Employees are now back in the office and on the sales floor for more and more businesses. And while the workplace might look a bit different than it did pre-pandemic, some of the mainstay corporate events are back in action, too, including annual sales meetings.
Successful sales kickoff meetings can boost morale and set the goals to help your sales teams achieve their big wins. These events are also an opportunity to reinforce company culture, rally and motivate your sales teams, and recognize employees for contributions.
Whether your event is in-person, remote, or hybrid, use these sales meeting tips to help shape your event for successful outcomes.
Create a theme
Choosing the right theme can help kick off your sales meeting on the right foot, setting the tone for the event while shaping messaging and deliverables. In addition, a strong theme can serve as a mantra for your sales team, so be sure to choose one that’s memorable and that reflects your brand in a positive light.
SocialPoint compiled a list of the top sales meeting themes used by corporations in 2019 in the three leading categories: motivational, growth, and team building. To help get your creative juices flowing for your theme brainstorm, here are the top five themes in each category.
Motivational
- Activate — Samsung
- All In — DJO Global and The Home Depot
- Game On — BriovaRx
- Grit & Passion – Intersect ENT
- If you build it, Sales will come – ITW Global Brands
Growth
- #Smarter — Jack Henry & Associates
- Be A Star — Lexis Nexis Risk Sales Meeting
- Be the SOLUTION — Spectrum
- Building Your Business — DeRoyal
- Commitment To Excellence — MicroCare
Team Building
- From Many, Wex — WEX
- It Starts With Us — National Safety Apparel
- Leading The Way — Source Atlantic
- On The Move Together — Hanover Insurance
- One Nationwide, Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond — Nationwide
How to bring your sales meeting theme to life.
After you arrive at the perfect theme for your sales meeting, use it to frame your event—and engage attendees. Display the theme on the event website, marketing materials, and on-site signage. And use your theme logo on event giveaways such as apparel, notebooks and pens, tote bags, reusable water bottles, and other practical gifts that attendees will use at the event and long after the conference ends.
At Shamrock, we help our clients make those connections with their sales representatives by creating custom-themed gift boxes mailed to remote attendees, managing custom apparel fittings on-site for people at the event, or producing themed event swag bags for all attendees.
Have an agenda.
This sounds like an obvious point but one that should not be overlooked. Creating an agenda and providing it to attendees in advance can help them prepare for the event and make their experience more productive and fulfilling. Using the agenda, they can pre-plan to attend the sessions that are of interest to them, prepare for break-out sessions, or research keynote speakers or topics prior to the sales meeting event.
Look back before moving forward.
Instead of skirting the issues caused by the pandemic, make them a focal point at your sales meeting. Use them as motivation to make up lost ground and also to highlight and applaud the solutions your team developed in the face of adversity. Some positives that may have come out of COVID-related business challenges might include the ability to:
- pivot your service offering
- adapt to a remote business model
- introduce more digital technology
- improve efficiencies
- create new product or service delivery options
- diversify supply chain
Engage attendees.
Gartner research finds that B2B sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training, and 87% will forget it within a month. Clearly, you want sales meeting attendees to retain the information you’ve provided throughout your event program.
So, to increase the odds that they’ll remember that valuable material, try these solutions. Video presentations (tape and live stream), digital gamification solutions (think trivia games or game show challenges) that present information in an interactive way, and dynamic group activities that team attendees up with reps from other markets or divisions to help create a more engaging learning scenario.
Don’t skip the follow-up.
To reinforce the material presented during your sales meeting, connect with attendees immediately following the event via a wrap-up email. Share educational or support materials, video links to presentations, and outline event highlights.
If you didn’t conduct an exit survey on-site or online, include a link to a brief survey in the email. Then, when all responses are tallied, share survey insights with attendees, including comments, photos, and other relevant event information, to bring the event to a formal close.
Our team at Shamrock is gathering this week for our first in-person national sales meeting in more than two years. While our team has remained pretty connected during distanced times, we’re really looking forward to meeting together in person again.
Is your corporate sales meeting back on this year? Join the conversation on social media!
