What can “out-of-the-box” sales promotions accomplish for a game or event?

Virtual sales kickoff ideas are concepts to try when your team meets to launch your new sales campaign. Examples include icebreaker games, virtual shark tank, and an award ceremony for top performers. These ideas allow the sales team to learn from each other’s experiences, develop product strategies, and share tips and tricks for success.

These ideas are similar to sales meeting ideas, Zoom meeting ideas, and out-of-the-box team meeting ideas.

This article includes:

• remote sales kickoff themes
• online sales kickoff games
• virtual sales kickoff meeting activities
• virtual sales kickoff event ideas

Let’s get started!

List of virtual sales kickoff ideas

An effective virtual sales kickoff is a means to engage your sales team. When planned properly, a virtual sales kickoff may unite and motivate your sales team and bring out their best performances. The following are virtual sales kickoff event ideas.

1. Award Ceremony for Top Performers

At any sales kickoff event, it is vital to recognize and award prizes to top performers. With award ceremonies, you can publicly acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of highly productive workers and offer a powerful motivator for future success. The challenge is in recreating the atmosphere of a live awards show in a virtual setting. Creating the perfect atmosphere for a virtual awards ceremony is the first step in bringing employees together in friendly competition and joyful celebration.

Success celebrations are an integral part of every sales kickoff. Whether the launch is physical or virtual, this component should be part of your program. Almost every salesperson would appreciate a fine champagne to make a toast to the end of a long and fruitful year. You can send a bottle of wine to their homes before the event. You can also have a virtual concert or hire a motivational speaker. This idea will help you engage your sales team and capture their attention.

Check out this list of virtual award ceremony ideas for work.

2. Fun Virtual Icebreakers

An icebreaker is a fun, interactive game that helps break the ice and get the audience excited about the coming event. The games will make your participants feel more at ease in unfamiliar settings, which may be challenging in the flurry of a virtual event. Icebreakers help engage individuals early on and help break through barriers later on during networking or business talks.

Examples of fun icebreakers to consider include:

• tricky questions
• brainstorming sales objections
• speed pitch
• sell me this pen

You can initiate relationships based on a shared passion with the right icebreaker questions and entertaining activities.

Check out this list of virtual icebreakers for meetings.

3. Team Storytelling

Your team’s significant accomplishments or individual triumphs may sometimes go unrecognized. Bringing these histories to light is an excellent exercise for promoting a culture of acknowledgment.

You can engage your team in a creative exercise by having them design a fake magazine cover celebrating a project, commercial success, or personal achievement. Employees can share a few words on a recent struggle or success that helped them or their team grow. You can also send your team members the necessary stationery and magazine templates ahead of time and have them start working on their stories. Setting aside about 30 minutes or an hour for this exercise during your launch meeting is advisable. Creating these stories will improve your team’s ability to foresee future triumphs, inspire one another, and plan for greater achievements over the coming months. In addition, employees may learn to care about one another and bond more deeply via shared experiences by sharing stories as a team.

4. Virtual Cocktail Party

You can throw a sophisticated virtual cocktail party for your company’s sales kickoff meeting. If you establish a spending cap and limit employee alcohol purchases to services like Minibar and Drizly, they will be able to buy their favorites from a trusted seller. One alternative is to let workers build their drinks using a menu and a list of ingredients. You may purchase all the materials for making your drinks, like mixers and toppings. Finally, you can consider buying your team a Hoppier card to use at a local shop.

Here is a list of virtual cocktail kits you can send to employees.

5. Sales Kickoff Schedule

Preparing a sales kickoff schedule is the first step when organizing a virtual sales kickoff. The success of your sales kickoff depends on the quality of the information shared at the kickoff, making this the single most crucial part of the preparation process.

When making your virtual sales kickoff agenda, you should focus on achieving goals like:

• Keeping your team focused on its mission in the next year
• Promoting interaction and networking amongst participants through the virtual channels
• Inspiring and motivating your sales department
• Providing your sales staff with relevant information on training, sales enablement, and customer satisfaction

You may use these points as a springboard when creating the sales kickoff schedule. However, remember that your sales staff will need to retain this information for months after the event has passed, which means your goal should be to ensure maximum retention. You can use Google docs to create the schedule or build a landing page for that purpose. All your team members should have the link to refer to the page anytime.

6. Virtual Sales Kickoff Theme

A theme or slogan for your virtual sales launch will help encourage and direct your sales force toward achieving your year objectives. Your sales staff has to be able to identify with, internalize, and commit to the remote sales kickoff themes as the year’s overarching objective. You can consider a simple, straightforward, catchy, concise, and optimistic slogan before settling on a theme.

