How the Rise of Virtual Events and Remote Working Is Actually Driving Sales Kickoff Success
A guest blog post written by President and Founder, John Hsieh, of Scale GTM. After addressing the growing complexity of the customer journey over his 20 years in marketing and sales leadership roles in companies like DocuSign, SAP, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and JPMorgan Chase, John founded Scale GTM. At Scale GTM his goal is to enable sales, success, and marketing organizations to successfully navigate the evolving purchasing and adoption landscape by deploying proven sales messaging, process, and skills.
If you have any part in planning your company’s Virtual Sales Kickoff (SKO), you’ve no doubt come across thousands of articles and experts sharing their top 3 mistakes to avoid, 4 virtual events ideas, 6 key steps, and yada yada yada. Therefore, this will NOT be a post with even more tips on how to plan a successful virtual SKO. So, what will this be about? Rather, we’re going to take a look at why Virtual SKOs are here to stay (even beyond the pandemic), and what you can do now to prepare - heck, even lead your company through this transformation. Equally important, this article isn’t just for the SKO “planning committee”. If you’re responsible for revenue (e.g. CSO, CRO, CMO, CEO), you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform one of your biggest annual costs into real, measurable impact!
Why Transform? Let’s Look At the Facts.
Fact #1 A typical SKO costs in the range of $2,000 to $4,000 per attendee. Using a conservative number within that range, say $2,500/person, a SKO with 1,000 attendees costs your company $2.5 Million, as aconservative estimate.
Fact #2 There is not one company on the face of this earth, including yours, that has calculated an ROI or quantified the impact of a SKO (prove me wrong)! At best, there’s a post-event survey to capture feedback (especially the all important feedback around the quality of the food and beverage). And it’s not because these are bad companies, as plenty of very successful metrics-driven companies hold extravagant SKOs.
Fact #3 Economies of scale do not exist with SKOs. As your company grows, the pressure to “out do” the previous year actually drives up the cost per head. This dangerous never ending cycle has led us to where we are today - a line item in your budget reserved annually for the ballooning cost of SKO.
Fact #4 Your buyers are engaging in digital channels as much, if not more, than in meetings with sales people to make buying decisions. This is just one example of how buying behaviors require companies to orchestrate selling efforts across sales, customer success and marketing (and many other functions). The selling skills that were previously only needed by your direct sales team is now table-stakes for anyone that touches the buyer. Yet SKOs are typically designed specifically for the direct sales team only. One of, if not the biggest, single program spend for the year excludes key employees that are crucial to driving revenue.
Fact #5 There’s a thing called the “forgetting curve”, sometimes referred to as the “Ebbinghaus forgetting curve” after the scientist. Studies suggest that humans forget approx 50% of new information within an hour of learning it. That goes up to an average of 70% within 24 hours. The percentages get worse when factoring in difficulty of the learning topic, and sleep deprivation. Good news, you can actually improve these percentages through “spaced learning” - essentially application/repetition over extended/multiple time periods.
Let’s sum this up. SKOs are expensive, their impact can’t be measured, the cost only goes up every year, they don’t include key people/teams in your company, and even for those who do attend, 70% of what they learned is forgotten within 1 day of returning home after SKO. And here’s the kicker - none of what I have written about is a surprise to any of you. Yet we continue to do the exact same thing year after year.
“That’s How It Used to Be Done” Is A Poor Excuse
Having to do everything, including Sales Kickoffs virtually in 2021 means you can’t just do what you’ve done in the past. Given the facts above, that’s a good thing! In fact, even prior to the pandemic, the best companies in the world recognized this challenge and started looking at SKO differently. For example, leading sales organizations have
Converted a 2-day event to a multi-phased approach with a before, during, and after phase to combat the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.
Transformed Sales Kickoffs to “Company”, “Global”, or “Revenue” kickoffs, being more thoughtful and inclusive of orchestrating key teams that have a role to play in the buyer’s journey (beyond just direct sales).
Leveraged digital solutions, like virtual event platforms to optimize engagement and create accountability.
Feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand? Scale GTM and Bash Creative Inc have partnered to provide your teams with a virtual SKO that promises to excite, engage, and educate - the 3 Es. We’ve incorporated hundreds of things to avoid and thousands of magical tips you’ve been reading about. But at our core, we have examined the many issues that have plagued the legacy SKO model and created a modern Virtual Sales Kickoff Blueprint. The Virtual SKO Blueprint is designed from the ground up to help companies orchestrate their collective revenue teams to win in 2021, and beyond. Whether you’re ready for wholesale change, or just want to take your first step, we’d be delighted to be the catalyst in your transformation.
Bash Creative is an event planning company that specializes in incredible gatherings that go beyond just great design. We’re known for teasing out smart goals for your event and serve up a stylish execution that will keep your guests buzzing. Located in San Francisco, but often found in New York, Austin, Chicago, Seattle, and beyond.