Your Sales Kickoffs Are Wasting Money

Poor Bob Blauman, high-powered leader guy.

We was enjoying a nice drink on the patio when he realized that massive check he stroked for the sales meeting was a waste of money.

We can all laugh a bit....or maybe uncomfortably relate.

The recipe for big sales meetings is fairly standard

• Detail heavy presentations about products
• A litany of updates from support teams such as marketing, IT or enablement
• Leadership discussions of new programs, initiatives or vision crafting
• Team building sessions or after-hours activities
• Sidebar discussions of varying quality or distraction

The desired outcome is typically renewed team energy, refocusing on new organizational direction, sharing best practices and building skills or knowledge.

Especially for in-person meetings great expense is incurred for travel, lodging leave alone the opportunity costs of being off-line.

But the results are often predictable...        

Teams revert to pre-meeting behaviors, information is quickly forgotten and new vision direction is ignored.

Within a week or two the meeting is forgotten, behaviors are not changed and teams continue to operate as normal

All so easily avoidable with the addition of a simple element.

Training, honest to goodness, high-quality training, smartly integrated into a sales meeting to align the messaging to company values, drive retention of critical need to know information and build practical skills to elevate performance to achieve the desired outcome.

Sales meetings don't only exist for large one-way transfers of information (aka: presentations) and afterhours antics.

Imagine a sales kickoff where:

• Vision messaging is organically woven into practical skills building exercises
• Team members can viscerally feel customer experience or frustrations through well-crafted breakout sessions or simulations and gameplan possible solutions
• Participants are given the opportunity to practice skills so leaders can coach, guide and develop at a deeper level
• Support teams can integrate with field sales to cross-pollenate ideas & innovations through skillfully executed group discussions or games
• Presentation delivery is augmented with elements of training concepts to increase retention of the material

It doesn't need to be complicated or cumbersome

Who normally plans sales kickoffs?

Marketing and/or sales.

Who actually knows, understands and exists to transform information into knowledge...your training teams.

I get it, your star salesperson gives a great customer facing presentation and is wicked funny.

Spoiler alert: presenting is not the same as training.

Repeat after me: presenting IS NOT training

Practicals

• Ensure your training teams are aware of your clearly defined objective & theme of the meeting or involved in planning sessions
• Have all presenters collaborate with training teams to graft training elements into all sessions and ensure consistent messaging
• Schedule a train-the-trainer bootcamp session for all presenters in the run up to the meeting
• Ensure training teams work closely with the actual skills building portions of the meeting to build effective sessions based on actual learning principles
• Allocate extra 1on1 coaching time for those nervous with presenting, let alone actually transferring knowledge

Bottom line:

What are you wanting to achieve with a big sales meeting?

Skills building, positive behavior changes that leads to increased performance and better alignment with your vision to set you apart from your competition OR just another meeting?

Obviously there is a role for large set-piece presentations and traditional meeting elements. I'm not suggesting they don't serve a purpose.

Nor am I saying, meeting responsibility should be given to the training team.

But...if you're not including your training teams in the planning and execution of large sales meetings, you are leaving money on the table that your better trained competitors will scoop up.

For daily tips for your training teams, follow my LinkedIn profile Adam Spacht

For free printable guides, to sign up for the NBT community or find all #NoBoringTraining content outposts visit https://zaap.bio/NoBoringTraining

If incorporating a training aspect into a sales kick-off intrigues you, and you'd like to chat a bit more I can be reached at KAS Concepts