7 Ridiculously Fun Ideas for Your 2024 Virtual Sales Kickoff Meetings

Ringing in the new year with a sales kickoff meeting is all but a requirement for a successful sales campaign. Few methods are better to rally your salespeople, discuss sales targets, and get everyone on track in 2024. And with more people working remotely than ever, many of these annual sales kickoffs (SKOs) have shifted into a virtual space.

An inspiring virtual sales kickoff is much more than a long online meeting — it’s a way to engage your sales team, inspire fresh ideas, and celebrate big wins. But when team-building activities, cocktail dinners, and award parties are traditionally shared in person, how can you keep your virtual sales training engaging from behind the screen?

This problem plagues managers and sales leaders, but with the right sales kickoff agenda, you can turn a remote sales kickoff event into a kick-ass motivator for the upcoming year.

7 Virtual Sales Kickoff Meeting Ideas for 2024

Strong communication helps sales teams connect, share, and succeed. According to Colleen Francis, sales strategist and author of “Nonstop Sales Boom: Powerful Strategies to Drive Consistent Growth Year After Year,” cohesion across sales teams and sales reps enables a business to build a sum greater than its parts.

That’s where virtual sales kickoff meetings can make an impact. With enticing and inspiring elements in your virtual sales rally, you can bring out the best in each sales team member and foster a sense of connection and community. And those benefits aren’t reserved for in-person SKOs, either. A well-planned sales kickoff that leverages online capabilities can help you achieve even better results than traditional in-person sales meetings.

Let’s look at a few ways you can make your 2024 SKOs more memorable and drive better sales outcomes.

1. Create Awards for High Performers

Virtual awards ceremonies can foster a sense of community and gratitude | Source: New York Times

Award ceremonies are an engaging way to publicly recognize employees who do extraordinary things while encouraging others to do the same. However, virtually capturing the essence of a traditionally in-person event is tricky.

The first step is to set the right tone for your virtual event. Take a page from the Daytime Emmy Awards and start with a killer opening act. A live virtual music performance, motivational guest speaker, or sales-centric keynote speaker can help you get as close to the “real deal” as possible. Engaging your sales team from the get-go is crucial because awards are as much about recognition as they are about celebrating success.

Your opening act will be your sales award ceremony’s headlining act. A grand opening act will ensure that you have your sales teams’ undivided attention. With distractions out of the way, you can begin award recognition.

2. Ask Your Team To Create Their Own Magazine Story

While award ceremonies are the most popular way to celebrate achievement, inclusion is just as important. Your salespeople or sales managers may have achieved primary goals or overcome personal challenges that went unnoticed over the last year. So, an interesting and proactive method to foster a culture of recognition is to actively bring these success stories to light.

Ask your entire sales team to create an imaginary magazine cover about a successful project, business achievement, or personal accomplishment. You can even send them the stationery and magazine templates and ask them to prepare their story beforehand.

During your kickoff meeting, allot 30 minutes to an hour for this activity. As your team of sales professionals begins putting together their stories, they can visualize future success, motivate their peers, improve teamwork, and set more ambitious goals for next year. Team storytelling is also a great way to foster empathy among your employees and bring them closer on an emotional level.

Here are a few pointers to get started:

• Send them an activity gift bag that contains markers, pens, magazine cover templates, and anything else they’ll need to create the cover story.
• Ask each participant to say a few words about their challenge or achievement over the previous year and how it made them stronger or improved their selling skills.
• Choose and reward the best cover.

3. Host a Virtual Cocktail Party With Hoppier

Take your sales kickoff meeting to the next level with a virtual cocktail party or happy hour organized with Hoppier. Set your budget and restrict purchases to vendors like Minibar or Drizly that allow employees to buy their favorite beer, wine, or spirits directly.

Another idea is to provide a menu and ingredient list so employees can make their own cocktails. Buy a Hoppier card for a local store where people can get all the mixers, garnishes, and other ingredients they need for DIY cocktails. No matter what you choose, Hoppier works with you to understand your needs and bring to life the kind of event experience you want to provide.

Hoppier offers customizable virtual event experiences.

4. Host a Virtual Shark Tank to Test Your Team's Improvisation Skills

You won’t find a better way to help your sales team hone their pitching skills and sales process than with a mock Shark Tank sales kickoff theme. This fun activity allows your team members to showcase their entrepreneurial side and perfect their pitching skills. You can make the experience richer by inviting sales coaches and influencers as judges — something that’s much easier to achieve with a virtual platform. You can literally ask experts from anywhere in the world to tune in and role-play as Sharks!

Divide your team into groups of two and use props or images for people to come up with an imaginary product and develop a pitch for it. The pitch could include specifics like the brand name, tagline, business plan, marketing plan, sales strategy, and, most importantly, why people should invest. In addition to promoting collaboration, this activity also fosters unconventional thinking and can be a great way to brainstorm innovative go-to-market strategies and sales initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year.

Judges need to provide each team with detailed feedback on their performance and also choose a winner — bonus points for delivering small prizes.

5. Fight Meeting Fatigue With Breakout Sessions

Virtual meeting fatigue is real, and sales kickoffs can run longer than expected. A novel method to ensure your team is engaged throughout the event is with virtual breakout sessions or webinars. While a breakout session might not seem innovative, the way you conduct breakout sessions makes all the difference.

Here are some of our top ideas:

• Lightning Talks: Stimulate your team to think about a single topic and give a short presentation (the key is to keep them under five minutes) to foster thought, conversation, and collaboration. For example, selling to prospects who are working remotely, using sales enablement tools effectively, tips for virtual sales meetings, advice to hit quotas while working remotely, boosting networking opportunities, cold calling tips for new sales prospects, introductions to new products, etc.
• Improv Sessions: Virtual improv-led breakout sessions can be a great way to foster out-of-the-box thinking across your entire sales organization. Whether you discuss common sales problems, conduct training sessions/product training, or have an icebreaker, the improv aspect improves creativity and camaraderie.
• Host a Goal-Setting Workshop: One of the most effective ways to help your sales team achieve more in 2024 is a clear understanding of their aspirations and personal goals. Encourage your team members to create and share a list of their top personal and professional goals for 2024 and define what success looks like. You can note their goals and offer personal development and coaching rewards to help your team members realize their goals throughout the new year.

6. Play a Strategic Skill-Building Game

Strategic games are common at sales kickoff meetings, but a virtual platform can make these games all the more exciting. For example, a virtual escape room can be added to your Zoom or other online meeting platform. These games ask your team members to put their heads together, solve significant problems, and complete puzzles.

Adding an escape room to your virtual sales team gathering allows everyone to work together to foster team-building and communication skills — without realizing it! This is also a great way to engage your team while breaking up some of the less interesting — but still essential tasks — through team bonding.

7. Host a Virtual Talent Show (With Great Prizes)

A talent show might not be something you’d add to your annual sales kickoff plans, but with a virtual platform, anything goes. A virtual talent show helps team members get to know one another in a creative, personal way that stimulates deep connection.

Focus the talent show around your sales meeting theme to anchor it to your business goals even more. For example, if your goal is to make more sales calls in the coming year, you could have everyone lip-sync a song related to telephone calls (“Hotline Bling,” anyone?)

The best part is that you can offer prizes to everyone. Give employee gifts based on what they did best, whether dancing, creativity, or costumes. You can use a Hoppier card to give prizes relevant to the contest, too, like tickets for a concert or funds for music streaming.

A Successful Sales Kickoff Creates Long-Lasting Impressions

Most of us have had a lot of virtual meeting practice over the past few years; however, an annual sales kickoff meeting is different. SKOs are the blueprint for yearly success. A virtual sales kickoff could be your first, so don’t shy away from experimentation.

Leverage this opportunity to foster human connection, use team gifts to demonstrate your care, and show your support as your sales force preps for another successful year in 2024.

Sales is changing, and a great kickoff meeting is the best way to show your team members that you’ve still got their backs.‍

Talk to us about hosting your virtual sales kickoff meeting. Get 20% off on your first event with Hoppier.