An SKO theme should encapsulate the key skills and lessons you want the team to carry throughout the year. Starting with business objectives (e.g., "be bolder") and building a theme around that (e.g., "Forte") is far more effective than theming it around the host city.

SKOs often fail with high-level corporate presentations. A better approach is to put top-performing reps on stage to share specific, tactical "how-to's" for key sales activities like cold calling, email outreach, and champion building, fostering peer-to-peer learning.

Most sales kickoffs (SKOs) over-index on education, causing reps to forget most of the content. A successful RKO must be designed to achieve five balanced goals: building culture, inspiring the team, educating, celebrating wins, and jumpstarting the new year with practical work.

Don't let reps just check into their hotel rooms. The first impression is critical. Create a themed arrival experience with food, music, and leadership presence. This sets a serious, thoughtful tone for the entire event and kickstarts culture-building from the moment they arrive.

A sales kickoff's primary goal should be arming the team with practical skills. Forcepoint's SKO focused on role-playing and certifying staff on new messaging, which was then cascaded to partners. This shifts the focus from simple revenue motivation to building genuine, scalable capability.

Don't treat SKO as a vacation from work. By holding the first QBR of the year during the kickoff, you force reps to immediately apply new strategies and themes. They leave with a concrete territory plan, account plans, and a clear path to their number, avoiding the typical post-event hangover.

In a tough market, sales results slow down, which can demotivate a team that thrives on closing deals. To counteract this, leaders must shift their rewards. Instead of only celebrating wins, they should actively and publicly celebrate the consistent daily activities and behaviors that will eventually lead to success.

Systematically sharing success stories about closing high-value deals is a powerful motivational tool. Hearing about a colleague's major win taps into the inherent competitiveness of salespeople, making them want to achieve a similar outcome and shifting the team's collective focus.

Shift focus from only celebrating closed deals to also celebrating ambitious attempts. Highlighting a near-miss, like reaching the final two for a major client, reframes failure as a valuable learning experience. This motivates the team to pursue larger, more challenging opportunities without fear.