How to Measure the ROI of Your Sales Kickoff Event (SKO)

A few years ago, the annual Sales Kickoff Meeting (SKO)—a bash where the entire sales team gets together to review goals, generate motivation, celebrate successes, and plan out the strategy for the coming year— was a given at most organizations. Following the pandemic, the rise of the remote workplace, and even the proliferation of sales readiness tools like Brainshark—which facilitates everything from sales coaching to improving sales performance and speeding up new-hire onboarding—are causing executive teams to question whether the costs of holding a SKO for the purposes of sales enablement are justified.

The good news is that when it is budgeted for properly, the SKO is likely to deliver substantial ROI for the entire organization in both dollars and employee satisfaction. The bad news (depending on who you are) is that it now often falls on sales and sales enablement leaders to furnish evidence for the c-suite that a SKO is worth the investment.

In this article, you’ll find applicable formulas and a sample SKO budget you can use to calculate the ROI of your next sales kickoff event and get your company leadership on board.

Calculating ROI in Sales Kickoff Events (SKOs)—Leading versus Lagging Metrics

For predictable results and demonstrated improvement, sales enablement needs measurable metrics.

There are two broad categories of metrics to understand:

Leading metrics (or leading indicators) and
Lagging metrics (or lagging indicators)

As defined in this article on sales metrics, “Leading indicators are simply those that you can measure as a direct outcome of your activities” and “Lagging indicators are simply those that you cannot measure as a direct outcome of your activities,” but which a company usually cares most about, such as revenue, quota attainment, and average deal size.

To properly measure the ROI of a sales kickoff event, you would need to know about the event’s lagging indicators such as deal size, deal velocity (how long it takes for a deal to move from start to close), and sales team turnover, among others.

The Formula for Calculating the ROI of your Sales Kickoff Event

Using our suggested cost factors below, you can compile a spreadsheet and accurately determine the ROI of your sales kickoff event.

Every company has different requirements and concerns, but the most common SKO costs are listed below. These can be used as a starting point for your ROI calculator—whether you use a spreadsheet, an online form, or another in-house tool—and can be adjusted as you find other metrics and costs that contribute to or detract from the ROI.

SKO Costs

Travel expenses for employees

If you will be holding an in-person event, include a field in your calculator for travel expenses, then multiply this by the number of attendees who don’t live locally and will be traveling in for the event.

Formula: Average travel expenses per person x # of attendees traveling= Total travel expenses for SKO

You might need to break this down per travel method, such as train, car, and flight costs.

Food and drink

This one is simple if you hire a catering company as they will usually provide a per-head fee. Sometimes, food and drink costs are included in a venue’s overall costs.

Venue overhead

If you are holding an in-person event (recommended) and won’t be holding it at company HQ, the venue overhead needs to go into the calculator.

The venue needs to be considered carefully, and is a vital determinant of the event’s overall ROI in the long term.

The venue you select for your SKO will impart several messages to your employees, including:

How much they are valued.
Their perception of how well the company is doing—people like working for a winning team, something that can affect employee turnover.

Slapping a sales team together at the HQ boardroom for the SKO, where no one can move and the feel is not one of “celebration,” might actually harm overall employee morale. And employee satisfaction translates into dollars. A Gallup report on the matter shows clearly that employee engagement has an enormous effect on multiple performance metrics.

Similarly, hiring out a superyacht for your next SKO is also not necessarily the greatest move because the cost will likely wipe out any potential returns.

There are many excellent event venues available that are professional and don’t cost an arm and a leg.

Venue decorations

This may seem like a silly consideration, and as such, can be easily overlooked. But just as the HQ boardroom is unlikely to excite employees, a bland event venue with no spark will also only go so far.

Hotels and conference centers often contain packages that include decorations but these won’t help if you want to do something to show your company’s branding.

A few well-placed banners and balloons, as well as event souvenirs like shirts or office supplies, can go a long way. These are negligible costs that can do wonders for overall employee satisfaction but can add up when not monitored, so they definitely should go on the calculator.

