It is the start of another new year. If you are in the profession of selling, you will be invited to yet another Sales kick-off that your company has organised.
The leadership team will get on stage and share the results from the past year. If it was a good year, it will call for some celebration. If it was a tough year, it will still call for some celebrations (not many companies publicly admit that it was a tough year and so instead of introspection about what went wrong, they will still find something to celebrate). There is nothing wrong with that as long as they also do some amount of introspection regarding their challenges and failures as well.
Then there will be a barrage of presentations from the sales leadership explaining why this year is going to be bigger and better.
If you are lucky
- You will have someone in the leadership who will get on stage and lay out the overall company strategy, which hopefully will be translated into the your goals (I’ve seen too many companies where the strategy shared by the CEO and the top leadership and the compensation plan that sales executives get are from two different worlds).
- There will be some useful sessions that you would be mandated to attend. You might actually get to learn something new about the product that you are supposed to be selling, or positioning against a competitor who is giving tough competition or some new sales process or tools. You might even get sometime to network with people whom you might have to work in the year to be successful at what you are expected to sell.
- You might already know what your target territory or accounts are before you head into the sales kick-off, so that you are able to put in context everything that you hear at the kick off. You can use the time to network with important and relevant people, try to learn about the account or territory (if it is a new assignment) from someone who managed this account or territory before you.
- Your manager might have identified some topics for you to focus on (learn new skill, meet new folks, meet senior executives, etc) and do while you are at the kick-off.
If not,
- You can enjoy the booze, music and the party
- You can go visit a museum or an art gallery or a nice picturesque spot to get some calm.
- And create your very own sales plan, learning plan and investment plan (time, money and attention to improving yourself to become a better sales professional)
And believe that ,
