Affinity Travel Co.
Sales Kickoff

Set your revenue team up to win the year.

Sales kickoffs are high-stakes, high-energy, and logistically demanding. We manage the complexity so your CRO and sales leadership can focus on the message, not the catering order.

The Challenge

An SKO brings your entire revenue organization together, often from multiple cities or countries, for a short window of time. There is a lot of ground to cover: strategy, training, alignment, and the energy and motivation that carries people through the rest of the year. When planning falls to sales leadership, it pulls them away from growing the business. When it gets handed to an Executive Assistant or Chief of Staff, the logistics get managed but the soul of the event gets lost. Someone who does not live inside the revenue organization cannot design an experience that actually resonates with the people in it.

Man presenting power point to small audience in start-up office.
What We Do

Leave ready to sell. Not just get home.

Venue & Production

The right space, set up to perform.

Venue sourcing for hotels and conference centers. Hotel room block management and attrition negotiation. A/V and meeting production coordination, so even those not able to attend in person can still benefit.

Spacious boardroom
Keynote address at sales kickoff event
Logistics & Facilitation

Everyone arrives ready. Every session runs on time.

Flight coordination and seamless airport logistics so attendees arrive ready to work. Speaker and facilitation sourcing for a memorable keynote and meetings that run on time. Onsite coordination so revenue leaders can participate, not just project manage.

Culture & Engagement

The moments that build momentum

Group dining designed with event objectives in mind, be it cross-regional networking or awards celebration. Standout moments, a surprise musical performance, a culinary competition, custom swag nobody expected, that kick the year off right and give people something to talk about on the flight home.

Presentation at team dinner
The ATC Difference

The goal is momentum.

A great SKO leaves your team energized, aligned, and ready to execute. We start with your objectives and build the agenda, the energy, and the experience around delivering that outcome.

An offsite and an incentive trip, in one.

An SKO has to do two things at once: get the business done and fire people up. We balance rigorous working sessions with the high-energy moments, the meals, the activities, the small touches, that make people feel the company has invested in them.

We manage the details so your team can be present.

Your sales leaders should be in the room closing deals and building culture, not answering vendor questions or chasing down room assignments. We handle every logistical detail and curate every experience so the people who matter most can focus on what they came to do.

Frequently asked questions

When should we host our sales kickoff?
January or early February is the dominant window for North American SKOs — most companies anchor around the second or third week of January, after the holiday slowdown but before Q1 is fully spent. Booking by August of the prior year is standard; venues capable of hosting 200+ in that window are typically full by October.
How much does a sales kickoff cost per attendee?
For a 2-3 day SKO with 100-300 attendees, plan on $1,800-$3,200 per person all-in, depending on city tier, hotel class, and production scope. Hotel will be around 40% of the cost, 25% for F&B, 15% for A/V and other production details, and another 20% is generally flights.
How long should our SKO be?
Two-and-a-half to three days is the right shape for most SKOs: arrival evening with welcome reception, one full day of content with an awards or celebratory activity the second evening, and then departures on day three, with a possible additional content session in the morning before flights in the afternoon. Extending to four days yields diminishing returns unless you're rolling out a major product or org change.
Should our SKO include training, awards, or both?
Both, in deliberate sequence. The strongest format is: day 1 — strategy + product + go-to-market training; day 2 — enablement deep-dives and breakouts; day 3 — awards, recognition, and a forward-looking keynote. Mixing recognition into early sessions risks losing focus; saving it to the end gives reps something to leave fired up about.
How do you handle remote attendees for a hybrid SKO?
We recommend full in-person for SKOs whenever possible — the ROI is in hallway conversations and shared experience, both of which collapse over Zoom. Where remote attendance is unavoidable (compliance, parental leave, geography), we treat it as broadcast-only: keynotes streamed, breakouts pre-recorded, no expectation of two-way participation during work sessions.
Can you handle the on-site production (stage, AV, keynote speakers)?
Yes. We source and contract with AV for our clients. For SKOs when we do not have an onsite coordinator, we still create the run-of-show document and act as the bridge between content owners (sales leadership) and the production team, so you can show up confident all the technical details of your sessions will go smoothly. We also frequently source keynote speakers, facilitators, and emcees for SKO events.
Should we run our sales kickoff in-house or hire an event planning company?
For sales kickoffs under 30 attendees with a flat agenda (one ballroom, one dinner, no travel), an in-house Chief of Staff or Sales Ops lead can manage planning. Beyond that, the math favors hiring out. SKOs require coordinating 8–15 vendors (venue, A/V, catering, transport, swag, photography, speaker, hotels, signage), and the work pulls a senior staff member off revenue-generating activity for 200+ hours. An event planning company manages the vendor stack while the CRO and Sales Ops own content, keynote, and message. Agency fees typically land at 8–12% of total program budget — comparable to the loaded cost of the staff time they replace.

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