Why does team building matter at a sales kick-off?
A sales kick-off is often the only time the whole team is in one place all year. New starters meet their colleagues for the first time. Regional teams who compete with each other on the leaderboard all year finally share a table. And after a day of targets and forecasts, people need something that connects them as a team, not just as a number on a dashboard.
A well-chosen activity does that. It gives people shared moments to talk about at dinner. It builds the camaraderie that carries a team through a tough quarter. And it lets that competitive streak come out in a way that brings people closer rather than pulling them apart.
1. Trading Table: a trading and negotiation team building activity
If your sales team lives for the deal, start here. Trading Table, a trading and negotiation team building activity, drops teams into a live market with a stock of virtual smoothie ingredients and one goal: make the most profit before the market closes.
Across four trading rounds, teams buy, sell and negotiate with rival tables while prices rise and fall with market twists. It rewards commercial awareness, quick decisions and good communication, so it feels instantly familiar to a sales audience. Two Onsite hosts keep the room moving and reveal the Trading Table champions at the end.
2. Movie Studio: a film-making team building activity
Movie Studio, our film-making team building activity, turns your team into a film crew. Each team receives scene prompts and films their short scenes on smartphones before uploading them through the app.
The twist is what makes it so useful for a kick-off. In round one, teams work alone with little context. In round two, they collaborate across the whole production to link storylines and characters. The difference between the two films says more about cross-team collaboration than any slide could. It all ends with a premiere where everyone watches the finished films together.
3. Level Up: an indoor team building challenge
Level Up, our indoor team building challenge, is our most popular indoor activity, and it’s easy to see why. Teams race through 10 levels that get harder as they go, mixing photo and video challenges, puzzles and quick-fire trivia.
There are two ways to run it. The original Level Up runs for 60 or 90 minutes and works for groups of 8 up to 750, so it slots neatly into a packed daytime agenda. If your kick-off ends with a team dinner, Level Up: Dinner Edition, a dinner team building activity, keeps everyone at the table, with trivia, puzzles and photo and video challenges designed to run between courses.
Either way, the live leaderboard keeps every team engaged from start to finish, and you can add custom questions about your products, your year or your team to make it feel like your own.
4. The Insiders: a Traitors-inspired team building activity
Want a talking point that lasts well beyond the kick-off? The Insiders: Indoor Edition, a Traitors-inspired team building activity, is a hidden-identity activity built around the suspicion of TV show The Traitors.
One team is secretly briefed to chase hidden objectives while everyone else takes on three rounds of challenges and mixed-team missions. Teams swap tables, suspicion builds and it all leads to a final vote and reveal, hosted live by two Onsite hosts. It’s a brilliant way to explore trust, communication and reading the room, all face to face.
The Insiders is a Wildgoose activity inspired by, and not affiliated with, The Traitors.
5. The Hidden Lab: an indoor escape room team building activity
Indoor Escape: The Hidden Lab, an indoor escape room for teams, brings escape room problem-solving into any meeting room or conference hall. Teams follow a missing scientist’s trail across three stages, cracking codes on interactive screens to recover the research before a rival gets there first.
There’s a purpose behind the points too. Every point your team scores plants real trees through our partnership with Tree-Nation, up to 7 per participant. For a kick-off that wants to start the year with a sense of shared purpose, that’s a strong message to send.
How do you choose the right activity for your kick-off?
Start with what you want people to feel when they leave. For pure competitive energy, Trading Table and Level Up are hard to beat. For collaboration across teams and regions, Movie Studio makes the point in a way people remember. For trust and talking points, choose The Insiders. For problem-solving with a purpose, choose The Hidden Lab.
Then think about practicalities. All five run indoors through the Wildgoose Platform, in teams of 4 to 6, with no props or equipment to ship to your venue. You can commit to the venue first and we’ll shape the activity around it, or pick the activity first and let the venue follow.
When should you book for January?
As early as you can. January is one of the busiest months of the year for sales kick-offs, and Onsite hosts get booked up quickly in the first few weeks. Locking in your date now means one less thing on the list while you plan the rest of the day.
You pick the activity, we create the experience.
Wildgoose has been delivering team experiences since 2004, with a range of indoor, outdoor, virtual and hybrid activities for teams anywhere in the world. Talk to an expert about your sales kick-off.
