How do I figure out a schedule for our revenue kickoff where marketing, sales, and customer success are all together?

• Having been through several of these at a few different companies, the advice I would offer is that for joint-sessions focus on the biggest impact announcements (e.g., new product demos, fireside chat with a major customer w/ Q&A, new company vision/mission, etc.), and make sure to put the time, effort, and energy into producing the content for these sessions--these assets can all be reused, and it’s an easy way to get the team excited. Have these sessions be less about Q&A and more of a one-way street in terms of content going out to the audience is typically better for everyone in the room.
  
• The individual team sessions should be used to focus on what’s relevant to those teams so that you can get focused Q&A that will be valuable to everyone in that room. Share wins/losses/learnings from big deals/top reps, train on new processes or collateral (e.g., pitch decks), go over new comp plans or territories (these probably need their own day to cover…).

Yes, at VMware this is called Sales Kickoff. It usually consists of sales, technical pre-sales, professsional services and customer success gathering for a few days to discuss the company's strategic priorities, solution areas, product positioning, roadmaps and relationship building. It is split out by the functions above to dive deep into each phase of the customer lifecycle. 

FKO, SKO, RKO, AKO to ZKO, put whatever letter in front – they are all company kickoffs. Sales teams are now being called Revenue teams –- I've also seen marketing departments rolling up into a larger Revenue org. Take the stakeholders going (personas) and map their typical and ideal work flow (customer journey). What information, resources and content do they need to be successful at their job? Your answer is your RKO Schedule.

Not sure? Talk to them and interview the most successful ones in each department. How do you replicate them? Take the data and plan out your sessions around what they do and their needs that ensure they are successful at their jobs. Do they need to know the product roadmap, message, positioning, personas, competitors, marketing campaigns, how to manage prospects/customers, do a first call, do a demo, work with services or partners, create a quote, negotiate with prospects, draft a legal contract, ensure compliance…etc? If yes, then there should be a session for it. If some personas overlap on their needs, those are your joint sessions. If there are unique needs, those are separate sessions.

We recently held a GKO (GTM Kick Off) with Sales/CS; Marketing attended the ones that were most relevant for them. Here’s a rough schedule:

Day 1: CRO kick off, Marketing 2022 Roadmap, Customer story 1, Product 2022 Roadmap, Sales Methodology / Rev Ops, 1st Call Deck training, Customer story 2

Day 2: Pop quiz, Customer story 3, Product demo training, Competitive workshop, Discovery questions session, Storytelling workshop, X-func. panel discussion (topic could be how you use your own product)

Day 3: QBR / breakouts for each group. Breakouts could be by function (Sales, CS), by segment (SMB, MM, Ent), industry, etc.

In the past, we’ve invited a few customers to join our SKO and the Sales team loved it!! There’s nothing like hearing directly from our customers on they use your products/solutions.