Mortenson

Kara Wallace

Kara Wallace is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Mortenson, where she leads integrated sales, marketing and growth initiatives. With more than 25 years of experience, she focuses on enabling teams, fostering collaboration and shaping how the organization pursues and wins work. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

In this feature, Kara Wallace shares how buyer overload, peer-driven engagement and intentional event design are reshaping customer events and sales kickoffs. She explains why listening, format discipline and respect for time directly influence trust, relevance and business outcomes.

I lead strategic marketing and business development at Mortenson, where my team sits at the center of a diverse, project-driven organization. We oversee the systems, programs and platforms that support sales and marketing teams across our businesses, from customer events and seller development to core marketing infrastructure.

When we define our role internally, it comes down to two priorities: winning work and building brand. In our industry, those outcomes are inseparable. Every decision we make supports one or both.

How Buyer Behavior Has Changed

The outcomes matter as buyer expectations continue to change in ways that are impossible to ignore. Buyers are more overloaded than ever. They carry pressure from their own roles and from their own customers, which means time away from work has to feel justified. If we ask for their attention, the experience has to deliver real value and break through a crowded, demanding day.

That reality has changed how we think about customer events. We design events for different comfort levels and interaction styles by offering varied formats, including large-group discussion, small-group conversation and unstructured peer time. Those choices are intentional. They create space for people to engage in ways that feel natural rather than forced.

Trust does not come from slides. It comes from conversation. At an event, the most valuable moments consistently happen when participants learn from each other. Peer exchange accelerates learning because people recognize their own challenges in someone else’s story. Sales-heavy agendas shut it down, while peer conversation deepens relationships with less effort.

“Sales kickoffs provide a rare chance to gather honest input, ask focused questions, test assumptions and uncover gaps that dashboards often miss.”

We also learned through experience that format matters as much as content. We tested hybrid events and saw early promise in their reach. But we could not create a personal experience for both in-person and virtual audiences at the same time. Each group felt the gap. We stopped mixing formats. Virtual and in-person events each work best when designed with their own pace, structure and facilitation.

What Events Should Really Accomplish

Customer events serve another purpose that is often underestimated. They allow leaders to listen closely. Slides, surveys and dashboards capture only part of the story. When approached with intent, these moments become a goldmine for insight. The most useful signals surface during side conversations and peer discussions, where people reveal what they may not feel comfortable saying during a more formal facilitated session.

That insight is qualitative, but it carries real weight. Accessing it requires deep listening, not passive observation. Marketing leaders cannot remain on the sidelines. Participation matters. Listening well requires being present in the conversation, earning a seat at the table and paying attention to what resonates and what does not. We often leave one question intentionally unresolved, creating a clear reason for sales teams to continue the conversation after the room clears.

Designing Internal Events That Actually Work

Sales kickoffs are different from customer events and require a different approach. One of the most common mistakes is filling the agenda with senior leaders speaking to the audience. It may be easy to plan, but it rarely holds attention. Messages land more effectively when peers or practitioners share them and sellers see their own experience reflected in those stories.

Workshops and participatory sessions consistently drive higher engagement and clearer learning. Sales kickoffs also provide a rare opportunity to collect honest input. With a captive audience in one place, teams can ask focused questions, test assumptions and surface gaps that dashboards often miss. Surveys are more effective in this setting, and informal conversations often reveal unexpected insights. Those connections across teams create real business value and make the investment worthwhile.

Time remains the primary constraint for everyone involved. Events require time, and being a good steward of that time matters. The responsibility is to design experiences that prioritize relevance, exchange and learning. When we do that well, trust builds over time, relationships strengthen and business outcomes follow.