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Sales Kickoffs (SKOs) are a key annual program for sales teams at most organizations. They are built to motivate, inspire, and educate the sales force, and create a rallying point to drive common goals. Sales leaders use their SKO to drive annual messages and look for these events to increase sales employee retention and drive quota attainment. And with planners typically responsible for organizing 86% of internal events, they are a true team effort. As if executing these critical internal meetings wasn’t stressful enough, in our current climate, the need to hold succesfull virtual SKO's is a reality.

This networking-heavy, highly motivational program is just too important to dismiss, but with many travel restrictions still in place and offices around the world still closed, an alternative to strictly in-person internal meetings is necessary. Going virtual or hybrid could be the right answer for your organization.

Top Reasons Organizations Host Internal Events (from a recent EventMB Report)  

• Keeping employees engaged, motivated, and loyal  
• Recognition and celebration events  
• Workshops and breakout activities  
• Set goals for the year  
• Skills development

Challenges 

Sales Kickoffs are an annual celebration to reward those who succeeded in the previous year and re-energize the organization as a whole. This event is an opportunity for inspirational speakers and company executives to motivate teams, educate employees on new products and campaigns, and rally sales departments around one goal. SKOs may include smaller-scale meetings with individual team projects and initiatives. Creating dynamic SKOs is an annual challenge for sales executives and event planners. Because their importance is immeasurable, the pressure is on to deliver year after year.  

To begin, you need to accomplish the following in a virtual or hybrid event experience:

1. Showcase a consistent, fully branded experience, from your event website and registration process to your virtual event experience and native mobile app.
2. Deliver enterprise-class live or pre-recorded video to support different session formats and appointments.
3. Have one source of truth for virtual, hybrid, and in-person event data for a unified, up-to-date view of your program.

Beyond that, you can take comfort in knowing that your key players and success metrics will be the same.  

Solutions 

Virtual events rely on technology. Attendance wouldn’t be possible without the use of computers and mobile devices. What used to be engagement killers at in-person events (“laptops down please,” and “please mute your phone,” for example) are now the cornerstones of your virtual or hybrid SKO.  

Virtual event technology can enable you to:

• Have everything you need to keep your entire sales team connected and engaged with your program, no matter where they join you from
• Give attendees easy access to key details, live and upcoming sessions, surveys, and more with a dynamic home screen
• Utilize a native mobile event app to engage your sales team on any screen
• Holding live session Q&A keeps sessions interactive and engaging
• Use embedded video appointments tools to create connections between your employees
• Hold virtual roundtable discussions to let your sales teams connect and network with one another
• Allow employees to catch up on sessions they missed live with on-demand videos

Conclusion  

The realities of the global pandemic mean that many a company’s sacred annual internal event – the Sales kickoff, will be different in the near future. Persisting transmission concerns, restricted travel, and reduced budgets will force companies to hold these events virtually. Sales leaders will be challenged to re-create the same “pomp and circumstance” used to rally, educate, and connect their sales teams in a virtual format.  

As one of your most important events each year, your SKO is pivotal in setting your sales force up for success. Even though it’s internal and doesn’t generate leads or drive direct revenue like other events, it needs to be highly engaging and educational. Your sales team should walk away feeling motivated and inspired. The bright side is how quickly the meetings and events industry has pivoted to a “virtual first” mentality, making the tools you need to create a thrilling one-of-a-kind SKO readily available.

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Events are a key part of the marketing mix and, for many B2B brands, provide a unique opportunity to interact face-to-face with target audiences. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, organizations have flexed their approach to events, moving them online to maintain momentum and to attempt to gain the same buy-in that events so often create. Now, omnichannel marketing has become a primary focus for organizations around the world. 

But whether a live, in-person, or online event, the core objective remains the same: to be in front of your audience, delivering your message. And an omnichannel marketing strategy will help you achieve just that.

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is the strategy of taking a holistic view of all online and offline touchpoints that your audience has with your brand, in order to provide a consistent experience. That might sound straightforward enough, but when you consider the vast array of channels that this could encompass, it can be a real test for brand efficacy and internal communication.

But it’s worth it. An effective omnichannel approach provides a much greater breadth of coverage and message penetration. It allows you to reach new audiences and reinforce your campaign with those that see it in multiple places. This has a compound effect on your marketing efforts, making them far more effective and helping you achieve much greater results.

Have a strategy and stay on target

Without a clear strategy before you start, and close ongoing management throughout, each of your campaign's channels could easily deliver a disparate feel, especially if the assets themselves are being created and tactically implemented by a range of teams across your organization, or by different channel-specialist suppliers or agencies. And whether this disconnect is in the tone of voice used, creative visual approach, or anything else, it will reduce the potential results. 