Examples of sales kickoff themes include:

• All in!
• Above and Beyond
• Believe
• Accelerate
• Level Up!
• Fired Up!
• No Limits
• Raising the Bar

After selecting the theme, incorporate it throughout your virtual sales launch event’s virtual team-building activities and speaker topics. Your sales force is more likely to remember your message and stay motivated if you stick to a consistent theme throughout the year.

7. Virtual Shark Tank

A simulated episode of “Shark Tank” would be perfect for your sales staff to practice their pitches and hone their improvisation skills. In this entertaining exercise, team members may practice their sales pitches and display their inner entrepreneurs. Using a digital platform makes it simpler to invite sales coaches and influencers to serve as judges, enriching the experience for participants.

For this activity, you can have your team members pair up and, with the help of photos and objects, invent a product and a sales presentation. The pitch should contain sections like:

• brand name
• tagline
• marketing plan
• business plan
• sales strategy
• reasons to invest

This exercise is a terrific way to get your team working together. The idea also encourages out-of-the-box thinking and can help to generate fresh ideas for marketing and sales campaigns. The judging panel should give each team detailed comments for improvement and choose a winner. You can also award small prizes.

8. Breakout Sessions

Fatigue can often occur during virtual meetings, and sales kickoffs might take longer than intended. Virtual breakout sessions are a fantastic method to keep your team engaged and productive during the whole conference. While the concept of a breakout session may not seem very new, the technique for handling it may have a significant impact.

Breakout rooms are a standard feature of most online event platforms. This feature encourages engaging conversations. However, it is often hard to strike up conversations in a huge gathering. Breakout rooms allow you to separate your large audience into smaller, more manageable groups.

A good idea for breakout sessions is hosting a lighting talk. The goal is to get your team thinking critically and working together by having each member talk on a specific subject for no more than five minutes. Topics may include cold calling strategies for remote prospects, advice on reaching quota while working remotely, and virtual sales meeting best practices.

Virtual improv-led breakout sessions may be an effective method of encouraging creative problem-solving and brainstorming.

Check out more breakout session ideas.

9. Goal-Setting Workshops

You can have a goal-setting seminar during your virtual sales kickoff. By getting to know your sales team’s hopes and dreams, you can assist them in reaching their full potential. Your employees can list their main personal and professional goals and note what success would mean to them. You can help your team members achieve their resolutions by keeping track of their progress and providing them with opportunities for growth and guidance as the new year progresses. Apps like ClickUp and Stride allow you to create goals and share them with group members. Each participant can contribute to the project, and you will be able to see their progress in real-time.

Here is a list of goal-setting activities.

10. Virtual Escape Room

Strategy games are often part of sales kickoff meetings, but using a virtual platform can take the activity to a new level. You may integrate a “virtual escape room,” for instance, into your Zoom or another online conference platform. These online sales kickoff games require teamwork, communication, and critical thinking skills to win.

Teams must collaborate to unlock the chamber’s secrets during the virtual escape room. You can prepare some fantastic rewards since salespeople are competitive individuals. Adding an escape room to your virtual sales meeting will allow your workers to work together and, without even realizing it, improve their teamwork, communication, and problem-solving abilities.

Check out this list of virtual escape rooms.

11. Murder Mystery

Team building is an essential part of every successful sales kickoff event. For the sake of the company’s culture and the development of employee relationships, team-building exercises are crucial. However, team building activities become trickier when you want to have a sales launch event virtually.

Companies exist specifically to plan and execute murder mystery evenings. You will try to solve a murder case together with your team. This activity relies heavily on communication and interaction. Your sales team will likely have a good time, and the good energy will help them close more deals. Not to mention, your sales team will learn to be observant, embody a persona, and respond on the fly to reactions.

Here is a list of online murder mysteries.

12. Gamification

During sales kickoff events, the sales leadership team often unveils the updated go-to-market plan for the following year. There will be a great deal of training that will help your sales team succeed. However, since this is an online sales launch event, your sales staff may get preoccupied with email and miss important announcements. Using gamification can help ensure an excellent learning experience. Examples of gamification ideas include:

• in-session trivia
• tour of the virtual exhibition hall
• virtual event bingo
• leaderboards

Making the activity fun will keep your sales team engaged during the session. Your sales staff and the entire firm will gain from this idea.

13. Virtual Scavenger Hunt

You may get participants up and mingling at your virtual event by having them participate in a virtual scavenger hunt. A decent Virtual Scavenger Hunt requires a degree of difficulty to keep the activity exciting and competitive. This idea is an excellent option for a team-building exercise since it makes players comfortable with one another as they work together to solve memory and strategic thinking challenges as quickly as possible.

