Portfolio Sales Kickoffs (“SKOs”)

Earlier this week I flew down to the Nozomi Networks 2022 SKO (“Sales Kick-off”). The event, a 4-day gathering, including great talks from company and industry leaders. I was excited to be the voice of the investor and spoke to the company’s sales & marketing teams for about an hour. I really enjoy speaking to sales teams. Why?

The phrase “product sells itself” is not true when you are selling to enterprise accounts. Even the best products require great sales execution: from demand generation, pre-sales, proof of concepts, sales conversion, post-ops, and account management. Sales teams at Nozomi, along with most of the companies in our portfolio, are global. These primarily distributed teams rarely get unified time. This is the SKO’s impactful opportunity: where the company mission, culture, goals, lessons,… and compensation structures can be communicated.

I believe most start-ups begin having SKOs far too late in their development. Alignment for a growing sales team on customer messaging, company values, product roadmaps, successful and failed sales stories… this is how the fabric of a revenue operation grows. I had my first talk to Nozomi back in 2017 when there were 10 people in the room. This year Nozomi had over 100 in the room or dialed in. Building a values-aligned (and non-mercenary) sales team elevates a company’s likelihood of commercial success and is a great investment of internal resources. My guidance is for our portfolio to start those SKOs early, and have them every 6 months into perpetuity.