New Approaches to Successful Sales Kickoffs
Shing Wong
Founder, Ampslide - technology solutions for creating meaningful conversations, learnings, and connections.
Fall is SKO planning season!
Fall is often associated with PSLs (pumpkin spiced lattes).? But as the new year approaches, for many organizations, fall is also SKO planning season.
A sales kickoff (SKO) is both an event to celebrate the year just gone by and to energize your sales team for the year ahead.? A successful SKO deftly blends celebration, inspiration, and education.? Your sales leaders have the expertise on what your SKO needs to celebrate and inspire your team. ?
In this post, we will focus on education and what you should expect from your events platform for a successful SKO.? Go beyond traditional event platforms with new approaches that will increase learning and SKO success.
Let’s first take a look at the types of SKOs your organization may be considering along with the pros and cons.
Virtual, In-Person, and Hybrid SKOs:? the Pros and Cons of each
Virtual-only SKOs were the norm during the pandemic.? They can be more cost effective but most virtual event platforms only provide limited engagement tools so learning and participation can suffer.
In-person SKOs have traditionally been the ideal format since they provide real-time, face-to-face, in-person interactions.? However, it may not be possible to have everyone attend in person due to logistical or even financial reasons.?
Hybrid SKOs can provide the best balance of an engaging experience for virtual attendees and give in-person attendees the ability to interact with virtual teammates.? The best hybrid experience requires an event platform that allows for real-time participation for all attendees in a unified manner, whether they are virtual or in-person.
Watching Does Not Necessarily Mean Learning
Before the internet, much of our education was done in-person in physical classrooms where teachers taught new material, students were asked to participate in discussions, students took notes, and later they got tested to prove they’ve learned a subject. ?
Since the beginning of the internet, educational content, whether for fun or business, have been uploaded to and streamed by platforms like YouTube.? Similarly, traditional event platforms have mirrored this capability by giving companies the ability to broadcast their presentations virtually. ?
Yet, science proves that merely watching something does not automatically lead to learning.? Engagement and participation are key.
What does this mean for SKOs?? This means that merely streaming content virtually or projecting them onto a big screen for in-person SKOs will not necessarily help your teams learn.? It is a passive experience, much like watching TV.
If your event platform doesn’t provide your teams with the ability to engage with the content being presented and participate live during the sessions then the platform may not be the best in helping your teams learn. ?
The success of your SKO may depend on how engaged and actively participating your teams are in their learning. ?
To aid learning success, your event platform should provide your teams with the tools to be actively engaged and participating.? This includes tools to:? take notes, rewind slides, react to the content, ask questions, answer polls, or join in discussions with the speaker and peers, all in real-time.
Note Taking is Critical to Learning - Does Your Event Platform Allow Your Team to Take Notes?
“If you don’t write your ideas down, they could leave your head before you even leave the room.” - Richard Branson, LinkedIn article.
Both Richard Branson and Bill Gates are famous for being avid note takers.?
Branson, in his book, The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership, stated that “Acquiring the habit of note-taking is… a wonderfully complementary skill to that of listening.” He further advises in a CNBC article, “It doesn’t matter how you record your notes?—?as long as you do.”
Note taking has always been one of the keys to successful learning.? It promotes active listening, thought processing, and being intellectually engaged. ?
Attendees who takes notes in real-time on relevant information improves understanding and enables post session recall, especially if the notes can be easily accessed and searched. ?
Does your event platform allow your team to take notes?
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Can Attendees Rewind, Bookmark, and Review?
Here’s a common scenario when watching a presentation:? have you ever been intently focused on a slide of facts or figures when all of a sudden, the speaker moves on to the next slide, interrupting your train of thought? ?
You may be thinking of a potential solution to a problem or a useful fact you know you should remember.? But when a speaker advances to the next slide, your incomplete thoughts may have also vanished with the disappearance of the previous slide.
Unfortunately, when slides are projected onto a big screen or virtually streamed together with a speaker’s video, an attendee has no way to independently rewind a slide to spend a few more seconds/minutes to complete his/her thoughts that would have improved learning.
In addition to rewinding slides, attendees should be able to bookmark slides and review them post session. ?
A modern platform that provides the ability for attendees to rewind slides, bookmark, and review them can greatly improve learning and the session experience for your teams.
Bring Live Presence into Hybrid Sessions
Not every SKO can be 100% in-person.? An in-person experience is ideal, especially for learning sessions.? When in-person, attendees can participate by asking questions in the same room as the speaker or join in group discussions with their peers.
Since a 100% in-person SKO is not always possible, your hybrid and virtual sessions should have the tools to create a similar in-person experience for your virtual attendees.? To give your virtual attendees a similar in-person experience, your platform should allow:
Extend the Life of Your SKO
Your leadership, sales, product, marketing, and many other teams have spent countless hours putting together a productive, fun SKO with lots of great content and discussions.? Post SKO, keep the learning alive and extend the value of all your sessions with a recap of relevant learnings with on-demand access of the sessions.? This can minimize forgetting (see Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve) and improve recall. ?
How an event platform can help you extend the life of your SKO:
Kickoff 2024 with New Approaches to your SKO
A SKO is one of the most important events for an organization.? It’s an event to gather, celebrate, learn, and have fun together. ?
A SKO is also an opportunity to bring new approaches that will maximize your teams’ ability to engage, interact, and connect with each other and with your organization’s learning goals.? Choose an event platform that provides tools which will help your teams learn, recall, and extend the value of your SKO investment.
Ampslide:? A Modern Real-Time Interactive Event Platform
If the above resonates with you and you want your next SKO to be the most effective and engaging ever, consider Ampslide. ?
Ampslide is a radically different webinar and events platform.? Unlike other solutions where attendees can only passively watch a presentation, Ampslide gives attendees the ability to actively interact with the content and speakers in person or virtually in real-time.? These engagement tools include:
Email us at [email protected] to learn more and schedule a demo.