PA/presentation system

Even if your event is in person, you will need to consider technology. If the venue doesn’t provide a PA system and your company doesn’t have one, you will need to rent or buy the equipment. You will also likely need laptops, cords, connectors, and IT help setting everything up so presenters can easily navigate the system and show any slides they may have.

Note: Don’t forget to test the system beforehand! Poor-quality sound can turn an otherwise well-prepared event on its head quickly, bringing all the prep-work to nothing.

Speaker costs

It’s a great idea to hire one or two external keynote speakers for the event. This can add to the feeling that the event is a big deal.

Well-known speakers are notoriously expensive, some of them charging many thousands of dollars for an hour’s talk. Perhaps your company can afford this, but will it bring ROI?

In the interests of a return, rather pick someone that isn’t a household name but which likewise has some meaning to your employees. The possibilities for this are endless and each company will usually know instinctively who to get.

Some great speakers don’t charge anything for a presentation. Look around locally for any opinion leaders, professionals, and even politicians who would be willing to talk to your sales team about something relative to their profession.

Finding local speakers is also a great way to build new partnerships for your business.

Award costs

It’s a great idea to award top performers in front of the entire team and to make a big deal about it. Aside from any financial rewards—such as bonuses—you might want to offer something symbolic such as an engraved pen, a specially designed plaque, or a crystal trophy. These are not usually expensive.

Your budget will determine how extravagant you’d like to make this. But its potential to drive ROI can be quite high, not only in the individual being awarded, but also in other reps who might feel more driven as a result of the potential recognition.

Individual gifts/mementos

Will there be a small gift for each attendee? This could be as simple as a card and some chocolates thanking them for attending, or containing a memorable quote from the CEO. A little goes a long way.

Stationery

Although probably a small cost, it is a cost nonetheless. If you expect attendees to fill out forms or questionnaires at the event, you’ll need to provide pens, and also consider the costs of printing the questionnaire itself.

If your company uses Brainshark, employees can fill out questionnaires in the app.

Entertainment

Will there be entertainment after the event, such as a band, or a DJ? If there will be dancing, are the lighting costs included in the venue’s rental cost?

Planning costs: Total hours required per person to plan the event

Some employees will spend valuable hours of their time planning various elements of the event. These cumulative hours need to be accounted for in the calculator.

This is a tricky one, and each company must decide how to do it for themselves. Some factors to consider are:

Was the person hired specifically for this task? Then the hours are as simple as dividing their salary by the number of hours spent on this particular event.
Has the person been pulled from some other activity to plan the event? Is there a loss of income for the activities that they have been pulled away from?

Formula: Planner Salary / Hours spent planning= Cost of SKO planning per planner

Specialized software

If you’re holding a virtual or hybrid event, there will be costs involved with the platform you use, such as virtual event software— more and more of these products are popping up now that virtual events are here to stay.

SKO ROI

Unless you’ll be holding training activities at the event, the leading indicators to measure will be few. The primary leading metric will be the number of attendees, and perhaps a few measuring engagement at the event.

As for lagging indicators, here are the primary ones that can be used to accurately establish a sales kickoff’s ROI.

Percentage Increase in ACV—Annual Contract Value

ACV itself does not necessarily measure the event’s ROI. But the difference in ACV—specifically increases in ACV following the event—is a direct measurement of the SKO’s effectiveness.

Companies might want to count the ACV generated by event attendees only, and not from new hires who didn’t attend the event.

ACV Formula: Total contract value / Total years in contract = ACV

When your reps increase ACV, that also increases the company’s MRR (monthly recurring revenue).

But keep in mind that the event might have an intangible impact on the company’s overall culture and mood which itself could impact sales made by new hires.

Total Sales Increase

The difference between the previous quarter’s sales—before the SKO—and the new quarter’s sales will show a direct measure of the sales improvement because of the event. The difference between the total improvement in sales, and the cost of the event, will give you the most direct possible measure of your ROI.

Other SKO Benefits

There are less tangible benefits that absolutely improve ROI and should be included in any presentation showing a Sales Kickoff Event’s effectiveness. Here is a list of the most important ones:

Shorter sales cycles

If the overall time of sales cycles—from lead generation to close—is lower, this shows that your SKO had an impact.