The virtual scavenger hunt can include taking selfies, surfing social media for clues, or browsing your corporate website for answers. Scavenger hunt games can help your sales team boost their level of resourcefulness.

Here are some virtual scavenger hunt sample lists.

14. Virtual Talent Show

A virtual talent show is an excellent way for team members to get to know one another on a deeper, more personal level. Additionally, you may connect the activity to your company objectives by tailoring it to the topics of your sales meetings. For example, lip-synching to a song about making calls is one way to motivate your team to reach its sales quota for the year.

You can reward staff members for their efforts, whether dancing, creativity, or costume creation. As a bonus, you can award prizes directly related to the competition, such as AXS tickets to a digital concert or gift cards for music streaming.

Check out this guide to online talent shows for employees.

15. Coworker Feud

Coworker Feud is a game modeled after the popular TV show Family Feud. The game can foster communication and healthy competition among employees. In most cases, the host is the one who does the research for the various topic suggestions. For example, you can add numbers from categories like animal behavior, human eating habits, and the solar system. Another option is to survey team members and their families and utilize the results as your data source.

A team leader acts as both the speaker and the buzzer. The team can confer on answers. Then, teams take turns trying to predict the most popular choices. The final point total determines the winner.

Here is a list of Coworker Feud questions.

16. The Bucket List Challenge

During this activity, give your staff five minutes to brainstorm activities to include on their bucket lists. Then have team members share this list with the group. As an employer, you may encourage teamwork by challenging coworkers who like similar pursuits.

For example, if you have many workers who either reside in the same city or will be participating in marathons simultaneously but in separate locations, have them commit to keeping each other responsible. Employees may encourage and keep tabs on one another. You can also use this approach to set sales quotas and contests.

When it comes to remote sales teams, the Bucket List Challenge is a great way to foster camaraderie and spark creativity and drive. Hearing about the goals of others is entertaining, especially if some group members have already accomplished some of the goals they have shared with the group.

17. Desert Island Scenario

For this activity, sort the salespeople into squads. The storyline is that each team is trapped on a deserted island with seven items, but they can only take three. These items should be as complicated and baffling as possible, so your team must rely on their collective intelligence and strategic planning skills.

These necessities include a bag of fruit and vegetable seeds, a pocket knife, a 100-foot rope, a sheet, a bucket, two gallons of kerosene, and writing materials. Each team can go into breakout rooms and discuss which options they want to pick. After the conversations, it is time to get on a group video call and discuss the results. In addition to fostering a spirit of healthy competition and enthusiasm among team members, such activities and exercises also help members perceive each other as colleagues.

18. The Guessing Game

To get to know your sales staff better, you can ask them to share some interesting facts about themselves. You can now gather the facts into a single document and share it with all team members. Each sales representative must determine which fact belongs to each team member and fill in the blank column next to each piece of information.

Besides the potential for hilarity, this game fosters teamwork and friendship among teammates. After every participant has given their best guesses, you can provide an answer key to reveal who made the right and wrong call.

Check out more guessing games for work.

19. Remote Tai Chi

Tai chi is a gentle and effective activity that can make you feel more at ease during the sales kickoff event. In part, Tai chi’s various benefits stem from its gentle motions, making it suitable for almost any individual. The only goal is to feel your energy and the air around you and move in harmony with them. There is no need to force your body into unnatural positions or to carry heavy weights.

If you want to improve your focus and memory retention during your event, giving yourself a good tai chi workout is a terrific way to get your blood pumping.

20. Virtual Comedy Break

This activity allows you to have fun with your coworkers while building rapport and friendships. You can create a theme or challenge for the joke before your virtual sales kickoff. Joke themes may be office-related, competitor, and lunch-related humor. As the event progresses, you can ask different team members to share their comedy sketches. This activity will provide some humor and levity to your meeting.

Here is a list of virtual comedians.

Conclusion

A sales kickoff meeting is a terrific opportunity to demonstrate to your sales representatives that you have their backs and are as committed to their success. Whether online or in person, your sales kickoff meeting is a chance to bring your team back together, foster team spirit, and equip participants with the knowledge and skills they will need to thrive in today’s competitive market.

Over 80 percent of what sales staff learn in a launch meeting is forgotten within a matter of weeks, if not days, according to studies. A virtual sales kickoff allows you to record your presentations and discussions so that you may refer to them even if you cannot attend the live event. Your sales team can then review content for optimal retention. The virtual sales kickoff meeting activities can make the event highly memorable for participants.

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