AMA: Sharebird CEO, Alex Lopes on Messaging

The "one and done" model for kickoff does not work, so it's a great question. What happens AFTER kickoff is equally, if not more, important than sessions at kickoff. Follow-up resources and activities: * Immediately after kickoff, be sure that Sales has access to the content shared, so they can refer back to it. Content should be easy to find in a single place. Ideally, a sales leader emails this notification out to their teams to reinforce the importance. * About 3-4 weeks after kickoff, have check-in calls with sales teams to hear/answer their questions. This is ideally done in smaller groups or regional team meetings (<20 people) vs one big call. After kickoff, sales should have had time to digest this information. Now, they will have practical questions as they try out new messaging, materials, etc. This is also a great forcing factor to ensure they consume the information. * Pull through kickoff content into your sales newsletters, if you have them. Consider focusing on one key topic each time. * Stay close to sales leaders, so you continue to get the "real" feedback. Ask what's not working, so you can adjust and adapt the content. Ask what is working, so you can weave that into your sales newsletter. Depending on your business situation, you may want to have a standing invite to their monthly team call to continue sharing new updates and reinforcing the message. * About a quarter after kickoff, host a reinforcement training. Round up the sales leaders and reps who are most successful with this content, and have THEM lead it. It's most credible that way, so it's not just "our" content. * About 6 months after kickoff, consider a survey to see how seller's confidence has changed since pre-kickoff and where the gaps are. Then, react in 2H accordingly (and start planning next year's kickoff, too!)

The size of market is often inversely correlated with success. One wants to go after a fairly small market and own that market instead of going after a very large market that is very competitive. The best market to go after has the following characteristics: 1. the market is fairly small (ideally under $50 million) 2. no one else smart is currently focusing solely on the market 3. the market is going to grow really fast (like 100% per year) 4. no one else except you believe the market is going to grow really fast (so you don't invite competitors) 5. the market has a "central" element that makes it very important to many adjacent markets (so when the market stops growing fast, the company can move to an adjacent market) 6. you are not doing something that another company could offer for free for position (try to never compete with Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc.) 7. there is a powerful reason for a winner-take-most scenario where one company will own the market (often because of network effects or the centrality of the business). If you don't do this, you are likely in an execution business. Execution businesses can be super large businesses, but they are way harder to run than product businesses. One could get lucky and pick a market with the seven criteria above, but usually only a great team will have the foresight to pick this market.