Image courtesy of VorsightThis is the time of year that if you haven't had your sales offsite for your sales team, you are probably working to pull it together quickly and simply.
Since we are all about simple and effective here at Score More Sales, I wanted to give you a few do's and don't when it comes to your sales offsite - and offer you a tremendous resource to give you more ideas.
Key takeaway about having a sales offsite is that it MUST be valuable to the participants. At the beginning of the year, everyone should have hope and optimism for a bigger and better sales year ahead. If you do nothing else, make your meeting focused around what is in it for THEM (your audience - sales reps, front line sales leaders, account teams, marketing, etc)
A survey was done by our friends at Vorsight about sales kickoff meetings. They polled over 1,300 reps, managers, and sales VPs and are sharing the results to help you plan a better offsite. Take a look here and also these key points below:
Have some sort of pre-work to send out to participants so that you can get their input and more importantly, their buy-in to the event. If you tell me what is important to you and I include that in my event, it is unlikely you'll feel excluded. You will even feel some responsibility, most likely, that we're focused on what is important.
Give attendees time for small group discussion. The great thing about this is that people will often share more in a small group than they might in a large room.
Hold your offsite, well, offsite. There is nothing worse than having attendees run out to their desk for various reasons. An offsite needs to be away from distractions.
An offsite location should also be a creative environment. You are, after all, working to come up with new strategies or roll-out programs and concepts that a creative approach is helpful for. I've seen people head to buildings in the woods, in boardrooms at or near museums, and at universities.
Instead of full focus on new products and training for new products / services, be sure to make time for sales skills development. Unless everyone is at 100% quota, which is highly unlikely, have time for coaching and training.
Finally, I love to see a theme for sales kickoffs and for sales offsites. A word or a phrase that inspires and can get everyone on the same page.
For more detail and data, check out the Annual Sales Kickoff Meeting Research e-book. Contact us if we can offer more ideas to help you make 2015 the year that sales really take off.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the "Top 30 Social Sales Influencers" worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the "Sales Ideas In A Minute" newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
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