The traditional season for national sales conferences in Australia is in January and February, however it’s been a bit tricky to host this kind of events over the past two years, for obvious reasons.
With optimism in the air in late 2021 for a sales conference season in 2022, all hopes were dashed as the Omicron wave halted these plans, pushing sales conferences out a few months, or seeing them cancelled once again.
But why place so much importance on sales conferences in the first place? They are expensive to host, and they take salespeople off the road when they could be selling. They are a nightmare for those who have to organise them. And they can also be seen as a one hit wonder making little impact, but more about this point later.
The importance of sales conferences
Let’s take a step back and have a look at the purpose of sales conferences, and how the current obstacles to the traditional version might be an opportunity to rethink and reconfigure these team events for the future.
Unlike most business teams and despite the people-intense nature of a sales role, many salespeople don’t get to interact with or see in person their fellow sales team colleagues a lot, pandemic or not, and everyone deserves an opportunity, occasionally, to reconnect, learn and celebrate with their colleagues. It’s part of being a team.
Sales conferences present great opportunities including:
- Networking and building relationships
- Celebrations and giving recognition to deserving employees, creating a sense of achievement
- Education about and workshopping new products and services, strategies and tactics
- Rolling out clear go-to-market strategies, messaging, and competitive advantage
- Picking up on new trends, staying informed and introducing new ideas and concepts
- Creating unity around a common goal and purpose, creating alignment and cohesion
- Having fun, and building team spirit
- Leveraging teamwork and closing the gaps on how to generate more profitable sales
- Publicity strategies especially when clients and the media are invited to attend
- Providing a memorable incentive, a change of scenery and creating excitement and anticipation for the future
These are just some of the positive aspects about Sales Conferences.
Which is why it is so disappointing to many when they are postponed or cancelled.
Let’s look at the consequences of this
What can a cancelled conference tell you about the pros and cons of this approach?
If you only run one or two large events for your whole team it means the stimulus and positive effects described above only happen, well, once or twice a year. Have you ever wondered what your people are doing post the conference? How they implement, embed and apply all the new things they heard about at the conference? Worst case, in between conferences people are just doing what they’re always doing, following their old routines and habits. Have you ever measured the impact of your conferences?
So, what are the actual consequences of a missed conference, apart from the fact that your people will be a bit miffed they couldn’t spend a few days on the Gold Coast or in a nice golf hotel?
Your team needs information and support for their work, such as training, product support, exchange with peers and experts, etc. to remain effective and expand their capabilities. Conferences are a great opportunity for a comprehensive upload of all these things, so the cancellation could leave a significant gap.
What will a good conference look like in the future?
There are a few things to consider. First of all, these are some basic rules for any good conference:
- The reason to have a sales conference is not ‘to have a sales conference’. The event needs to include meaningful and coordinated elements like training, providing information, exchange of ideas and concepts, relationship building, best practice, motivation, team development, staff retention, etc.
- Make sure sales conferences have a specific reason or purpose that ties into the overall sales strategy, learning and engagement plan. It needs to be embedded in the big picture
- Make sales conferences active not passive, ensuring sales teams and key people are giving things to work on prior to the conference
- Create anticipation for ongoing positive change, and then keep the momentum for change going post the conference
This brings us up to the next point: How to future proof your sales conference
Avoid creating a monolithic event that tries to tackle all the elements described with one brush. Sales conferences should form part of an annual, longitudinal sales team engagement plan, and not run in isolation. They can still be the annual or semi-annual highlight, but your business should not depend on them (Not only at the moment because of the pandemic, but also for those few people who for personal reasons might not be able to attend).
So these are a few things you can do, if your sales conference is postponed, and in general to increase the impact of the support for your sales team. Here are some ideas we are rolling out with our clients who find themselves in this situation:
- Serve up some interesting videos and podcasts around core elements that will support your main conference theme. Provide teasers or “sneak previews” of any kind
- Capture ideas from the field about what they are seeing trending, what needs to be addressed, provided, discussed
- Take what educational content you want to roll out at the sales conference and break some key elements down into short sharp 1-hour webshop sessions every 2 weeks until the conference. After all, no one can cover everything in-depth at a conference, so why not have a series of remote run-up session to the conference getting people in that learning mindset already? Give them some practical tasks to prepare and bring real-life cases to the conference
- Avoid boring lectures and PowerPoint presentation during the conference by providing the teams with some key information beforehand. Use the conference to discuss and work with new information, products, services, etc. rather than merely present it and leave everyone to decide what to make of it
- To ensure items 3. and 4. on this list work out, engage the local leaders and managers to follow up with their teams before the conference, discuss the contents provided, help them prepare together as a team, and create an opportunity for the team to shine at the conference with their input (instead of solely with their presence)
- Create an embedding plan: What are the teams and individuals supposed to do when they return from the conference to ensure change is actually carried all the way into the field? How can they be supported (locally, again through leaders and managers, and centrally, through additional information and training material, consolidated follow ups, etc. (Even a small survey among participants a few weeks after can function as a reminder and a nudge to apply some of the new ideas or opportunities presented)
- Create a sustainable series of event, building on each other. This means setting milestones in between conferences, creating an ongoing story across conferences, incorporate training and other initiatives throughout the year
Always have a Plan B
Above all: Use this approach to create a Plan B in case the conference event can’t happen or needs to be postponed. Which elements can be provided remotely? Which parts are critical at the time, and how can they be delivered? What parts can be facilitated locally (e.g. within states, regions or branches)? What “treat” can you provide your team with to make up for the missed ‘trip to the Gold Coast’? How can you address team motivation, best practice and engagement? Which components really only work in a physical setting?
These are just a few general options and ideas. The key is to think longitudinal, and to break free of the mere “two days in a conference hotel” mindset. The rest is a matter of creativity and purposeful planning.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something – and this includes selling your new approach to conferencing to your team.
Authors: Sue Barrett and Jens Hartmann
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