Categories: Front-line Managers | Sales Kickoff
We’ve been a part of making many sales kickoffs successful over the years. One early indicator of a SKO that drives the company’s core revenue objectives all year: front-line manager preparedness.
Managers are a critical instrument to driving results after your sales kickoff, helping to reinforce new concepts and best practices throughout the year. Getting them onboarded early and preparing them to lead during and after your event can transform the outcome of your SKO.
Here are three ways to support your front-line sales managers before the sales kickoff that will help maximize the impact of your event:
Get Buy-In: Communicate the Mission and Vision
To maximize manager effectiveness in rolling out your SKO initiatives, it’s important to provide the “why” and the “how.” Start early sharing your big-picture strategy and the core business objectives you’re looking to drive; this will help managers understand the value of what they and their teams are being asked to do and position them to instill the importance of your initiative with their teams, getting everyone on board to maximize your impact.
It’s also helpful to share your post-SKO adoption plan early on. Often, sales initiatives can come with a big ask but leave managers to iron out the details of how to achieve this behavior with their teams. Providing a detailed action plan demonstrates your commitment to your managers’ success and helps them feel supported. Give the “how” by sharing:
- The behaviors that will lead to success in their role
- The behaviors they’re expected to reinforce with sellers, and the leading indicators or benchmarks that would indicate intervention is needed.
- A uniform cadence for how they’ll reinforce these behaviors (deal reviews, win/loss analysis, weekly check-ins)
When managers understand how they’ll achieve success and how their success will play into the company’s overall objectives, they’ll be more equipped and eager to take action and lead by example.
Invest in Initiative-Related Skills
If your sales kickoff includes an initiative to introduce or reinforce sales skills and methodology training, your front-line managers will be instrumental in driving adoption. Skills training for managers should be separate and take place prior to your event to ensure they’re equipped to coach and facilitate sellers learning. By starting manager training early, you enable them to focus all their energy on making your reps successful during and after the SKO.
Even if your managers are already familiar with the methods you’ll be covering, keeping the skills top of mind will enable them to lead by example and be proactive with reinforcing the desired behavior. Whether your SKO goals include improving sales qualification or rolling out a new messaging strategy, you can support lasting and repeatable success by hosting manager-specific training before the event to ensure all managers are speaking a common sales language and managing via common processes.
Invest In Their Ability to Lead
Your front-line sales managers’ ability to ensure the success of your SKO initiatives is directly tied to their ability to coach. The priorities and goals you set at your sales kickoff only make it into the day-to-day through the guidance and reinforcement provided by managers. Ensure your team can hit the ground running and maintain the momentum created at your SKO by making manager coaching training a priority now.
Just as sellers need skill support and tools to sell well, managers need support and reinforcement of their coaching skills to be effective leaders. If top sellers have been promoted to managers in the past year, remember that management requires a completely different skillset than selling. Leaders should provide guidance to ensure that managers are equipped to give effective feedback, successfully coach deals to their maximum revenue potential, and leverage win/loss data to improve future execution.
Start with our top resources on enabling sales managers to be better coaches.
Execute A Sales Kickoff That Drives Measurable Impact
Your sales kickoff is a big investment - maybe the biggest investment in sales enablement that you’ll make all year. You can’t afford to take chances on getting return on that investment. Make sure your strategies make it to execution by learning the four most common SKO planning mistakes we see sales leaders make. Force Management Senior Partner Tim Caito has been instrumental in many SKOs throughout his career. In this webinar he’ll share the common reasons SKOs fail to produce year-long results, as well as strategies to guarantee ROI on your event. Sign up to join us.