Converting this to a monetary value is simple because shorter sales cycles should also mean that more sales cycles were completed, and so the total sales value should be higher. Shorter sales cycles also reduce CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).

Customer Acquisition Cost Formula= Cost of Sales and Marketing / # of New Customers Acquired

Reduced employee turnover in your sales teams

Events like SKOs that show employees they are valued and create a sense of community decrease turnover. Reducing employee turnover can cost the company anywhere from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary. Attrition also reduces the company’s ability to consistently generate sales and recruit high performers.

Reduced training time in months following the event

Ideally, your event wouldn’t just be about the pep talk and the fun, but would also include exercises and hands-on coaching sessions to improve sales reps’ performance. If the training is effective and memorable, attendees will require less training in the months following the event, meaning they can spend more time working on sales cycles.

This directly improves sales and ROI.

Boost in team morale and employee satisfaction

As shown above, employee satisfaction has an enormous impact on multiple performance metrics.

Gather valuable information and feedback directly from reps

One of the most important aspects of sales kickoff events is the wealth of information that managers and sales leaders gather directly from employees. There’s an old joke about a factory whose production went down mysteriously for months. They hired external consulting agencies, actuarial scientists, and other bigshots to establish the problem. None of them could figure it out. After the factory went bankrupt, one factory worker stood outside lamenting how he had stood outside the foreman’s door every day, trying to tell him that a stone had gotten lodged in one of the machines and was blocking production but the foreman never gave him the time of day.

It’s unfathomable that such an error would happen in modern companies that should be more inclusive of all employees regardless of their position, but remnants of the “managers versus employees” attitude of the previous century sometimes still linger in today’s companies.

SKOs get managers to rub shoulders with the people on the ground. These are the folks who work in the trenches and so have insight into sales cycles that managers often don’t. Paying close attention to what they say at these events can pay off multiple times over in improved sales processes and training.

Expected costs of a sales kickoff event

Most estimates for an in-person sales kickoff event hover around $1,000 – $2,000 per person, but this can vary widely depending on the venue, the distance employees must travel, and which speakers will be hired (if any).

The cost of a virtual event is more predictable because travel and venue are removed, although the variables of speakers, gifts for attendees (these would need to be mailed), and additional technology need to be taken into account.

It is our opinion that nothing beats an in-person event for morale and overall improvement in sales. They’re also a lot more fun!

We’ve put together a sample cost breakdown for a sales kickoff event in Massachusetts, which is where Brainshark is headquartered. We’ve created the budget for the iconic and yet very fictitious Acme, Inc., which has a few remote workers and so will need to pay for travel and accommodation costs for 10 people. The total number of event attendees for this sample will be 100.

Sample Budget for Fictitious Acme, Inc. Sales Kickoff Event

“Party” Venue in MA, including food and drinks	$7,500¹ ($75 per person)
Travel for 10 remote employees (all located in the USA), including shuttle to and from airport, and meals	$4,000 ($400 per person)
Additional venue decorations (branded balloons, flower arrangements, blow-up photos)	$1,000
DJ	$495²
Local speakers	No cost due to existing business partnerships.
PA System	No cost, as the DJ will provide the PA system.
Presentation system	No cost. Acme, Inc. will use existing company hardware.
Award costs (three crystal sales trophies):	$159³
100 “DInner Party” gifts	$1,500⁴
Stationery for surveys and questionnaires	Free if companies are using Brainshark to conduct surveys.
Specialized software	Not necessary as all sales training and presentation can be done within Brainshark.
Employee hours required	$4,500 (150 hrs @ $30/hour)
Total:	$19,154

[1] https://www.eventective.com/waltham-ma/party-event-venues/
[2] https://www.bark.com/en/us/dj-hire/massachusetts/
[3] https://www.awards.com/sales-awards-ideas
[4] https://parade.com/441393/janenemascarella/dinner-party-table-gifts-to-impress-your-guests-15-or-less/

With these formulas, typical costs and returns, your personalized spreadsheet or calculator, and sample budget in hand, you will be able to present your company leadership with the numbers and evidence they need to put their support behind a sales kickoff event that energizes your sales team and benefits the entire organization.