What is a SKO? And how to use Mural to build a better kickoff

Every year around this time, leaders everywhere are thinking about the same thing: SKO.

There’s the anticipation, the crazy pressure. And there’s always that familiar question in the background: how do we make this one actually matter?

I’ve planned a lot of Sales Kickoffs. And the pattern I see most often is this: teams invest weeks of preparation, pack the agenda full of beautiful slides and talented speakers, fly people in from everywhere, and then hope that momentum carries. 

It rarely does. Not because the content is bad, but because the experience was designed to deliver information rather than create alignment.

A SKO is one of the few moments when your entire revenue organization pauses at the same time. That’s a rare thing. And it’s powerful. But only if you use it well.

To me, a great SKO comes down to three questions. Every seller, and every function that supports them, should leave knowing: What are we trying to achieve this year? Why does it matter in the market right now? And what do I need to do differently starting tomorrow?

If those three questions don’t get answered clearly, the rest is noise.

Here’s how we approach it at Mural, and how we use Mural itself to design a better kickoff.

What is a SKO (Sales Kickoff)?

A SKO, short for Sales Kickoff, is a dedicated meeting, typically annual, where a company’s sales team aligns on the plan for the year ahead. It’s where revenue goals are clarified, strategy is reinforced, new products and messaging are introduced, and sellers are trained on the plays that will drive growth.

Sales Kickoff meetings usually happen at the start of a fiscal or calendar year and can span several days, especially for global teams. Some are in person. Some are virtual. Many are hybrid.

But format isn’t what determines impact. Alignment does.

I truly care about SKO because it’s the moment when strategy becomes real for the people who bring it to market. Marketing can craft the narrative,  product can build the roadmap, and leadership can set the targets. But SKO is where all of that translates into action. If our sales team doesn’t leave aligned on our narrative, our positioning, and our priorities, nothing else we build matters.

We treat SKO like a product launch

We don’t treat SKO like an event. We treat it like a launch.

It has all of those thoughtful things you need for a launch… A theme, a narrative arc, a clear business outcome. And we design all of that intentionally before anyone even thinks about opening a slide deck.

Every SKO starts with a single question: what must be true at the end of these few days for this year to succeed?

We don’t answer that in a static document. We bring together sales leadership, marketing, product, and enablement early in the process and start working in Mural. Sometimes that begins with a brainstorming template to quickly surface ideas across teams. Other times we build a mind map, placing our revenue goal at the center and branching outward into competitive shifts, customer pain points, product bets, messaging gaps, and execution risks.

Seeing the strategy mapped visually changes the quality of the conversation. It makes everyone’s assumptions visible, and it exposes gaps. It also forces the kind of clarity that a slide deck never will.

As ideas build, this is where AI becomes a real accelerator. We use Mural AI to cluster related themes, summarize patterns, and identify areas of momentum. Instead of manually sorting hundreds of sticky notes, we can organize thinking in seconds and focus our energy on the strategic tradeoffs that actually matter.

We’ll often run a quick voting session directly on the canvas to pressure-test themes. What feels urgent? What feels differentiated? What still feels unclear? Instead of debating abstract language in a conference room, we build strategic pillars and connect them explicitly to revenue priorities. If something doesn’t ladder back to the business, it shows.

What you end up with goes beyond a theme. You end up with shared conviction. 

And in my experience, shared conviction is the only thing that survives contact with Q1.

Building the SKO agenda in one shared canvas

Most SKO agendas live in spreadsheets. Ours lives in Mural.

We centralize everything in one collaboration space, from agenda to session content, experiential activations to design details. We start with an agenda template as a foundation, then adapt it to fit the story we’re telling that year. We create swimlanes for each day. We place keynotes, breakouts, workshops, and regional sessions on the canvas. We draw connections between sessions so the narrative flow is intentional, not accidental.

When everything’s visible, tradeoffs become obvious. Where are we heavy on information and light on interaction? Where are we repeating ourselves? Where does energy dip? Those questions are nearly impossible to answer in a spreadsheet. On a canvas, they jump out at you.

During planning, we use a Now, Next, Later template with our core planning team to stay focused and clearly visualize progress against deliverables and deadlines. And we use Mural AI to summarize updates and key takeaways along the way, so the planning team stays aligned without reading through every thread or sitting through another status meeting.

