SKO Day 1: A Good Day
Feb. 15th, 2024 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerDay 1 of our sales kickoff (SKO) was a good day. I nearly overdid it the night before but managed to wake up ready for a full day. My first session was a speaker walkthrough (I was presenting as part of a panel in one of the afternoon sessions) at 7:40am, and the day ran through a dinner reception that ended at 10:15pm with about an hour break before dinner.
Three things kept the long day from dragging. One, the content was inspiring. My company has a vision and strategy that make sense now— after a few years of being kind of lost and letting the competition outmaneuver us. We've had a new product launch in the past year and big new features bolster the existing product. More great stuff is on the way for both. The concern remains, though, how soon is it really ready to sell.
Two, the main presenters kept it lively. There was no "Death by Powerpoint". Yes, there were presentations with lots of Powerpoint slides (well, actually Google Slides; we've been standardizing on G-Suite the past few years) but our CMO and CRO are dynamic speakers who kept it all snappy. And the content was upbeat (see above) rather than more-of-the-same.
Three, there are only two days of this. For me and many of my colleagues, knowing that we only have to keep the pace through Thursday night makes it easier. At other companies, and at this company in the past, SKO runs/ran to 3 days. It's often that Day 3 when half or more of the attendees are hating life. With knowing that it's a shorter schedule we're all looking forward to Day 2.
Three things kept the long day from dragging. One, the content was inspiring. My company has a vision and strategy that make sense now— after a few years of being kind of lost and letting the competition outmaneuver us. We've had a new product launch in the past year and big new features bolster the existing product. More great stuff is on the way for both. The concern remains, though, how soon is it really ready to sell.
Two, the main presenters kept it lively. There was no "Death by Powerpoint". Yes, there were presentations with lots of Powerpoint slides (well, actually Google Slides; we've been standardizing on G-Suite the past few years) but our CMO and CRO are dynamic speakers who kept it all snappy. And the content was upbeat (see above) rather than more-of-the-same.
Three, there are only two days of this. For me and many of my colleagues, knowing that we only have to keep the pace through Thursday night makes it easier. At other companies, and at this company in the past, SKO runs/ran to 3 days. It's often that Day 3 when half or more of the attendees are hating life. With knowing that it's a shorter schedule we're all looking forward to Day 2.