• At best, your audience won’t instinctively connect the dots of each campaign element, and you’ll lose the multiplicity of messaging impact you could have achieved.

• At worst, the experience will jar in their mind as they wonder if the lack of coherence is due to a deliberate change in your core messaging or poor internal communication. In this case, you could risk alienating your audience and undermining your brand in the long term. 

With such an array of different channels engaged, it’s imperative that omnichannel campaigns are thought through and well-structured, with strong project management from the start. Every team that has responsibility for executing their tactical element of the campaign must understand the brief and how their area affects every other.

Omnichannel for events

It’s clear that an omnichannel strategy is worth exploring as part of a brand or marketing campaign. Events can be both a contributing part of an omnichannel campaign and be enhanced by them.

How omnichannel can improve event success

For many marketers, events make up a significant portion of budgets. As such, they demand similarly significant effort and planning to ensure the best possible ROI. Where other channels may provide lower-cost access to individuals, but with a potentially less directly engaged response (we’re looking at you, social media), events are the counterpoint.

Events may need a higher initial outlay, but the relative response on a per-person basis has the potential to be so much greater. Attendees of an event can interact face to face with the brand. This level of engagement builds strong bonds between brands and their audiences and can often be the defining factor in purchase decisions. In B2B at the very least, people still often buy from people.

While some event visitors may well be new to the brand, for many an event represents a point in the buying journey much closer to the end of the sales funnel. An omnichannel strategy provides coherent steps along that journey that guide prospects toward the end goal of becoming a customer. In a B2B environment events often offer the first real chance of that direct real-world interaction between the brand and the audience.

Omnichannel marketing provides an opportunity to achieve the best possible results from your events. And equally, as the live crescendo to your campaign, events can be a fantastic way to help achieve your omnichannel marketing objectives.

Just as every event is different, the omnichannel approach you’ll have to take will differ based on your key objectives and target audience.

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At the start of 2020, virtual events were not on many people’s calendars. Fast-forward to 2021, and it’s clear virtual events are here to stay. The majority (70%) of business event professionals and suppliers have moved whole or portions of in-person events to a virtual platform. 

During the global lockdown, virtual events helped businesses break the geographical barriers and connect and engage with their audiences

Virtual events help generate greater ROI and affordability, along with creating meaningful experiences

Shifting that model to 20% in person, 80% virtual is more likely to guarantee success in the future of hybrid

Not so long ago, in a world of lockdowns, venue closures, and social distancing rules, all in-person or physical events came to a halt. At that moment, the virtual events landscape helped global businesses break the geographical barriers and connect and engage with their audiences. 

And with the global virtual events market projected to be worth around 504 billion dollars by 2028, we can expect more organizers pivoting from in-person conferences to virtual, and with good reason. 

There are plenty of advantages to producing virtual events including:

• The flexibility of holding events at any time
• Expanding your event’s reach
• Saving on event costs
• Recruiting speakers who would otherwise not be able to attend an in-person event
• Inviting attendees who would otherwise not be able to attend an in-person event
• The ability to repurpose event content with video
• Lowering your event carbon footprint

The truth is Covid-19 is not disappearing tomorrow. The global situation can change within a matter of days; event organizers are finding it difficult to put together an effective event strategy and plan hybrid/in-person months or even a year ahead of time. 

With virtual events, organizers can be more agile and plan on the fly. They can react better to what their market is currently talking about and is curious about, successfully executing relevant events within two to four weeks, with no risk. 

Without worrying about another lockdown or changing measures, virtual events have become the safest route and a de-facto option for connecting global audiences and facilitating business and revenue requirements. 

Virtual events platforms are unimaginably transforming events and adding meaning to every event experience. Through artificial intelligence (AI), they are perfecting the science of matchmaking and helping businesses create relevant one-to-one meetings and networking opportunities. 

Based on business goals and needs or even personal interests, AI algorithms can better pair attendees and provide suggestions on relevant speaker sessions ahead or during the event, making it more dynamic and meaningful. If businesses want to attract and engage their audiences, they can no longer approach the events with a ‘come and see who you can meet’ attitude.

Adapted from inc42.com

Now that live shows are coming back to the main stage, you might be a bit hesitant to plan your first event. From the agenda to the venue, it can be tricky to gauge just how comfortable your audience members will be when they attend your event. If you’re one of the #EventProfs struggling with post-pandemic jitters, check out how a professional emcee can help. 