This approach dramatically reduces alignment meetings. Feedback happens in context, directly on the canvas. Cross-functional leaders across time zones can contribute asynchronously without waiting for the next calendar slot.

Designing content before slides exist

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in Sales Kickoff planning is jumping straight into presentations.

Slides are the output, they’re not the strategy.

Before anyone opens a presentation tool, we storyboard sessions in Mural. For keynotes, we map the narrative arc visually: the shift in the market, the opportunity in front of us, and the action required. We use diagrams and frameworks to connect product strategy to positioning, and positioning to pipeline impact.

For workshops, we design the experience directly in Mural. If we’re running a competitive positioning session, we use structured templates to guide sellers through strengths, weaknesses, and talk tracks. If we’re focused on territory planning, we create collaborative spaces to map accounts and white space opportunities. Everything’s built as an exercise sellers actually do, not a presentation they passively absorb.

During live SKO sessions, we use Mural’s Facilitation Superpowers® features, including timers, facilitator guides, private mode, and voting, to structure participation and keep large groups focused. The experience feels dynamic and purposeful, not chaotic.

By the time slides are built, the strategic thinking is already aligned. That reduces late-stage rewrites and elevates the quality of what we deliver to the room.

From event to execution

There’s an unfortunate thing that often happens after a Sales Kickoff ends.

That explosive energy from a great SKO fades by February. Messaging refinements get buried in email threads, and competitive insights sit in a slide deck no one reopens. Those action commitments everyone worked on disappear.

When sessions are built in Mural, the work doesn’t disappear. Territory plans, messaging refinements, competitive insights, and action commitments all live in a shared workspace that teams can return to throughout the year. Managers reference those canvases in pipeline reviews. Enablement builds on them. Marketing identifies recurring themes.

And we don’t just move on. After the event, the team runs a retro directly in Mural to capture wins and opportunities, creating a feedback loop that makes next year’s kickoff stronger. It’s how we continuously iterate on the experience itself, not just the content.

We think about this as one continuous growth journey, not a user journey and a buyer journey running in parallel, but a single motion where users adopt, endorse, and advocate, and that momentum carries through to the buyer. SKO is the starting line for that motion every year. And if the artifacts from SKO stay alive and connected to how teams actually work, the kickoff compounds rather than fades.

That’s the difference between inspiration and impact.

How to plan a Sales Kickoff using Mural

If you’re planning your own Sales Kickoff, start with clarity, not content.

Define your revenue priorities first. Get specific about the single outcome that must be true at the end of SKO for the year to succeed. Then bring cross-functional leaders into a mural early. Use a brainstorming or mind map template to explore risks and opportunities together. Use Mural AI to cluster ideas and surface patterns faster, so the team can focus on strategic choices instead of sorting sticky notes.

Build your agenda in one shared canvas so you can see the entire system. Adapt templates to fit your story, not the other way around. Design workshops before slides, focusing on outcomes and exercises over polish and presentation. Use voting, timers, and structured collaboration to drive real engagement.

Invite asynchronous feedback directly on the workspace to reduce meeting load. And keep the boards alive after SKO so the work continues into pipeline reviews, enablement follow-ups, and ongoing team operations. Run a retro to close the loop and capture what you’ll do differently next time.

A Sales Kickoff shouldn’t fade in February. It should create clarity that compounds all year.

Why visual collaboration changes SKO planning

Distributed work isn’t going away. Sales Kickoffs, whether in person, virtual, or hybrid, need to reflect that reality.

Static decks don’t create shared understanding. Shared thinking does. And shared thinking requires a space where everyone can contribute, see the full picture, and act on it together.

At Mural, we believe visual collaboration makes strategy visible and participatory. Templates provide structure so teams aren’t starting from scratch. AI removes the manual friction of organizing ideas. Mind maps clarify complexity. Shared canvases eliminate version chaos and the endless cycle of "can you send me the latest?"

We see this with our customers every day. And we hold ourselves to the same standard.

The launch of the year

For me, SKO is one of the most important moments of the year. It’s where strategy meets execution. Where narrative becomes real. Where momentum is built, or lost.

Using Mural to design our Sales Kickoff forces clarity. It invites participation. It turns planning from something performative into something shared.

SKO isn’t just a meeting. It’s the launch of your year. And when you build it together, visually and intentionally, you start aligned.

Start aligned, stay aligned, and the year takes care of itself.

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