For companies that have a number of units and need to align the results achieved and what is expected for the following year, it is common to plan a sales convention. These events can include retreats, trips to tourist sites, sales meetings or conferences with top professionals.
In practice, the strategies outlined prior to the event are essential for it to be a success. But do you know what they are to organize a great sales convention?
The truth is, while organizing an event is a demanding undertaking, you’re not the first to face this challenge. And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel to achieve your goals. Having a good organization involves following some specific steps.
Actions you must take to organize a sales convention
In order to be successful in the process of organizing this event, we prepared this list with.
Strategies and actions you need to follow to get everything off the ground and turn your ideas into reality:
Define the main objective of the event
What do you expect to accomplish and what do you need to achieve as a result of your event? First of all, this is what you need to define for your sales convention.
Establish why you are planning a convention and exactly what you want to accomplish with it. It’s important to work on translating this well and presenting a theme and agenda that really meets your goals from beginning to end.
It’s always a goal that everyone on the team feels more comfortable talking and interacting during the big day. But if the goal is simply to entertain the public, hire teams who do a good show and help create a great event. Entertainment is one of the important points during a meeting like this. But you can plan actions that go beyond what happens at social events, creating other kinds of interactions.
Prepare a budget and activity plan
Whether your convention is an event that has been going on for many editions or is starting now, you’ll have to set up a budget. And with it, you need to know where your money is being earned and invested. Having a budget also helps you set the price to get every key item of the event.
Here are the most common items you always need to budget for:
- Place or space of realization;
- Transport
- Meals;
- Fees for the professionals who will work for the event;
- Activities
- Marketing.
Preparing a budget with realistic estimates will also be useful when looking for locations and negotiating contracts.
Thinking about the site, it can make all the difference when it comes to creating a beneficial environment for the sales convention. A great example is the PTC convention, which surprises attendees every year by happening in a different city around the world.
Help your employees to develop skills during the event
One of the most used actions during the sales conventions is the realization of trainings. It is important to give at least an overview of what is to come if this is the first of many trainings you intend to conduct. Focus on providing participants with just one or two skills that can really be improved in the limited time of the event, but that will make all the difference in day-to-day work.
And an important tip: if you need to review the results of the entire organization in a single event, don’t leave it to do the training as the last activity on the last day of the event. This period should be used for celebrations and already engage your team for the new year of work.
In this case, create a diversified schedule that can take on the demand to hold the training sessions at intermediate times.
A great example of the market when we talk about learning during a sales convention is the one held by Domino’s Pizza, which during the 2 days of the event had speakers such as Rafael Henzel and Rick Prospera. They told their life experiences to the participants and left important messages to succeed in their career.
Use the event to reward participants
The timing of the sales convention is also important for making awards for the professionals who have excelled in the past year. Reward your people, build a team culture and show that the company is investing in talent and results.
Have competitions or challenges driven through the months leading up to the event, as well as those that fit the goal setting. The engagement of everyone during the event will be even greater if the final result is kept to be disclosed only during the event!
Align goals and objectives
Also, take advantage of the event to bring teams together around a new strategy of goals and objectives for the coming year. Align with the leadership team how to take this step during the event, to put the strategy and the path that needs to be followed, always with the focus on the customer.
This is one of the most important moments for sales representatives, so you need a strategy that focuses on what can be achieved, but at the same time challenges each employee.
Investigate well who should speak at the event
Do some research similar to an investigator to find out a little more about the participants and which people could talk during the event, always thinking about their main objective.
The most important thing is to have stakeholder engagement. So, get as much information as you can to get the right choice of speakers. You might also consider taking a band or something a little different when the serious side of the event is over.
Gather feedback from the event with all participants
It’s nice to get feedback after the event. The conclusions from this questionnaire will help you organize an even better event next time.At the end of the feedback result conference, you will have a good idea of what the concrete outcome of the event was and whether it really achieved the objectives set.
One of the quickest ways to put this into practice is by using the event app. In it you can already make available the feedback form and several other features that will make your participants’ lives easier.