3 Steps to Run a Virtual SKO

Dhruv Markandey on March 6, 2020

How to Keep The Strategic Alignment When Your Sales Event Turns Virtual

SKOs are one of a company’s most important annual events that help motivate salespeople and managers for the upcoming year, align the salesforce with company strategy, provide key information needed to succeed in the field, and celebrate — while learning from — the wins from the prior year. If your company has canceled or is evaluating canceling your SKO due to external factors or is just looking for alternative options to run effective SKOs virtually, read on.

Over several years, Mindtickle has been the platform of choice for numerous organizations to make their SKOs effective and engaging.  In this article, I have synthesized our observations and learnings from the best virtual SKOs into a simple 3 step process that helps you set up and run your SKOs virtually in a matter of hours. 

Step 1: Announce

The audience for your SKO gets an email from your CEO with a welcome note for the virtual SKO. The note contains a link to the Mindtickle mobile app that participants need to download to view a welcome video from your CEO and other leaders. While we recommend directing and encouraging the audience to download the app so that they can engage with the SKO content on the go, desktop is also an alternative.

Step 2: Launch

Mindtickle helps segment and distribute content with ease. Our admin portal will allow you to personalize your SKO content so that each specific group/target audience receives content that is directly relevant to them. The distribution can be automated with rules running of your HRMS profile data.

We’ll need help from your leadership as well – they need to record their presentations! And please ask them to add a bit of fun trivia (e.g. I was walking my dog Milo one morning) in their talk tracks. We’ll put the trivia to good use and I’ll explain how in just a bit.

The leadership talk tracks will be available for consumption on Mindtickle and can be split into smaller, bite-sized video chunks to aid attention. Now, we want the users to focus on key takeaways and messaging and not just passively watch the videos, don’t we? That’s where Mindtickle’s 9 engaging question formats come into play. Convert the key points into questions to aid recall and reinforcement. And yes, this is where we also leverage the trivia questions we embedded in the leadership talk tracks e.g. what’s his dog’s name!

Mindtickle technology is on your side to engage adoption. It has a strong, built-in reminders and notifications system that nudges the audience if they haven’t started/completed watching a session. Users can also add a calendar reminder if they want the system to surface content at a particular time. 

While your audience is engaging with the SKO content, it’s good practice to embed polls and surveys at the end of the session since we want to hear our audience’s opinion on the relevance and quality of the content. Mindtickle’s surveys and polls capability lets you do just that.

While SKOs are the perfect forum to educate the audiences, running SKOs on Mindtickle provides you with an additional advantage – seeing how your reps have internalized and how ready they are to apply all the new information you have provided them with. Confused? Let me explain.  In your SKO, you are likely to have launched and talked about a new pitch deck, a new elevator pitch, new products/capabilities, but how do you get a sense of your rep’s grasp of the associated messaging? Mindtickle’s ‘Missions’ capabilities allows you to set up specific scenarios your reps will have to respond to and in the process record themselves delivering their message. Our powerful AI will parse through the submissions to surface insights for you on how well prepared are reps with the new messaging. 

Also, let’s accept that with so much information overload at the SKO, it’s natural for reps to either forget or far worse, not pick up the information in the first place. Mindtickle’s ‘Spaced Reinforcement’ is the perfect solution to the “drinking through a firehose” challenge. Spaced Reinforcement helps you resurface information at programmed intervals and help overcome the forgetting curve.  It also helps you space the information out so as to provide room for reps to internalize it.

Pro-tip: Leverage gamification – points and leaderboards to help drive participation and adoption. Use cumulative scores for individual/teams and associate prizes to fuel competition among peers and group.

Step 3: Analyze:

Congratulations! You now have a fabulous virtual SKO that’s running, and this allows us to move to the next stage – analyze. Mindtickle’s rich analytics will provide you insights and reports on what’s working and anything that may need attention. You’ll be able to move through various layers of abstraction to zoom in/out on the specifics. These insights will inform you of any clarifications, updates, follow-ups that may need to be sent during or post the virtual SKO e.g. your surveys are relaying that a particular session leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and therefore needs a second version to be rolled out. Analytics will help you immediately respond to the needs of your audience. 

Many Mindtickle customers also use the analytics to extract learning for them to take to SKO for the following year.

I hope you found the read worth your while and inputs on how Mindtickle can be the solution that alleviates Coronavirus’ impact on your crucial SKO this year. 

For more information, check out this resource page for successfully running virtual and online sales events.

When No-Travel Policies Get in the Way of Sales Kick-off

Gopkiran Rao on March 6, 2020

Kick Off Productive Sales Bootcamps, Events and QBRs with Virtual Strategies

This is the story of a company like mine, maybe yours.  Perhaps you’re an enablement director, marketing or sales exec, sales ops leader, training director, field event owner or an executive admin. It’s March 5, so it’s that time of year or quarter when you’re on the verge of the multi-week showcase known as Sales Bootcamp, Sales Kick-Off (SKO), Quarterly Business Review (QBR) or Company/Global Kick-Off  (GKO). This means you’re in the throes of your evening job as the “chief sales-kick-off officer” – responsible for pulling together in a single location, corporate and field teams distributed near and far.

Then you have the mic drop moment. After all that really hard work – bad news goes viral! A no-travel policy is enforced or perhaps executive management makes the call. Employees are proactively asked to cancel all work-related travel as a precautionary measure. 

In this moment, it’s logical to pivot towards one of a few options:

Option 1: Panic 

Option 2: Cancel everything, reschedule, or worse just wait, hoping for a miracle

Option 3: Put everything, all content, all presentations in shared drives, your CMS and run long, boring web conferencing sessions, hoping against hope that something will stick

The good news is that there is a proven approach to getting a high ROI on the work that has already been done. 

  • Presenting Option 4: World-class companies implement a blended approach to sales events designed to withstand emergencies including outbreaks, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Over the last 7 years, Mindtickle has been working with these organizations to implement a readiness approach across their sales events.

Over the course of this post, I will review some of these best practices in the form of Do’s and Don’ts to help you go from a standstill to a winning virtual event in 2 weeks or less. (Scroll to the end for a link to connect with Mindtickle experts that are available for a 1:1 consultation on running great virtual sales events and kick-offs.)

Do’s and Don’ts for Moving from In-Person to Virtual in 2 Weeks or Less

Engaging Executives and Fellow Stakeholders – Build Your SWAT Team!

DON’T

  • Don’t assume you are in this alone and try to pull off the shift to an online or virtual event on your own. Continue to engage and communicate with people that worked to support the event.
  • Why: These folks have a vested interest in being consulted and playing a part in a successful follow-through. While it’s easy to focus on assuring executives and leaders that ‘something’ will happen, consulting with the end recipients, peers in product marketing, pre-sales, services, and other organizing teams will create a meaningful, engaging, and collaborative experience. 

DO

  • Do reach out to your existing telephony, conferencing, and readiness solutions partners to see what experience and insight they might offer to work with you on transforming your live event into a virtual experience. Talk to other industry peers on industry forums or in your network to incorporate their learnings.
  • Work with executives and leaders to inspire the troops.  From inspirational messages to short videos delivering and reinforcing key messages on themes, objectives, and the importance of virtual participation, the organization will feel supported and assured that business will not only continue but thrive amidst the uncertain business climate. Nothing delivers confidence like the message that business will continue as usual particularly with an event designed to make sellers and their supporting teams competitive. 
  • Virtual competitions, leaderboards and other fun activities like quizzes or polls, as well as micro-content formats on mobile to drip-serve long-form learning to pre-reading on mobile with gamification and rewards tied to completion, will also create an atmosphere of engagement with learning and reinforcement.

Transitioning Quickly from In-Person to Online 

DON’T

  • Don’t attempt to convert your live event to a live web-conferencing event on the same exact days and times as your original conference. 
  • Why: Locations, connectivity, time-zones, and home office settings are very different and not conducive to day-long sessions of one-sided content consumption in a vacuum.

DO

  • Do leverage live presentation tools in conjunction with a platform aligned with pre-conference planning and attendee preferences.
  • Do solicit feedback from sellers and attendees using surveys and polls on how they would like to participate in a virtual setting, consume content (real-time, online, offline, mobile, video/pdf, gamified, etc.) and provide feedback.
  • Use visual journey builders, social engagement like leaderboards, and gamification to build a sense of virtual community.

Keeping your Presenters and Experts Engaged Before, During and After the Event

DON’T

  • Make your presenters record every session in long videos using a web conferencing solution or video in PowerPoint and post them to a shared folder or file sharing service.
  • Why: Presenters are human too and the best presenters draw energy from participation and reinforcement from attendees. Allowing Presenters to experiment with new formats like polls and voice-over video or role-plays as well as micro-learning or spaced reinforcement modalities and feedback mechanisms like polls will engage them and create a feedback loop.

DO

  • Maximize the power of personalization to service every attendee based on their unique role. Survey reps online to collect ideas on topics that matter in the field.
  • Conduct online role-play competitions to find success stories.
  • Use a pop quiz to identify knowledge gaps.
  • Present your executive team with reasons to shift to a virtual model and get enthusiastic buy-in because of the better outcome it will offer versus simply shifting the in-person event to a series of web-conferences.
  • Take stock of and categorize your existing content and leverage internal teams or vendors like Mindtickle that have dedicated content services to help you quickly re-factor your content for consumption with modern modalities such as gamification, mobile micro-learning, virtual coaching forms, email-based reinforcement and role-plays.  

Orchestrate the Event as Series of Mini-Exercises, Each Designed to Maximize Interaction, Engagement, and Long-term Retention 

DO

  • Review my colleague Dhruv Markandey’s excellent post here on a practical action plan for implementing a quick virtual event in a few days. Our experience with our customers informs us that taking a micro-experience approach to sessions, content, exercises and a focus on personalization will drive the best possible outcomes. These include: 
    • Integrated pre-learning and pre-certification with instructor-led skill development workshops delivered via live streaming platforms. 
    • Short surveys after every micro-session to measure ROI and engagement.
    • Use of quizzes and virtual leaderboards to measure knowledge retention, engagement, and readiness.
    • Continuous drip delivery of bite-sized information updates like product and competitive snapshots from SMEs.
    • Online role plays for reps to practice their message during breaks or in between sequenced sessions on topics such as objection handling or elevator pitch.
    • Spaced reinforcement after the event to ensure reps have adopted product messages. 

While there is no size fits all to define the perfect virtual sales or corporate event, platforms such as Mindtickle have evolved to help our customers address one overriding objective. Maximizing the capability of their people by supporting how they are onboarded, aligned and reinforced to deliver in the field. Bootcamps, SKOs, QBRs, and GKOs are perhaps the most important anchor events designed to achieve this objective in a single forum to deliver the executive vision, product launch training, messaging certification, competitive training and accreditation, coaching 1:1’s and feedback loop. 

I hope this blog post sparks some ideas for your own event and look forward to opening up a conversation as we all come to grips with doing business no matter where people are.

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