What if your favorite TV characters spoke at your 2024 Sales Kickoff 2024 SKO is our take on SKOs with celebrity or other “star” speakers. Want to skip the content and get right to the list? Click here.
Sales Kickoffs (SKOs) and other corporate events often have celebrity speakers brought in to bring a bit of “star power” to the event. It could be a famous athlete, a movie or TV star, or someone who is known for being successful in business. Or, depending on your team’s budget, it could be a B or C list social media personality.
There are a few reasons to bring in a celebrity speaker to your SKO. Most of them boil down to “because it’s cool.” And of course it’s cool. Who wouldn’t want a picture with that guy from the sitcom they liked?
The challenge of course, is that celebrity speakers rarely have true sales experience. Maybe they’ve pitched a script or a project, but most of them haven’t sent cold emails or filled out an RFP response. Your team may leave a celebrity SKO talk feeling inspired – but that may not be enough to drive success in 2024.
SKOs are often expensive. If you’re running an in person event, you have to account for travel, food, venue, and all of the associated costs. And, of course, if you have a celebrity SKO speaker, they likely charge high talent fees. And travel and food. But SKOs have a hidden cost – time.
I remember a few years back I was sitting in an SKO for a large sales organization. The speakers were internal, not celebrities. And the content being presented was, shall we say, less than valuable.
At some point, the person sitting next to me leaned over and said something I’ll never forget:
Do you know how much salary is in this room right now?
Depending on the size of your organization, that number could be in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even in the millions. With costs like that, your SKO needs to be more than just a chance for everyone to get together. It needs to be a time where the team walks away with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful for the coming year.
We decided to have a bit of fun with the idea of celebrity SKO speakers. We asked ourselves what would happen if our favorite TV characters – not the actors, but the actual characters – were invited to speak at an SKO. With a little help from ChatGPT, we’ve written scripts for what we think these characters might do.
Here’s the list as it stands today. Keep checking as we’re going to be adding to this list as often as we can. Want us to write one about your favorite characters? Let us know in the comments!
Your 2024 SKO is a time to not only get your team excited about the coming year, but also give them the skills and resources they need to hit their numbers. If you’re interested in learning more about SKO programming that will deliver a measurable impact in 2024, contact us.