Sales Kickoff Keynote Theme: Be Prepared!
Welcome to the 2016 Sales Kickoff! How was that dinner out there? Wasn’t that salmon amazing? The Marriott really outdid themselves tonight. Let’s give the kitchen staff a big hand!
Great meal, but I’m telling you, I could use a Thin Mint right about now. Anybody else? Craig over there knows what I mean.
Some of you might be wondering why I have my nine-year-old daughter up here dressed in her Girl Scout uniform. Well, I’m here to tell you, it has everything to do with our aggressive sales goals this fiscal year. She’s here tonight as a symbol of what we need to do to crush our competition by showing us how to be prepared.
You see, that’s the motto of the Girl Scouts of America: Be prepared! Megan came prepared tonight. Not only is she in her spotless uniform with spit-shined shoes, she came prepared with the paperwork needed to sell a ton of cookies. We have fifty-seven tables in this ballroom and you’ll notice that each table has ten cookie order forms, or one for each of you. That means she came tonight with almost six hundred forms. That, my fellow employees, is being prepared.
This is the kind of spirit that needs to be with each of you this next year. Frankly, it’s a spirit that I found lacking particularly in the third quarter of last year, table twelve I’m looking in your direction. Because, whether you’re selling software or delicious, coconut Samoas, you need to be prepared.
“How prepared?” you may ask. Well, just take a look at those order forms in front of you. Notice how painstakingly each one has been filled out with your personal names, addresses and home phone numbers. Megan did that herself, with the help of our HR department and many nights at the kitchen table. That’s preparation. That’s spirit. That’s commitment; knowing that if you pull this off, not only will you be able to go to camp this year, but you can sponsor other, less fortunate girls to attend camp.
“That’s a lot of preparation,” you’re saying to yourself. You’re darn right it is. But is it enough to get you to select at least four boxes and return your form to the table in the back? The one with the cases of every type of cookie the Girl Scouts sell, including the new Toffee-tastic which is gluten-free? I think it is.
The key to getting your customers to commit their software budgets to you, is making it as easy as possible for them to do so. How about being prepared with some sort of free trial or demo of some kind? Something like the plates that are being delivered to your tables right now by members of Megan’s troop. Notice how there are plenty of samples and how well they are labeled so that you can tell the Tagalongs from the Shortbread, the Trios from the Savannah Smiles. Go ahead, try some. They are only available for another week and then good luck finding them for another year. It’s a good thing you can freeze them.
As we go into this year’s selling season with the kind of goals we have set, if we aren’t prepared, we won’t survive. Our software is good, just like these chocolate-backed Thanks-A-Lots are, but it doesn’t sell itself. If you’re not prepared to make the sale, not only will we not “go to camp” as a company, but our company might need to downsize, just like the Girl Scouts will, if they don’t hit their goals.
Finally, as your VP of sales, I’m committed to watching out for each and every one of my salespeople in this room. Please take the time to shake my hand as you personally turn in your order forms to me at the back table. Megan, her troop and I have every confidence that each one of you will do what’s expected of you this year, starting tonight. Good luck in your individual territories, and any checks you may write tonight should be made out to Troop #883.