How Yext uses Virtual Deal Rooms to Educate & Align a Distributed Team

‍The Yext Revenue Kickoff 2021

Yext is building the next big thing in search. The company has over 1,300 employees and 13 offices worldwide. They were recently honored as one of 2021’s best workplaces by Fortune for their collaborative company culture throughout this distributed workforce.

To showcase this collaborative culture, Yext turned to Filo.co to host their 2021 Revenue Kickoff. The three day virtual event brought together over 500 employees across two continents (EMEA and the US).

‍Read on below to see how they leveraged Deal Rooms to enhance peer-to-peer communication!

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More on Yext's 2021 Revenue Kickoff

Like most successful virtual sales kickoffs, the event aligned, energized and motivated employees around the year ahead. Yet beyond the traditional mainstage presentations, networking and Q&A, the organizers saw an opportunity to create a rich collaborative experience with peer-to-peer learning.

Facilitating Rapid Learning in a Virtual Environment

During the virtual SKO, employees across the Sales, Sales Development, Sales Engineering, and CSM teams could hop into short briefing sessions to learn the ins and outs of successful deals and customer accounts. An RVP led the session and account teams provided key learnings such as how the engagement unfolded, what the value drivers were for the customer, and shared best practices throughout the deal cycle. 

“The best way to know what is happening in an organization is to learn what is happening with customers. They are the real experts, so it was fantastic to see how the Yext organizers elevated their voices in their virtual sales kickoff.”
-Matt Compton, CEO, Filo.co

The hour-long block for Deal Room presentations consisted of two 30-minute sessions. In each session, employees had the option of 10 Deal Rooms they could join; allowing them to select the most pertinent aspects of the business to learn about, tailored to their role. Employees could easily navigate on their own, or switch sessions if needed without relying on facilitators.

Traditionally, running concurrent breakout sessions in a virtual event can be nightmarish for facilitators, and confusing for attendees. To streamline this without overburdening facilitators, the team relied on Filo as an organizational framework for the virtual group. Organizers set up Deal Rooms in advance, with each room corresponding to a single Deal and presenter. 

“Logistically it was very smooth. By having dedicated Deal Rooms, we could structure everything in advance, so it felt like a very light, easy event to manage.”
-Troy Burbank, Sales Tools & Content Management, Yext

Other takeaways from Yext's Virtual SKO

Beyond virtual deal rooms, the Yext team followed many of the best practices for virtual sales kickoffs. These included:

• Breakouts for networking between or after main stage presentations. 
• Fun social sessions like low-key workouts or yoga sessions
• They acknowledged high-performing team members a leaderboard, visible to everyone in the company, an awards ceremony, and badges throughout the event
  

The Results

In post-event surveys, the Deal Rooms were the most highly rated session throughout the event. 

“We saw some of the highest engagement in these sessions. It stimulated a cross-functional learning that would have been hard to achieve with standard presentations. Since employees live these experiences every day, they were the best teachers, and gave a depth of learning I don’t think we could have summarized.”
-Cindy Wei, VP Sales Enablement, Yext