1. Be a Knowledgeable Partner

If you’re in the midst of planning your first post-pandemic live event, you need more than an entertainer or keynote speaker — you need a partner. More specifically, you need a professional emcee. A professional emcee acts as your companion throughout the entire event process, from start to finish. They offer an unlimited knowledge bank of how to engage, connect, and delight audience members. 

An experienced professional emcee can also advise event planners on which material works best for the event at hand. For instance, they can guide scripting for event speakers like company CEOs, or help establish the type of engagement pieces used throughout the event. Once the event is underway, a professional emcee can also socialize with attendees and help the event planner smooth over A/V hiccups or timing delays. 

2. Plan the Agenda

With a professional emcee as a partner, event planners no longer need to worry about an unsuccessful agenda. Seasoned professional emcees have been to countless events — both live and virtually — and understand what works, what doesn’t, and what event planners should avoid. The best example of this is scheduling when high-priority workshops or keynotes occur.

Professional emcees have been to morning, afternoon, and evening events and can let event planners know when audience attention will peak and when it will crash. They’ll have the hindsight to shift main event keynote speeches to after lunch but before cocktail hour. Professional emcees can also advise on the type of agenda activities, such as physical team-building or think groups, that would be most appropriate for your event objective. 

3. Set Up the Room

With so many responsibilities on their plate, the layout of the event is often the last thing on an event planner’s to-do list. However, when the physical layout of the event location goes ignored, it’s pretty easy for disaster to strike. Case in point: A dance floor wedged right between the stage and the first table. Or even worse, a photo booth set up smack next to the shared bathroom. 

Though table, dance floor, stage, and refreshment placement might seem like minor details, they’re truly nuances that can make or break a successful event. Ideally, attendees should be able to navigate the room simply, moving between refreshments, their table, and the dance floor with ease. With tons of live emcee experience under their belt, professional emcees can help event planners organize a physical space that makes the event shine.

4. Prepare to Pivot

While no one likes to be the bearer of bad news, it’s anticipated that not all live events will remain live over the next few months. Depending on your geographical area, potential spikes in COVID cases or local restrictions may force a live event to become a virtual event. In this case, it’s essential that event planners partner with a professional emcee who can seamlessly transition to a virtual format.

The best professional emcees are prepared to pivot and come complete with their own virtual event production company. This way, event planners don’t need to rush to find someone else to host their gig or invest in costly production software. Instead, the professional emcee can facilitate the event, engage digital viewers, and mingle with attendees in the chat room completely remotely, all for the same price event planners had allocated for live entertainment. 

5. Meet Attendees Where They’re At 

If you’re an event planner struggling with post-pandemic jitters, you can anticipate that some of your audience members will be a little anxious as well. However, that’s not to say that all attendees will shy away from conversation. It’s actually quite the opposite. Attendees are looking for connection now more than ever —and event planners need to ideate safe ways of bringing that to them.

So, event planners should expect to meet attendees where they’re at. Tap in your professional emcee partner to create systems that allow attendees to express just how comfortable they are with physical connection or networking. Above all, acknowledge that there will be varying levels of comfort and provide multiple opportunities for each audience member to form connections.

6. Let Laughter Break the Ice

You know what they say, laughter is the medicine! When you’re dealing with an anxious crowd, or feeling a bit nervous yourself, laughter is an absolute necessity. By injecting laughter into a live event, event planners can help everyone in the room let their guard down and become significantly more open to the event material. 

Likewise, with a professional emcee on board, laughter can be your gateway to team-building or fundraising. A professional emcee uses humor to break the ice and draw attendees from out of their shell. And with a roster of clean comedy, an experienced professional emcee can ensure that no audience member feels embarrassed or offended. 

7. Strive for Engagement 

Last but not least, the top tip for event planners struggling with post-pandemic jitters is to strive for engagement. Don’t partner with an entertainer who will hide in the break room between keynotes. Instead, find a partner who will work the room, strike up a conversation in the cocktail lounge, and get people on the dance floor. Find yourself a true Master of Ceremonies!

A professional emcee naturally knows how to get the party going. They understand what audience members and event planners have been going through these past few months because they’ve been living it too. So, instead of shying away from the event when the spotlight isn’t on, a professional emcee will dive headfirst into the conversation to generate that much-needed engagement. 

Basically, Professional Emcees Are an #EventProfs Dream

After the past year that we’ve had, it’s really no wonder why some event planners are nervous to get back to live events. Fortunately, the time has come when we can gather safely again. If you’re battling post-pandemic jitters while planning your company’s return to the live stage, partnering with a professional emcee is a must.

copyright - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffcivillico/