S2E76 - LIVE Bonfire Session - Building a Successful SKO for Your Team

Okay, we are gonna get started. Welcome, everybody. My name is Tim Clark. I'm in marketing here at Salesforce. Today we are not going to be speaking anything about Salesforce. We are going to be purely talking about the sales community. Sales kickoffs. How do you build a successful sales kickoff if you should even have a sales kickoff? We have some great speakers. We're going to keep this interactive. We've thought of some topics that we think would would be really relevant to all of you. But feel free to ask your questions in the chat window. If you're just joining, feel free to go into the chat and put where you're zooming in from today. I know we've got a few people there. New Hampshire, Belfast, North Carolina, India, Denver. If you have any tech issues as we go through this, we have Richard who you can send a message to and there you go and he will help you. We are going to be recording this sess. So as you signed up for it, you will be sent this on demand afterwards as well. And yeah, as I said, feel free to post any questions. As we go through this. We're going to start out with some introductions. We're going to do it a little bit differently. Rather than saying just who you are, I'm going to ask our speakers. Give me one SCO experience that you have had in your career. Maybe, Chloe, you could get us kicked off.

Yeah.

Hi, everyone. It's so great to be here and see all of you and thanks to Tim and Richard for having me. I'm Chloe. I run sales at a company called Pilot and I have so many SCO memories or experiences. I have also been to sales kickoffs where people are fired as a result of behavior there. So something we might get into today.

I relate to that. Thank you. Neeraj, let's come to you.

Hi everybody. I'm Neeraj. I'm a trusted sales coach and LinkedIn trainer. I worked in sales for 15 years before I went to my first sales kickoff. 15 years. So I never knew what it was until quite late into my career and once I went, it was amazing. Best experience was when I first became a manager and the sales director introduced me to the CEO and he said, this is a guy who's making a difference to our company. And the CEO thanked me. It only lasted 10 seconds but it was a great feeling. I love the CEO and I went on to kick ass because I wanted to make the CEO happy. So it's a good thing for sales directors to do at SKO is introduce your good performers to the CEO.

Thanks, Niraj.

Scott, coming to you.

Great tip. I have to follow that up. My name's, my name's Scott Lease. I run Scott Lease Consulting, Surf and sales as well as Thursday night sales. Fun fact about SCOs for me, I have never been to an SKO that I was not delivering the SKO all of my career. I spent my time all at early stage startups and a lot of times early stage startups don't have the budget or feel the need to run sales kickoff events. So I've never been on the receiving end of a sales kickoff. I've only given them before.

Thank you, Scott and Bilal.

Hi everyone. Death to fluff. I think for SKOs, my experience, I'm like, Chloe, I've seen people fired for some pretty crazy behavior that was like to me, I was like, what were you, what do you think was going to happen? The entire company was watching like the dance floor. What did you think that was going to lead to? It's like really, really odd behavior. But my most memorable experience at scale similar to what Niraj said, I was a top performer with the first one I went to, but I was only really known in my team. But by the time I left the sko, I was like months away from a promotion because I built like the social capital and all the like different settings with all the different teams and like managers and directors that I'd never spoken to got a chance to meet me. So it's really like a game of politics, like Game of Thrones and some rise and some fall and it just, you make, you make of it what you get. But it is a lot of company politics in a very short amount of time is my experience.

Thanks, Bilal. Cool. Well, we're going to jump straight in and I certainly relate to some of those experiences there. And even when we did a prep call, we were just discussing what is sales kickoff. I think some people have the view that it's product training. Some people have the view that it's sales trainings. It then evolved into a discussion on is go even worth your time? I think I've seen particularly over the last 18 months. Obviously we're, we're all very much remote. I've seen a few organizations recently that have done full company off sites, at least in the US going abroad. And this is really top of mind for a lot of organizations right now as they start to do their planning for Q1. You know, should you have a SCO? Should you not?

Scott?

I'm going to, I'm going to throw it to you to get us started off. And then any of our speakers can jump in on this. I know you had some controversial, perhaps, thoughts on this.

My controversial thought, if you call it that, is not everybody needs to have an sko. There are some companies in your size and stage where it's not that important, not that relevant. And a lot of SKOs to the opposite of Bilal's trademark are full of fluff. And it's just a big rah, rah, rah fest or a big party for a few days and people go home not really learning all that much and wondering why was I just taken off the phones for a couple days without my quota going down? So I think, especially given how hard we've all been working for the last couple years and how isolated we've all been, how many people on your team on the sales floor actually give a shit about an sko, how many of them would rather just have those days off to completely unplug and do something totally different and not have to travel? And so I think that's kind of where I was coming from. I think a lot of people default straight away to, oh, it's January, we have to do an sko. No, you don't. I was a VP of sales six times. Never did an sko, not once. We did just fine. So I don't know how controversial that is. Sure, somebody here maybe disagrees and thinks everybody should. Should have one, but that was kind of where I was coming from when we were talking a little bit behind the scenes.

Anyone on the speakers can. Can jump in and share your thoughts.

I think I'd like to say. Go ahead, Chloe.

Are you sure? I. Well, thanks.

I think what Scott's. Like, Scott's point is so relevant right now. Like, no one is working in the same way that they were 18, 20 months ago. Right. And no one is going to ever work that way again. And I think about our sellers have to sell so differently now, and our buyers are buying so differently. And so the idea of, like, a traditional SKO or what we used to do in the past, like, how relevant is that, really? And Scott's getting to a point of what is the purpose and who is it intended for? I think right now, you know, our teams, and if you think about, like, our customers and our buyers, everyone is just so tired and trying to figure out how to operate efficiently and effectively and with satisfaction in this, you know, kind of new way of working. And I really do think that you have to examine the purpose and the intent and the outcome you're trying to drive to understand if it is really worth it. And it also means just decentering your perspective as a leader potentially. And really, to Scott's point, like thinking about what is it that your team wants and needs right now and how is that going to benefit the business and the customer.

Cool. I was just going to say before I comment, Scott, I have so much respect and admiration for you and everything you say normally.

I just wanted to say that it's really important. I do because I love you to picture great person, But I think SKOs are really important because everyone I've been to. And bear in mind, I'm only speaking from my experience and I spent 25 years working in London, corporate London, and this year, 2021 is my first year doing SKOs in Europe, America and Canada. I've never done it, never had international clients with my own business before. So I'm speaking from a slightly different perspective this year. I find SKOs are really important because it helps bring a lot of the team together, bearing in mind many people in the last 18 months haven't met their colleagues face to face, they haven't met people internally face to face. So I think SKOs are important for bonding, for culture and of course, for understanding more about product, new revenue streams, training. And there's so many things involved in an sko, it's not just one thing. And yes, the idea of we don't have to have it, let's lower our targets or if we're going to have one, or let's not have one. I think it's important because when you're in line with where the company is going and you bond stronger with your team and you respect your bosses more, I believe most salespeople can go further in their careers. And that's why I'm actually a big fan of the sko. Sorry. Thank you.

Hey, I. I've got something to back you up a little bit, Niraj. So I asked that question that you wanted, Scott. I did that poll. So the. The poll I asked LinkedIn and obviously it's skewed to my audience. My audience is mostly SaaS, salespeople, so keep that in mind. I asked Sellers, what do you want most from an sko? And the choices I gave them was training and practice, company vision from execs, bonding with peers, or just give me PTO instead. And I was thinking what Scott was thinking when we first did this, which was that just gimme BTO instead would be the number one answer. But actually 42% out of 1,100 votes said bonding with peers is what they want out of an sko. And then that training and practice and company vision, which is kind of like traditional SKO stuff, that accounted for another 35%. And then PTO was only 23%. So the majority of people do want bonding with peers. Now I'd say that's probably a knock on effect from the pandemic. So you have to like take that into account. People do want to talk and meet each other, and there's a whole bunch of people in the world that have been working with people for the last year plus and never met them face to face. So if there is a chance to finally meet them, they would want to take that. So I think that's part of it. But going back to what my experience with the SKO was, I think in terms of training, it was a complete waste of time because none of it stuck. In terms of actual peer bonding, it was very legit. And in terms of then the politicking and what you made out of it, I saw huge career benefits from the short three days I spent at an sko. So I think you can make of it what you want. There were other people, like I said, that completely wasted their time at the sko and I don't even know why they were there other than to drink booze, literally.

But the data just showed you that's why they're going to those. Those people responded with, I just want to go bond and I want to hang out. I wonder if one of those options in the poll was so I can go fucking politic my way to the top and play Game of Thrones with everybody that I work with. I wonder how many people would have responded in that particular way.

Fair enough, fair enough. But to Niraj's point, like, there's a, there's a world, there's a definitely company setups in worlds where like skos make a lot of sense.

Right.

And I think we wanted to get into where is that tipping point. Yeah, because if you do have a really large remote sales team, like we saw recently, like Chili Piper did like a big announcement how they did like it in, there was sales off. One of them did like a big in person SKO and shot a big photo of like 200 people, you know, in one location. And they probably haven't had a chance to do that in a year plus maybe two years now. So I bet there was a lot of value in that time, assuming they used it wisely. I think we're all in agreement that training probably isn't the best use of an sko. So then what becomes the alternative if you're going to do it?

When you talk about training, Bilal, are you specifically referring to like, product training, sales training?

Sales training in particular. Like, that's. Most of the SKOs that I've been a part of were sales training focus. They brought in some big training company for three days to teach us some methodology or framework and like, literally nothing after that. And I was like, that was weird. Like, that was like a really weird investment.

Okay, I deliver training now. I used to, obviously. I've been on both sides of the coin 25 years working in sales and then three years now as a coach and trainer. So I go into companies now for SKOs. And there's been a lot of questions asked about how valid is sales training. And sales training is a waste of time. If after the SKO you just go back to work, it is 50% of what you learn, you forget the next day, 95% you forget in a week. In that case, it's a waste of time. So what I do is I make sure the managers hold their teams accountable. So the very next morning after the sko, before everybody's checking emails and doing anything else, okay, what are your commitments? What have you learned and what are you going to do? Implement. And that is so important because when you're held accountable, you're always more likely to achieve more. That's just my thoughts on it. But the second thing I wanted to say to everybody is, I've never attended an SKO that was more than one day. I'm amazed you're talking about two or three. That's incredible. This is my 10th year of doing Skos. I've never had one more than a day. So that's incredible.

I'm interested, Chloe, in the role of Chief Revenue Officer. Where does this decision sit within your organization? Like, is this a sales led conversation? Is it marketing led? Where does it fit for you?

It's mainly customer facing, team led in that sense. But I think the other piece too, I mean, Pilot's a startup, right? So to Scott's point about, like, when does it make sense to have a formal sko? That's one question for us. Because I think the other question that gets to Neeraj's point too. Like, for me, it's more important at this stage of our business and the size of our team to create and cultivate a culture around coaching and always on training. And that to me is more important right now than actually, like, Putting together a day where we're kind of going through the motion, and it's a lot of work that's put into it. As Scott said, you pull your team away from the phones, and that can have major impact just on the business and on the team as well.

I think deconstructing or redefining SKO is what's most interesting to me at this point. And so I say customer facing teams because again, buyers are buying totally differently now, right? Just like as our sellers are selling and as our customer success teams are retaining and expanding. And so I think that the way in which we organize this sort of stuff has to mirror that and has to be really, really different. I think another side of it too, like, to Bilal's point about, know, like, team bonding being really important. Like, why is that any different than a company kickoff? So really understanding, like, what is the intent of a sales kickoff? What is the outcome that you're trying to drive into? Niraj's point, like, how do you ensure that you're getting, like, the return from that? Like, what is the. It's only valuable if you're getting more from it afterwards and you can see the results there. But for me, right now, it's really a matter of, like, the traditional definition of sko, like, I think is irrelevant. I think the people who I'm serving, like, my team probably thinks it's irrelevant too. Like, I have to work with them and ask them about that. And then ultimately it's like, what is the better use of time and can I break out those goals? Like, if the team wants to hang out and see each other and meet each other, do they also want to meet the other colleagues that they have in the business, like Chili Piper did, versus just being in a sales centric mode? And so I think that, like, the critical examination of what SKO means now and how that differs from what it meant three years ago when folks would, you know, meet up in Vegas or Nashville or whatever and get hammered and eat bad food and show up late to training and just be hungover all day. Like, that is so irrelevant to me, especially thinking about how tired our teams are too, and how, like, fatigued they are just by learning how to work differently right now. And we're all learning that together. That was a bit of a tangent around it. But, like, that's what's going through my mind right now. And I think that the decision is not just based on, like, the leadership in the team. I'm sorry, of your business, but also your team itself. Like, they should have a seat at the table to determine like how they want to run that day. If you end up doing one.

I love that. I love how you differentiated also between sales kickoff and company kickoff. I think there's a really important nuance there. I'm going to also weave in some questions. Matt, I think if you are there, I know you have a question in the chat. I think Richard is going to unmute you if you want to ask that live.

Yeah. Thanks Tim. And panel was curious on your thoughts on the effectiveness of SKO in a virtual environment. Considering Bilal's feedback of most people want to go and bond and what have you. You know, how does that take an effect, the virtual dynamic.

Go for Bilal.

For me personally, I'm going to take it from the standpoint of like a seller because that's, that's more what I'm aligned to. I think Chloe could speak more as a sales leader, but like as a seller. If I'm going to sit through a virtual sko, I don't want it to be like a three day long zoom meeting because that's a disaster waiting to happen. But the virtual SKO allows you to do is just break it into little chunks. So there's like, there's no rules on SKOs, right? You can do whatever you want. Your, your, you're only bounded by your imagination. So the idea that the SKO has to be during this day at these hours isn't necessarily the right thing. It could be like we could have a month long SKO that's just spread out through over the weeks and just has little calls. But they're like really actionable and they build upon each other like ending with something really powerful like meeting the last three customers that signed up and just having like a fireside chat with them about how much it sucked before they bought our product and how great it is now that they did. Like that's the sort of thing I tune in and it's not too demanding on my attention or like resources to just spread out an hour or two every week for a few weeks in a row. You can't do that in an in person sko. It's just gotta be like all action the whole day, get it done, you know, and then everybody's gotta fly back home. So like use the medium to the advantage that you don't have to, you don't have to cram it all in. And in fact you could do things in a virtual scale that you can't do face to face. Like you can do online gaming and things like that that other people might want to participate in, or you could do things that are a little bit outside the norm that again, an in person SK wouldn't let you do. So why not? Again, there's no rules.

I feel like it's really, really tough, Matt.

I'm a little bit bored and tired of people saying getting together on Zoom and having the opportunity to hang out is like the way that we're going to bond. Like, what's the bonding opportunity for people at a virtual sko? They're going to get in the chat and message each other all over the place and giggle on the side, which will happen for sure, right? And okay, they're bonding. They've been doing that already for the last two years. How is that different or unique or interesting? And if there is somebody talking, if Niraj is there delivering good content, firing everybody up, if Richard is there teaching people, you know, a methodology of some sort, how many people are just there to chat with their friends and kind of have a laugh on this on the side? So it just becomes really, really complicated. And I think Balon made really interesting points about redesigning the structure of an SKO to more be these little tiny modules where you can impart some knowledge and wisdom and energy and enthusiasm and tips and tactics and games and fun in a less formalized 72 hour kind of fashion. Because I'll go back to my original point. You fly me out to an sko, you take me away from my cadences and my duties for 72 hours. And 99.9% of the companies do not adjust your quota to account for that. So now my job is actually harder. So I'm resentful of losing that time. So I'm a bit, you know, down on like the virtual SKO thing in terms of like the bonding opportunity, if you want to pitch it. The value of this SKO is we need to bring everybody together. Then you got to find a way, in my opinion, to do that in person right now. Because that's what everybody starved for, right? And politics and feelings on the pandemic and everything aside, like, everybody starved for that kind of intimacy and that kind of experience. So the value of that to me is way stronger than virtual from the bonding side of things.

Interesting. Some fantastic points there, Matt. I wanted to add as well. I did my first ever virtual SKO this year. It was a client of mine in Spain. Spain is not the safest place to travel to because of COVID And I said, look, I do not want to do an eight hour SKO on Zoom. It is horrible. I do not enjoy spending all day on Zoom. It's just not for me a natural way to work. It's not even a natural way to train. So we actually split it up into two half days, which works so much better. I also brought on board a surprise speaker to fire people up. The thing is, you can with an all day event live, you've got to really structure things with a virtual one. You don't have to be as strict and rigid. You can have a few little surprises. We had a few little competitions and giveaways in terms of the bonding. We had breakout rooms where we could talk to other people and we had virtual lunches with other people in the breakout rooms. That was only bonding we did. And that was good enough for most people because they got a chance to meet others in the company virtually. But I just wanted to explain to you how we did a virtual SKO and how we made it quite fun as well.

Okay, thanks everybody. Gregory, I see a question from you if you want to come off mute and ask that.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. So I'm curious on a couple, couple of things around the SKO or no, because we're probably going into that conversation pretty soon.

The first one I guess is do you get together as a comp, like for. Chloe mentioned the company kickoff. Like are you getting together as a company kickoff? So SKO becomes a doubling up, so to speak of kickoff events. But it's sales specific. And the other thing is for if you're advocating against, have you met your teams in person already so that you, you already under. You've already had some bonding time versus you built a team completely virtually and an SKO might be the only time or the first time you get, you get to meet them. Would that change your decision or how would that influence your. Your thinking?

I think those are really good questions. And for me again it gets back to like, what is the point? Like what is the purpose and the outcome that you're trying to drive? When I worked for larger companies, we would do a company kickoff and then often SKO would sort of be like the second or last day of it, right? So they would be married together. Like I'm thinking right now, working for a company that is 250ish people and we're growing like crazy. Like it actually to me feels like it's more meaningful to bring the entire company together in some way and get everyone to work more cohesively and to be aware of what the company strategy is and sales should be inherent to that. Right? Like, and I think that product should be inherent to that. So for me it's a little bit even less so about kind of siloing our different functions of different teams and actually really bringing everyone together to figure out what we're doing. And that's that sort of like rah rah, we're all working toward the same goal, that same mission, that same purpose for the year. Also in a startup world things change so much. So it's a little bit different than if you're working for a really established company where your company goal for the year is probably fairly static. Like in a startup environment, things change so fast. The next week you might be looking at a new vertical or hiring a whole new segment or something. And so having a kickoff where it's aligned to the purpose for that year can be a little bit contradictory to like how a startup actually operates. That's another piece to it.

And then I think to your point, Gregory as well, like if your company or your team has been virtual forever, then and that's what you're going to continue to do, it's opens up a whole different sort of like layer of complexity that's about your entire company culture. Right. And so I think getting back to how are you working with your team and I firmly believe that leadership does not define culture. And leadership here is to like help curate and cultivate culture that the teams are creating.

That just is like a totally different conversation I think to be had.

Awesome. Thank you, Chloe.

Anyone else on the speaker list? Anyone want to jump in? If not, I'm going to move on to the next question.

I'll jump in. Tim, I just had a. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, you're great.

Okay, awesome. A question for the panel just in terms of maybe some SKO best practices. I've been to working for companies like Xerox is an example that had 150,000 employees around the world. It may not be reasonable to think about doing a company wide SKO event.

So in that case we did events that were more department specific and then invited the executive team in to do some presentations, etc. So do you have like some best practices about when, you know, is it better to do a company event with small breakouts by.

You know, by department or to do department specific skos?

Maybe that is company size dependent? I don't know.

What are your thoughts?

Hey, Heidi Neeraj here. I find the breakout rooms to be of tremendous value because if you just go by team, it's Just the team learning. And as a manager you should know your team fairly well. Now everybody has different skill sets in the team and if they can go into breakout rooms and one room they can learn how to be better at cold calling. One room they can learn how to be better at closing deals. One room that can be better at effective email writing, you know, and they can all learn different skill sets, but more importantly improve skill sets. That's what really it's about, improving your skills but also trying to remember things you forgot about. Because a lot of things in sales as human beings we naturally forget about. That's why I'm a big fan of the breakout rooms.

Yeah, that's great advice. So you're suggesting maybe even get more granular that not necessarily by team but even to focus on specific training items for individuals. That's a great idea.

I think that, you know, by team and by topic is the way to have a stronger impact. The smaller the room, the bigger the impact you can have for most, most people. Unless you're Tony Robbins blowing people's minds in a right otherwise for most of us, once you get a room, if we all go to an event and there's 10 of us there, you can't hide. You go to a room and there's a hundred of you, you can hide and you're not compelled to pay attention and learn as much. On a different note about best practices of these things, the ones that I have done.

The most valuable thing is that we came in with one particular problem and we were going to solve one particular problem before we left. That was the main purpose. You can't necessarily solve people's email abilities or cold call abilities over the course of one training one thing. So I would always say to people like what is busted in your organization right now? And what could we do if we all sat and thought about this for 45 to 60 minutes to fix that thing? Because that thing doesn't get enough time and attention in the course of our everyday activities. And so if nothing else, the team and the leadership will be excited because we solved one particular problem that they're all on the same page with and know exactly how to implement. So that's how, that's how I always think about these things. It's like what are we actually going to fix by getting all of these people together?

I love that point. Scott, like if you're everything to me is about selling like just every aspect of life and what you're talking about is like personalization and hyper specification which is like what Bilal talks about on LinkedIn every single day. Like how are you actually being super specific and talking about an actual problem that pertains to the people that the people can relate to in the room. Right. And so if you're talking at you know, 1500 salespeople at the same thing in an auditorium, like how, how much that's going to land with your audience versus like how are you actually yielding the results you want to see by having smaller groups that are focused on more specific or tangible problems.

And it's probably easier and then I'll get off but I just love this it to measure a return on investment on the spend for an, you know, an sko. Right. Because then you have specific actionable goals that you can measure afterwards based on the problem that you're solving. Right. That's, that's brilliant.

100% if you're, if you're in a, if you're in a leadership role. And let's say I decided to spend 50 grand on Niraj to, to come do the SKO and Niraj and I talked beforehand and we've identified like we have this particular problem, like there's too much friction in our closing process. And so he comes and talks to us as a group and we solve that and we eliminate three, four steps and we can quantify the speed differential in our sales cycle now and say okay, that 50k spend is going to result in five more deals this year. Each of our deals is worth 20k. That's a net 50k positive problem that we just solved. I would pay neuropsychology to come in every day to solve a net 50k positive problem. Easy to quantify if you're focused on a problem like that. To me, my opinion at least.

Thank you.

I think this conversation around stakeholders and wants and asks and needs is really relevant and something we talked about in the prep call. I want to throw it over to Josh A. I know you posted in the chat if you wanted to come off mute and just talk to your thoughts on how to gather feedback.

Sure. So no, I think that.

I agree with Scott on the virtual coffee meeting.

Let me see if this camera's wrong.

I agree with Scott on the virtual coffee meetings are dead. And you know, candidly.

You know, after five to eight minutes in this room was thinking about leaving because two things.

You know, happened or didn't happen. Right. One, obviously appreciate you guys time and for putting this on but I think that having Even if it's 90 seconds of homework to engage with to enter the room or to be prepared to talk about in a meeting is important. And then B, is there a resource, one pager. And I guess you guys did provide, you know, a one pager handout. So I think that's important. And where I'm going with this is to say whether it's an in person SKO or a virtual, you know, team meeting, I think that engaging with and really empowering the audience, the sales team.

Empowering them with hey and holding them accountable to bring something, to bring an action item, to bring a resolution, to bring an idea to share with the team with the expectation that they're going to have to engage is important.

And yes, just to echo the comments, the majority of what you learn at an SKO, you know, 80% of it goes away within 24 to 48 hours. So I would vote for putting together a format where you learn or provide the sales team with an online tool or a book or an activity that they do on their own, at their own learning pace, whether that's reading audio, whatever it is. And then based on that learning module or tool, they come prepared to share something, they learn from it. And if they haven't, if they don't have something prepared, then they, you know, they can't come or they come and you call on them, they're embarrassed in front of the group.

But I do think the face to face mask, to mask whatever it is outdoors.

Something where the team is engaging together is the majority of the benefit in HA in holding an sko. It's the relationships that are built, doing something out of the norm.

And that's where I think the bonding and the collaboration and the synergy happens and you start to launch.

I love that.

Thanks, Josh. Any feedback from any of the speakers or thoughts?

My favorite part of it is Josh just owning essentially how lazy people are who attend everything right. And calling himself out in the process, even if it wasn't his intention. But like if you show up to something and we're not gifted and handed something on a silver platter and given a particular resource, we're unlikely to take action. And that's very, very important to remember. People can compel themselves to show up, but they've not necessarily compelled themselves to do more beyond that. So what can we do.

To kind of force them without forcing them, force them to take action, to interact, to have some sort of deliverable, to have some sort of consequence for not doing what they were supposed to be doing to force the learning experience? I think that that's very, very important. I appreciate the share.

As a seller, I, I kind of, I kind of groan when I hear that. Be candid because I mean, every seller is at a different level. And if you're going to make your top sellers do the same exercises or entry level sellers, you're just making them annoyed and wasting their time.

But I don't think that.

I don't think.

But I don't think he said that. And neither did I. Because if you rewind the tape five minutes. When we were talking to Heidi, we were talking about department specific topics, specific role centric. Right. So I'm with you. I would never give a thousand salespeople all the same task, but I do still, I do still hold my best people accountable.

No matter what. And I think that that's some of what Josh was talking about.

Does not get complicated quick though, when you try to think role specific, comedy specific, team specific, like a good luck trying to pull that off. I mean, I'm just being real. Like I've never seen that done. So if you do it, please make it a Harvard Business Review case study, because I'd be willing to like read that and really understand that. I mean, at the end of the day, you only get a person's attention for so much time and you can't put too much homework on the employee to do some things. I mean, I get it, like give and get and like come prepared and so on. Totally understand the mentality. But like, how are you going to make that manifest? I mean, some of the things that are like just most mission critical for one seller to get out of an scale are completely, completely unnecessary for another. Right. And like, how are you going to be able to tailor that between the two groups when most managers use one on ones for pipeline review and really have no idea what's going on with their employee? Or like, what's the diagnosis of why they're not hitting quota? So these are like complicated issues. It sounds good, but I just don't see how you can do it. I think if you're going to, like.

With all due respect, you've worked for horrible bosses before.

Maybe I have.

Yeah. Because this is not. But if this is not as much rocket science. It's not as much rocket science. It's not as much rocket science as you think. It's actually not that hard to deliver different material to different types of people and to know your team good enough to know what they need to have dialogue with them frequently enough to be on the pulse of these things. So to me, you sound like a typical jaded seller. Who has worked for bad bosses before and who's just like, yeah, good luck with this and good luck with that. That'll never happen. I'm good at my job. Leave me the fuck alone. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me. I'm just telling you that that is not the case everywhere. And part of the purpose to me at least of this conversation is to spread the information and the knowledge out there that it doesn't have to be that way. Because there are people like Chloe who is a CRO right now, who's being very thoughtful and has different ideas about when she's going to do it, how she's going to do it, how it's going to be structured. And there's people like Niraj delivering these things, who understands the best practices and how to make a positive impact. And there's people like Heidi who are thinking about how to do one in an ROI positive kind of way. And so I think the purpose is we're just saying this old way is busted. How can we carve a new way? And I think that that's what we're trying to do.

So. Okay, yeah, a couple things there. One is, one is I am dated because I have had bad sales leaders and I think anybody in sales long enough has. And I view Chloe as the exception, not the norm. Like I view all the exceptions.

I love this conversation. This is great.

So I think most people do have bad sales leaders and we might be talking to people that have self selected to show that they have more initiative just by taking the time today to like listen to this. But I do speak in generality because again, I'll take it from the view of like the common seller, most of the stuff isn't good. Now if I go back to like what I really needed to learn as a seller and the things that I wasn't trained on, that would have been a great time to have those things in scale. Let me give you an example. Copywriting, right? I look back and I've written thousands, maybe more. Maybe I've hit 10,000 plus emails in my 10 years in sales and I've never once in my life taken a copywriting course. I'm just relying on literally my grammar from high school, which is like not good. Right. And, and that's it. I haven't really pushed myself to learn how to write. And part of my job, part of the core function of my job is writing and I never really learned how to do it or, or basic social Psychology. I, I asked so many sellers before, have you ever learned the science of decision making once? Has anyone ever exposed you to how neuroscientists can determine a person making a decision seven seconds before they're cognitively of aware that they even came to a decision? Have you ever learned how they do that? What that. Because that matters to what you do every day. Majority of them never have. So, like, that doesn't have to be personalized by team or anything. You could still give like, really high value. Again, it's. It's just the creativity of the company. Why, why don't companies train their reps on copywriting? Why don't they bring in like master copywriters that are really skilled and understand how to create emotional, provocative messaging and teach that to their sellers as an exercise versus trying? I think I just, I. It feels really ambitious what, what you and Josh were talking about. Like, I just, I haven't seen it happen, but I think there's even simpler things, like, I'll jump over the low bars first. Like, just a simpler thing is like, stop thinking of the SKO as just like a place to cram down a new sales methodology or something like that, and start thinking about it in terms of like bringing value to the person. Because when you enrich that person, you're going to reap the rewards from that employee. And every SKO that I've been to has been pretty much devoid of that. Like, it's just been the traditional. Here's the sales training. It was Vegas, by the way, Chloe. So I. My scales were in Vegas, which again, like, if you were going to pick a spot as a company, why would you pick Vegas? But they did. So, like, that's what I'm used to. So maybe that's where, maybe that's where you're picking up that jadedness, Scott, which, you know, I. Sorry for that, but. But I just, I want to see this, like, really work for a lot of sellers.

I just put, I just put in the chat, like, if I was a sales leader watching this, I would be listening to things you said, writing them down and being like, I'm going to do every single one of those things. Single greatest way to stand out as a sales leader that there is and, and increase the performance of your team as well as the morale as well as you go from pushing to pulling in recruits. Because every single person who's in sales who wants to improve will be like, I want to go work for that person. I want to go work for that leader. Where Bilal is because he's getting trained on all this stuff. It's very easy. And Chloe knows this. I bet it's very easy to distinguish yourself when you're in a sales leadership role from all the bad sales leaders that are out there. And you just provided a whole formula for people to follow.

I mean, Bilal just said two things, like two opposing things in this whole conversation which is so important. Like.

Bilal's talking about SKO being a way to like mitigate attrition, right. If you're doing what he's telling us to do right now, where you're making this like again, specific valuable, these are things that the sellers can see how they're going to actually up their game. You're investing in their career. Like that's exactly, I think a really important outcome that you want to drive through an sko. And that to me is what keeps SKO relevant. I still have a hard time differentiating, like why do an SKO versus ongoing training and team building events. But that's different story on the other side just said going to Vegas SKO has ended up being actually like an attrition risk event, right? And so like flipping that just through this conversation, I think is really interesting. Like you're putting people in Vegas, putting them in front of booze and like no sleep. And you're just asking for trouble. And you're asking folks to like be adults, right? Which is just like whatever that means. That's unfair.

You.

And then you're giving them like a really long day of bullshit content that's not relevant or people are. Executives are talking at them once again, you know, never minds like rolling their eyes or trying to stay awake. And that's totally. Not only are you having people, you're just asking for people to get fired, which like has been my experience. But you're also asking people to like not be invested. So doing what Bilal just said on the other side is actually a way to mitigate attrition, which I think is just such an interesting like coin flip.

So I have a number of quick fire questions from different people. We're going to see how many we can get through. Rajan, thanks for being patient. If you want to come off mute and ask your question.

Hi Richard. First of all, glad to see all these amazing sales leaders sharing their insights.

My question is, if the company is.

Remote forever, then how can we create the in person meeting experience while hosting a virtual sku?

I have no idea.

Why I already sort of said that. You can't replicate it.

I don't think you can.

Apples to apples to apples. So let's let Niraj take this one because I think he probably has some of the best ideas.

Yeah, it's very difficult to replicate in person. Is always better. Earlier I mentioned that instead of having a full day, break it up into two half days. Have a surprise motivational speaker come to fire people up and make sure you're having one to one sessions and a few breakout sessions over lunchtime. Give people a chance to spend time with people who are not on their team so they can meet their peers and other people in their company. That was kind of the best we could do with one of the companies locally. We did two kickoffs. One was a company wide, one was a sales kickoff. I persuaded the CEO to sand takeaway food to every single person and we all ate takeaway food virtually over lunch. And that was kind of a surprise. Some people had pizza, some had burgers. Again, it was a lovely bonding moment. It was a lovely surprise. When you do virtual events, create nice surprises for people. If you're holding a big event at a venue, it's much more difficult to do that, especially with big numbers. So a lot of it will depend on the size of the company but also the number of people helping you organize the company because it needs to be a sales director, probably a sales manager, quite often quite a few HR people helping. You know, you need to get a good team of people helping you prepare for an SQL as well. Make sure you're not doing it by yourself. Those are just like best practices I had because this is my first year doing SKOs virtually. I've always gone to them in person.

Thank you.

Next, I want to come to Shafi. Thanks for being patient.

Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you all the panelists. Appreciate the time here. I, I really enjoy, I'm really enjoying this.

Starting new and Scott knows we, I met him last week over Zoom on Thursday night. Sales. New into sales. I'm starting on Monday. So as I'm going through this webinar sort of as a, as a new salesman.

I want to get as much education as possible before I get busy nine to five. And there's a lot of insights, a lot of experience coming in and sometimes top of my head and sometimes very.

Logical things, especially coming from Scott. So once I start, how do I gain respect and trust from my team and my managers so that the stuff that I'm learning out here can be used and put into place effectively.

And.

So that in that team's kickoff events. So basically how do I gain respect and trust and not step on other people's foot?

I would punt this one to Bilal, who is the king of politicking during skos.

Okay.

So a great sign, a great, A great sign to show intelligence is to ask really good questions.

Jeffy.

So when you're at the SKO and you're there and you're new, be quiet, learn, observe people, understand power dynamics, who's in charge and, and the, you know, the, the room and everything. But just be, be timely and asking a very relevant, good question. It shows a sign of intelligence that you're listening, you're actively listening and you're thinking about the problem when you can ask an astute, clever, well formed question and you don't have to ask that many. See people who are wise, they only speak when they need to. And so it only takes one really good question for people to catch the attention of you. And then they realize this is somebody who's clearly thinking they're trying to do this the right way, they're engaged in the right way. And it's the greatest honor you can get as a speaker when somebody asks you a really thoughtful question. So just think that in mind and keep your words to a minimum and you'll find success in SKO while everybody else kind of goofs off and blows the chance at that networking opportunity.

Perfect. Thanks, Bilal. I had a DM question that came through like, how do we wrap in mental wellness and mental health into some of these conversations? And I know maybe I'll start to. Chloe, first you talked about attrition as well. You know, like, there's a lot of job changes going on right now and I think a lot of people have been burnt out. So just want to put that out, out to the panel. How do you start to wrap that into some of these events?

I'm happy to start again. I think it's a matter of like how SKO used to look a year and a half ago, two years ago. Does it still need to look the same way, especially in the way in which we're working right now? I think it goes back to engagement and the community building, which is sort of a theme that we're talking about here. But really making sure that you're serving the people who are involved and are they, do they have their own, like, are they able to inform what it is that you're doing during your kickoff in whatever like, way, like shape form that it ends up being. But you're going to get the best answers by going straight to the source. So I would always start there. And that goes to like understanding is this format actually going to be like interesting to you and helpful to you or is this going to actually be more pressure? To Scott's point, like if you're not giving quota relief during time off, is that going to just create more burnout or just more anxiety, more sleepless nights? And so I think starting there is really important and what that will do is hopefully, if you're not doing it already, allow you to kickstart that conversation, which should be ongoing with your team just throughout. Right. Like you always. I think Bilal made this point like your one on ones. If you're conflating one on ones with pipeline reviews, like you're doing something wrong. And so if you don't already have your finger on the pulse of how your team's feeling, like this is an opportunity to figure that out and just to start starting is better than not. I also think what's interesting about like and I'm so I'm kind of taking this to another approach too. Like when I think about virtual environments for sko, it actually does have benefits that in person doesn't have. So when I think about accessibility and when I think about people who are introverts, which we have introverts on sales, I know it's super weird. There is this sort of interesting relief or environment that's really positive for other folks where an in person like giant in your face. I have to travel, I'm really tired, I don't feel well. Environment actually makes people feel really bad. And so there's ways in which I think a virtual environment can also be aligned to how you're thinking about mental health and how you're just trying to have those conversations and create an environment on your team where we can be open and transparent about that.

Yeah, I totally agree with Chloe. It is absolutely vital that mental health, well being and discussions of burnout are talked about. Because while certain people like the more introvert people I know who are accountants or people who work in IT marketing, they have loved working at home because it suits their personality. But a lot of people in sales are more extrovert. Yes, you've got loads of introverts in sales as well, of course, but a lot of them are extroverts and sales teams often work better together. And so many people I know joined companies in February 2020 and they haven't met their team and many joined maybe in the summer or even this year and haven't met their teams and it's very difficult being isolated for a lot of people, especially if you're living by yourself.

I'm a grown man. I lived by myself for four months in England. I hated it. And I moved back to Ireland to be with my parents and it was great. But for a lot of people, they didn't have that luxury. And you got to provide a support system. It has to start from the top and work its way down. And it's very important to tell people, especially men, it's okay to talk about mental health because a lot of men are terrified of talking about it. A lot of them are terrified of it. Will my boss think I'm weak if I talk about it? Which, by the way, mental health is not a sign of weakness. Vulnerability is a great strength. But these are important discussions to have and they need to have. In February this year, I asked the company I was working for to hire a yoga teacher. And the sales director says we have no budget. So I hired my sister and she delivered a half hour during the day and they loved it. So it does make a difference. And it can be delivered remotely if it has to be.

Perfect. Well, we are nearly up on time. I would just recommend two organizations there. One, I'm involved with Uncrushed. Another great organization is the Sales Health alliance with Jeff Risley. So if you are interested in that, feel free to send either Jeff Risley or myself a message. Richard, I want to come to you just as we start to wrap up here. I know we've got two things. One, we've got a giveaway. And then also the next surf and sales bonfire discussion. So. Oh, amazing. You're off.

Mute.

That's fantastic.

I did it. I did it, Scott. I did it without your help.

I'm so proud.

Just real quick, we are giving away $500. So the winner had to show up today. So you are on here. So don't go anywhere. That's the first thing. And you can ping me privately or on the chat directly with your Venmo.

Before I do that, I want to.

Let you know about our next surfing sales event, which is next week we're doing a session on with Tony Hughes. If you don't know Tony, amazing author, really smart sales leader, how to de risk your pipeline. So it's a really powerful one, both from the individual contributor level as well as that management executive level. So feel free to come join us for that. And now for the drum roll. And the winner of $500 today, Shara Davis. You have just won $500. So I do think we have to.

Ask you to come off mute.

And you know, we want to hear your joy, so.

Oh, you missed it because I was so excited. Thank you guys so much. I'm super excited to to have learned. I mean, it's a bonus to get the 500 because the learning was what I came here for. So thank you, guys.

You're very welcome. Find me on LinkedIn or send me your Venmo or PayPal and I'll get it to you today.

So.

All right, great, Tim, I'm giving it.

Back to you then.

Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone for attending. Thanks to our speakers, Chloe Scott, Niraj Bilal, highly encourage that you follow them on LinkedIn. And as I said at the start, we will be sending out the recording to everyone that registered for this. So thanks for spending an hour of your time learning about this and I hope it's been valuable and I hope everyone has a great rest of the day.

Thank you.