Categories: Economic Change
In times of economic change, the most resilient sales organizations evolve their sales strategy to align with buyer needs. There’s no better time than the sales kickoff to align your team on a powerful, relevant strategy that serves the most critical outcomes on your organization’s agenda.
Don’t wait to start planning your SKO strategy. What do you need to do now to equip your team to navigate challenges and sell consistently in the upcoming year? Consider how you can use the SKO to ensure your sales organization is aligned, equipped and motivated to execute. Here’s what to consider:
1. Define What’s Mission Critical
This SKO season, sales leaders are looking for ways to be more efficient with who and what they have to maintain revenue through the shifting economic tide. If you or your customer organizations are prioritizing doing more with less, align your strategy to those changing needs. Maximize your impact by defining one or a select few, mission critical objectives for your organization. Where does your sales team need urgent support to pivot their strategy and meet company-wide goals in the upcoming year? What customer concerns are top-of-mind that your solution can align to?
Once you’ve defined your area of focus, strategically leverage your SKO to empower your sales team to execute on mission critical objectives. Capitalize on this opportunity to invest in critical sales skills and align your team on customer-focused messaging that will drive revenue, regardless of what the upcoming year brings.
2. Clearly Define Objectives and Action Plans
Driving morale and gaining support for company initiatives is an important part of every SKO, but to impact sales numbers, your kickoff needs clearly defined outcomes and a roadmap for reaching them. Empower your team by outlining specific goals to work toward and communicating how they contribute to the company’s overall success.
Ensure that your SKO agenda items are based around realistic, measurable and specific objectives for your sales team. Limit your scope to a few high-impact goals, and make sure to clearly define what success looks like as well as key indicators that will show sales managers that their teams are on the right track. Provide action plans for each role as well as cadences for reinforcement and assessment. Clearly defining and reinforcing behaviors that drive success in key areas is the number one action that will affect your team’s numbers in the coming year.
3. Align Your Agenda to Company Priorities
Chances are your organization’s strategy has shifted to meet market changes in the coming year. You’ve been hands-on with that strategy, but to ensure your sellers’ ability to execute on it, create an SKO agenda that’s actionable. Think beyond the event itself and define clear, measurable objectives for your SKO. Then, align your agenda accordingly.
Maximize the impact of your SKO by specifying a direct focus for each agenda item as well as communicating on action items before and after the event. Information on new products or company activities can be provided as pre-work to ensure a baseline of knowledge from everyone at the event. Use the actual SKO to give your team time to build skills around new processes and practice applying those skills to real-world opportunities. Similarly, ensure plans are in place for reinforcement and implementation after the event to avoid using valuable time for planning and discussing logistics. By building in a structure and anticipating your team's needs, you reserve event time for valuable in-person roleplaying, application and confidence building around new strategies.
4. Take Ownership Where it Matters
Direct involvement from sales leaders in the SKO can be a major factor in driving adoption and buy-in for the organization’s goals. Strike a balance between great delegation and active leadership. Start with effective communication.
Build a team that will help you get insight at every level of the organization, and communicate with them early and often. It’s important that sales leaders take a direct role in the planning of SKO priorities, messaging and adoption plans. The right team can help you ensure that all of these elements are relevant to the people in your organization. When your sales team feels that leaders are invested in their success and consider their day-to-day concerns, it’s much more likely that new strategies will be adopted efficiently. Your direct involvement with sales enablement and front-line managers throughout the planning and adoption process will ensure that your sales leaders are able to coach salespeople effectively on your most critical objectives.
5. Communicate Critical Concepts to Your Salespeople
When external economic factors are uncertain, morale can take a hit. As a sales leader, it’s important to acknowledge the current economic state and communicate company goals and priorities. It’s also imperative to share your plan to support your team. This kind of transparency can have a significant impact on your sales team’s actions and engagement.
Provide clarity to your entire sales team on where your company is headed and how this direction will impact your people. While it may be obvious to you how the overall company strategy will impact the sales organization — your team may not be making that connection on their own. Your salespeople are concerned with hitting their numbers and dealing with their own day-to-day challenges. Understand what you need to communicate to your salespeople, early and often, throughout your SKO journey to drive commitment and engagement from your team.
Start Now
A shifting economic landscape can lead to more complex deals and increased competition. Act now to define what your sales team needs to consistently outsell competitors next year, and invest in making it happen. The sooner you define what’s next, the more time you have to develop a strategic sales initiative that impacts revenue objectives. Dive into planning with an in-depth exploration of leading strategies from FM Managing Director, Brian Walsh.
