Anything" session and OKR refinement will ensure alignment on priorities, while panels featuring individuals and companies who’ve achieved similar goals will provide fresh perspectives and inspiration. Finally, we’ll map the customer lifecycle for multi-product renewals, prioritizing seamless, customer-centered experiences that support long-term value creation and success.

Your Sales Team Doesn’t Need a Motivational Speaker Created by: Jen Allen-Knuth

Link to Original Voice: Empower Sellers at Kick-Off

Quote: “Empower sellers with new ideas to address new problems. Don’t keep running the same plays and tell them to work harder.”

Jen is challenging the ways sales teams typically run their SKOs. Rather than motivating teams to “work harder” she suggests a fresh approach: give the teams the skills they need to succeed in our modern selling world.

Takeaways:

• Let’s challenge the idea that if sellers aren’t performing it’s because they’re lazy and need to work harder.?
• Sales is a demanding job and most salespeople work very hard already.?
• Bringing in a motivational speaker who tells a story about climbing Mount Everest will make everyone feel good but what does the team actually get?
• Motivational speakers don’t directly help your sales teams deliver results. After the session, they still have to go back to their desk and figure out what to put in their cold email.??
• Empower sellers with new ideas to address new problems. Don’t keep running the same plays and tell them to work harder.
• Kick-off is a prime opportunity to bring your team together and get them focused on new skills that will drive results for your business.

Experimenting at Klue:

• At our kick-off this year we are using the time together to run a unified Messaging Framework session across all our GTM teams. This will allow us to build consistent messaging that can be used throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This framework will serve as a foundation for onboarding, training sessions, and positioning, ensuring consistency and alignment in how we engage with customers moving forward.

Spot Simple AI-Powered Fixes for Big Wins at Your SKO – Part 1: Pre-SKO Created by Isaac Smith?

Link to Article: Spot Simple AI-Powered Fixes for Big Wins at Your SKO – Part 1: Pre-SKO

Quote: "The magic of this approach is in flipping the SKO dynamic—you’re not just delivering ideas to your team, you’re drawing innovation from them, evolving together, and setting the tone for a year of collaboration, trust, and progress."

Sales Kick-Offs aren’t just about new techniques or big-picture strategy. They’re about tapping into your team’s day-to-day pains and turning small inefficiencies into massive wins. It starts by handing the mic to your people. Ask them which processes slow them down, then empower them to ideate quick automation or AI fixes. This approach not only builds trust but also frees up hours for more meaningful, revenue-driving work.

Takeaways:

• Start with What You Have: You don’t need to buy expensive new tools. Simple automations (like using Zapier) and basic AI integrations can tackle repetitive tasks—freeing up time and energy.
• Empower Your Team: They live these workflows daily, so let them identify the roadblocks. Not only will they feel valued and more bought into changes, but their insights are the keys to true efficiency.
• Flip the Script: Move from “telling” to “asking.” A genuine invitation to share frustrations and ideas injects creativity and buy-in.
• Small Wins, Big Impact: Fixing tedious tasks (like data re-entry) might not sound life-changing, but done hundreds of times, those minutes add up.

Experimenting at Klue:

At Klue, we’ll be dedicating a segment of our SKO to open brainstorming sessions. We group teams by function—Sales, Customer Success, Product—and ask them to identify areas that feel clunky. It might be something as simple as creating the same folder for every new customer or manually updating multiple systems. We collect these “diamonds in the rough” and commit to implementing at least one or two improvements right away. That immediate follow-up builds trust and confidence, creating momentum for even bigger automations down the road.

Take What Works and Make It Better Created by: James Clear

Link to Article: How Innovative Ideas Arise?

Quote: "The most creative innovations are often new combinations of old ideas. Innovative thinkers don’t create, they connect."

James Clear, the renowned author behind the best-selling Atomic Habits, explores a counterintuitive approach to innovation: instead of "going back to the drawing board," focus on iterating what's worked before.?

Takeaways:

• Starting from scratch takes far more resources and energy than anyone expects.
• Instead of "going back to the drawing board", ask what can be iterated and expanded upon from past successes.
• Innovation doesn't necessarily mean creation - it can be the connection between existing ideas.
• For complex problems, iterating on what already works is often better, since these solutions have proven effective to some degree.

Experimenting at Klue:

We use this innovation mindset at Klue. At the end of each year's Kick-off, we collect feedback through a Google Form about the event's value, highlights, and suggestions for next year. This gives us multiple perspectives on what worked well versus what didn't, allowing us to iterate rather than create a whole new plan each time. While planning a Kick-off is still A TON of work, it's far more efficient than building from scratch every year.

At your next SKO, gather feedback immediately after the event - don't wait for everyone to fly home. Capture those insights while they're fresh and while people are still energized from connecting with colleagues in person. You might be surprised at what actually resonates.

As we continue to spot trends, we'll keep you updated. See ya next month!