By Ahmed al-Akber/Dubai

I know of no better way to get your marketing and sales team aligned to organisational goals and motivated to achieve them than by getting them together in a marketing and sales kick-off. A successful kick-off gets people together that don’t usually interact with each other much, and clarifies and removes issues they have that may be holding them back from achieving greater results.
The starting point of a successful marketing and sales kick-off is to take stock of where the organisation is right now. What changes has it recently gone through or will it go through that may affect the outcome of the kick-off? Has competition ramped up recently? Is the team’s morale low or otherwise? Assessing where you are on these factors will help guide not only the theme and content of the kick-off but also prevent an obvious ‘elephant in the room’ scenario from happening.
Choosing a theme
The theme of the kick-off is important, and should tie into your biggest marketing or sales goal and be tied into most of the activities you do during the kick-off. Do you want to increase your customer base, or grow your opportunities with existing clients? Are you planning to enter a new market? Do you have a big number that you must hit no matter what? Make sure that is incorporated into the theme. Here are some examples:

* Going the extra mile!
* Becoming number one!
* Land and expand!
* Together we grow
* Winning together
* Unstoppable!
*The A-Team!
* Planning and strategy

The agenda for the kick-off should be tailored around organisational objectives. Is your team not working as closely together as they should? Then design some activities during the kick-off that help to break down those barriers. Or perhaps they don’t understand the vision of the company the way they should (or it hasn’t been articulated to them previously).
This is a great opportunity to share it with them and see if they understand it.
Use a portion of the time to dissect issues that the team are facing, and get agreement then and there on how to solve it. I use the start-stop-continue format with my clients, which works really well. Teams then present back to the rest of the group what they think the issues are and how to solve them. Recommendations are committed to then and there, and notes are taken to record these follow-up actions.
Sharing learnings and best practices is important in a kick-off. I usually use a portion of the time to get my clients’ best marketing or sales people to be interviewed by me in front of the rest of the group. Taking this time serves to recognise optimal performance and reinforces these star employees’ behaviours. If the team is fairly new, then get an accomplished marketing or sales person to come in from another company or industry, and focus the questions on their habits, how they develop themselves, and what makes them successful.
Marketing and sales people are competitive by nature and therefore no kick-off would be complete without some type of competitive element to it. Offer a valuable prize for the best 30-second video on what they think the vision is, or what they will take away from the conference.
Make sure there is a team activity in the early evening that takes the team completely out of their usual environment.
Communication is vital so sending out e-mails and talking to the group before, during, and after the kick-off is important to set expectations and show how important this is to management. I strongly advise to have the head of department and CEO present and participating in the activities.
Kick-offs are only as valuable as the actions that come after the event, so keeping track of what initiatives were agreed (with accountabilities assigned on the day) is important to make sure they happen.
This is where a lot of companies drop the ball, so don’t be one of them! I suggest sending out the minutes/write up of the action steps immediately after the kick-off and having someone make sure that all the initiatives get followed up on.

*Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected]