Founders and sales leaders across the SaaS world are preparing for their Annual Kick Off meetings. This annual meeting is a great opportunity to bring the entire company together around the annual goals and priorities for the business.

At Levelset, we established the habit of holding an Annual Kick Off every year, even when the company was only 10 employees. It’s such an important habit that sets the tone for the upcoming year, yet so many companies get it wrong. Why?

Many leaders confuse the purpose of your Kick Off meeting. They structure the meeting and the presentations for the purpose of delivering information to the team. The presentations are dull, matter-of-fact, and they don’t ignite the emotion of the team.

If you have ever been a part of an annual kick off meeting that you were dreading to attend, you know exactly what I mean. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Your Annual Kick Off Meeting should be the highlight of your team’s January, it should be a meeting that the team looks forward to every year.

You can make your Kick Off Meeting one of the best meetings of the year, but it requires work from across the company to make it great.

This is the exact approach that we used at Levelset to run our Annual Kick Off Meeting for a team of 400 employees. (hint: it’s the same format we used to run the kick off meeting at 10 employees).

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The Founder is the Quarterback

Someone needs to be the play-caller for this very important meeting, a “quarterback” for the event. Don’t hand this responsibility off to People Operations or Market. That’s the job of the Founder or CEO.

The founder is the chief architect of the content, they are the emcee for the event, and they are responsible for delivering an experience for the team.

The head of the company needs to sweat every detail of this meeting - Pull the slides together. Nominate the speakers. Review the awards. Approve the swag designs. - because this meeting sets the tone for how they communicate to the team throughout the year. Every monthly all hands meeting or quarterly kickoff is an extension of this annual meeting.

The founder owns the company vision and tells the company story. Every Kick Off meeting should start with a story about where the company has been, what it has accomplished, and where it is going in the future.

So get your story straight and put it in terms that inspires the team. Choose a theme for the year and wrap your story around that theme.

That’s how you kick off the Kick Off meeting.

Once you have your story and your theme, remind everyone in the company why you are here and what you stand for…

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Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values

Every leader knows that the company purpose, the company vision, the mission or BHAG, and the company values are important. Most companies get once, write these things down in a document or presentation, then stash them away in their Dropbox account never to be seen again.

Don’t do that.

You purpose, vision, mission, and values are CRITICAL to building a world-class team and culture. You have to make these things come alive within the company!

If you have been shy about your own company’s purpose, vision, mission, and core values, this year is the year to change that. The kick off meeting is a great place to reinforce these tenets of your company culture.

Reiterate to the entire company what your purpose is. Why are you in business? Who do you serve? Why does it matter?

Next you must clearly articulate the vision for the business. Where are you headed? What does that “city on the hill” look and feel like for the company, for the customer, and for the market.

Then remind them what the mission is for the business. What is everyone working toward? The big, hairy, audacious goal that aligns with the company purpose. Put it in black and white and talk about how important this mission is for the business.

And finally, review each of the core values of the business. They should be more than platitudes that you put on the wall. Use stories from within the company from the last year to showcase how the company’s values are alive and thriving within the business.

Restating your company’s purpose and values over and over again highlights how important they are to the company. If you feel like you are talking about them too much, then you are doing it right.

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Looking Back at the Last Year

This section of the meeting is straightforward. Remind the team what you set out to do at the beginning of the year. It’s helpful if you still have the slides from the last kickoff meeting. Go through each of the annual objectives and recognize where the company succeeded.

Be transparent where the company didn’t achieve its goal. It’s OK to talk about the misses and the learnings that came from those misses. Don’t dwell on the negative, however, because this is meant to be an inspiring meeting for the team.

Some things to call out with the team:

• Revenue performance to plan
• Number of customers added
• Major customers or logos closed
• Major product releases
• Product engagement traction (increase in user count, for example)
• Key partnerships or integrations launched
• Number of new hires added to the team

You have your own story to tell about the past year based on the size and scale of your business. This is a place to recognize the collective effort of everyone across the company, so lean into the bright spots and show the team how proud they should be of their own work.

And finally, make sure to include a customer story or two. Talk about the value that you are delivering for that customer, get the Customer Success team involved to tell the story because they know the details of the relationship. This gets the team fired up.‍

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Celebrate the Individual Wins, Even If You Have To Make Them Up

Once you have reviewed the team-wide performance from the last year, it’s time to recognize the individual performances across the team.

Don’t waste the opportunity to manufacture huge WOW moments for your sales team.

Recognize each top performer by name.

Put their name and face in bold letters on the presentation deck and be specific about what they did.

If you have special swag, give this out to each team member who is recognized.

One of my favorite awards that we gave out every year at Levelset were the Core Value awards. One award for each core value was given to a team member, nominated by their peers. What made it impactful was that the individual’s direct manager presented the award and spoke to the merits of the individual’s performance. This was a memorable and emotional section of our annual meeting that the entire company looked forward to each year.

Other individual wins to celebrate:

• Top salesperson by new bookings
• Major promotions from within the company
• Product leader whose projects drove the most product engagement
• Engineer who deployed the most code
• Finance team member who saved the company the most money
• People Ops team member who recruited the most new employees
• Marketer who deliver the most demand

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You get the idea. You can make them up if you have to. The point is that public recognition is such an easy win for executive leaders. Give the gift of gratitude and you will win over your team.

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Looking Ahead To The Next Year

When you shift your focus to the year ahead, its an opportunity for the rest of the leadership team to get involved.

There should be a few annual priorities for the company, and the executive responsible for delivering on the priority should present them to the team. Keep it short, 3 minutes or less.

You should give enough information for the team to understand what the priority is and what success looks like. You can also include some talking points on how the team is going to deliver the outcomes associated with those priorities, but keep it short. The engineering team doesn’t care much about how sales is going to hit its number, and vice versa. Save the details for breakout sessions for each team.

Some things you definitely want to cover with the entire company:

• The revenue plan / growth plan
• The headcount plan and which teams are growing
• The product roadmap with major product releases scheduled

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Remember, keep it short. Get the point across and leave the finer details for the breakout sessions.

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Breakout Sessions for Each Company Function

Once the company priorities have been presented, it’s time for each function in the company to have their own Kick Off.

We divided the company into three parts:

1. Revenue: Marketing, Sales, Customer Success
2. Operations: Finance, People Ops, Operations, Strategy
3. Technology: Product, Engineering, Data

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Each team reviews the priorities specific to that team and completed a more in depth version of the same meeting. Review the previous year, recognize top performers, look ahead to the current year’s execution plan.

The major difference in the breakout session is that it is very specific to the team. For example, the Revenue team will talk about the revenue forecast and the demand generation expectations. They will dive into customer retention forecast and plans. They will review any material updates to the operations of those teams, like structural changes or any upcoming technology that will be implemented. They will talk about the variable compensation plans and the qualifications for President’s Club.

These details are better saved for the breakout sessions because the audience will be most impacted by the information being shared.

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Some Tips to Make It A Great Meeting

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1. Get out of the building - hold the meeting in a place that is apart from your normal office. The change in scenery will enhance the experience.
2. Get the entire team involved - the audience will get presenter fatigue if there are only 2 or 3 presenters. The more you can distribute the presentation workload, the better the message is received.
3. Don’t skimp on swag - get the shirts and hats and socks. Also get something interesting that each person on the team will enjoy. This makes an outsized impact on the team.
4. Make it a full-day event - do the all hands in the morning, serve lunch, then do the breakout sessions in the afternoon
5. Incorporate professional development - set aside time after the breakout sessions to do some training and enablement for the team
6. Make it social (if you are in person) - make sure you create space after the kickoff activities for the team to get together socially. They aren’t going to retain much of the information that you share, but they will remember the relationships that they develop at this in-person meeting.

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Here’s to a great year for you and for your company!