Customer Advisory Board Implementation Process
In the customer advisory board implementation process blog post part 1, I covered customer advisory board best practices in stage 1 (Align) and stage two (Design and Plan).
The final stage is Deliver and Implement. Following customer advisory board implementation, driving value is critical to fuel your program’s ongoing growth.
Customer Advisory Board Implementation, Stage Three: Deliver and Implement Your CAB
Agenda Creation: Ignite advocates a member-driven agenda creation process, by interviewing all CAB members based on a vetted set of interview questions and top topics important to all parties. Is your CAB agenda based on feedback from your customers/members? Or is the agenda determined by your company only?
Take the time to interview all members, gather feedback, create an agenda, and gain final internal consensus on the agenda. By shaping your agenda to incorporate top-of-mind customer concerns and challenges they are facing, the greater likelihood that the discussion and dialogue will resonate with your customers and be mutually beneficial.
Meeting Logistics: This element begins back in stage two when meeting venue contracts are finalized. Are there enough breakout rooms per the final agenda? Are all networking activities and meals booked? Have seating arrangements for the meeting and networking activities been completed? Are travel arrangements and ground transportation booked? What gifts or tokens of appreciation will be given to members? What about signage? Printing of documents? Have you produced the meeting book with attendee bios and the agenda?
Session and Facilitation Plans: How have the sessions been planned? Which customer challenges or questions is each session addressing? What structure will help you achieve interactive discussion? Are the best facilitators leading the session? What facilitation flow is needed to support the session leaders? Do you have assigned note takers to capture key insights and action items?
Face-to-face Meeting: With all of the above preparation, the advisory board meeting will run smoothly. Jump start synthesis of key insights and actions at a joint debrief meeting with the session leaders and steering committee. Turnaround the meeting report quickly, internally and externally. Set up your post-meeting engagement timeline and communication plan in advance (e.g. send the executive sponsor thank you note post-meeting out within a week).
Drive Value.
Following the face-to-face meeting implementation, your advisory board’s growth depends on driving ongoing value and engagement internally and for the members. Plan for ongoing engagement year round! Leverage that engagement with your top customers to achieve results for the enterprise.
Read this blog post on best practices to sustain your advisory board’s momentum in between face-to-face meeting.
Revisit your CAB scorecard and write down all results achieved – what was the annual revenue generated by your customers in the advisory board and year-on-year growth? How many testimonials or case studies were produced? How many customers became beta testers? How many thought leadership pieces were created?
Promote and showcase your advisory board program and its results internally and externally.
When members tell you they see the progress from one meeting to the next, you’ve got a winning program.
