Categories: Sales Leadership | Sales Kickoff
As 2026 approaches, revenue leaders face a pivotal moment. The pressure to grow is intense, but the path to sustainable success is complex. Economic volatility, rapid AI adoption, and shifting buyer expectations have created a landscape where proactive leadership and business predictability are mission-critical.
Force Management’s latest guide, The Growth Imperative: How leaders drive discipline and scalability in the modern revenue organization, outlines six essential priorities we've seen emerge among the high-growth organizations we work with for the upcoming year. In it, we explore the actions that we've seen lead to greater customer value, more predictable revenue, and elite execution across the go-to-market function.
In today's blog, we'll preview the six core priorities that leaders are considering in their 2026 strategy to keep their organizations future-ready and productive in a rapidly fluctuating market. Download the full guide for an in-depth look at key action items and resources.
1. Increasing Company Valuation
Enterprise value is the scoreboard for revenue leaders. The most valuable sales organizations have unlocked productivity by investing in a repeatable sales message and process that drives scalable growth. Rigorous qualification and a universal value message are the building blocks of predictability, and predictability is what drives investor and board confidence.
Execution of these strategies at the seller level is today's revenue leaders' greatest challenge. The first step to unlocking top-down execution is executive alignment. Your executive team is aligned on your revenue goals, but are they aligned on the specific GTM approach and actions that will produce them? Many leadership teams find that, when all members answer these four essential questions, they actually have a lot of variation in their answers:
1. What problems do you solve for your customers?
2. How specifically do you solve those problems?
3. How do you solve those problems differently or better than your competition?
4. What's your proof of the outcomes of your solution?
2. Accelerating Growth from Existing Customers
Net Recurring Revenue (NRR) is now a top priority for 73% of executive sales leaders, according to Gartner. Driving value with Customer Success teams has consistently been an area of investment for leaders in recent years, but many organizations still miss the broader picture of value across the customer journey.
Customer Success or Client Success teams can't deliver value on their own. There has to be a continuous value story that's told from the first buyer interaction to the renewal conversation. That requires a common value message that goes beyond sales, as well as intentional leadership direction around handoffs and documentation. If your teams are struggling with renewals and upsells, you likely need to invest in better cross-functional alignment across the customer journey, starting at the top with executive alignment.
Get the Growth Imperative guide for more on this topic.
3. Improving Forecast Accuracy
As a sales leader, you rely on forecasts to make strategic bets. Your board and investors rely on them to make performance assessments. Forecasting is critical to the health of a sales organization in today's volatile market — yet 65% of revenue leaders say unreliable forecast data is a major source of revenue loss, according to Clari.
The solution? Standardized qualification benchmarks, a strong management operating rhythm, and a culture of accountability. AI is rapidly advancing in its ability to predict patterns and forecast. But a foundational sales process, documentation protocols, and pipeline visibility are still essential to ensure the data you're providing to your predictive systems is sound. We have a guide on how to prepare your sales organization to maximize the impact of AI if you want more on this topic.
4. Expanding Revenue with New Product Offerings
As AI reshapes the competitive landscape, many organizations are introducing new solutions to remain competitive. A critical mistake we often see leaders making in this situation is not dedicating enough investment or strategy into the messaging behind new products.
Launching a product that is a new technology is not the same as launching a new product in an existing market. The challenges and objections to new technology like AI are different and require specific messaging solutions. Don't make the mistake of waiting until your pipeline falters to diagnose and address this issue — we have a messaging guide for selling new technology that dives into how leaders can ensure consistent sales success when introducing new products to market.
5. Driving Business Value with Intelligent Systems
AI tools seem to be ubiquitous in the business world — but results are not. According to IBM, only 25% of leaders who have invested in AI tools in the past three years have seen their expected ROI.
This year, we hosted a panel discussion with leaders in the AI and Sales world, and our experts gave some insight as to the source of this issue: many leaders, faced with the fear of being left behind on AI, invest without a clear understanding of what problem they're trying to solve. When teams lack process rigor in how value is defined and how deals are documented and moved through the pipeline, AI can tend to accelerate and amplify existing execution issues.
We dive deeper in The Growth Imperative.
6. Invest in Talent and Culture for Future-Readiness
We often say that your talent is your greatest investment. Top-performing organizations attract and retain talent by defining what success looks like — and coaching to it. That means not just recruiting high-ticket A-players, but learning to develop them internally and reduce performance gaps that stifle execution.
Elite organizations accomplish that using a tool we call a success profile. The success profile is not just a hiring tool. It’s the foundation for onboarding, coaching, and performance management. As AI reshapes roles and responsibilities, your success profile must evolve to reflect new competencies and behaviors.
How Leaders are Acting Now on 2026 Priorities
If you have ambitious growth and revenue goals for 2026, you don't have time to wait. Right now, leaders are strategizing how they will align teams and equip them with the skills and processes to execute on the topline strategy at the sales kickoff.
Your sales kickoff (or revenue kickoff) is not just a teambuilding event. It’s a strategic lever, and your opportunity to:
- Lead from the front: Show your team what matters and why.
- Translate strategy into execution: Equip managers to coach, not just observe.
- Align cross-functionally: Ensure every department understands how their work supports revenue goals.
We're working with leaders right now to help them design an SKO that goes beyond the event and makes a lasting, tangible impact on their business. Let's discuss how we can help you align and execute.
