Customer Advisory Board Advanced Facilitation

Structure Strengthens Customer Advisory Board Meeting

Expert facilitation is critical to the success of your Customer Advisory Board.

Eliminate random performance with proven facilitation to structure successful meetings. The result is not a scripted meeting, but a well-organized and well thought out delivery of information and inquiry to ensure member guidance is obtained.

Consider the Most Important Deliverables

For each and every session on your agenda, there are two key questions to answer as the content is developed.

  •      What is the sponsoring company’s desired outcome?
  •      What are the desired outcomes for the members?

Build the Agenda Session Framework

Typical session length is 60 to 75 minutes. More in-depth sessions may be 90 minutes or longer.

In each segment, embed the questions for which you seek answers or guidance from the members.

 Time  Suggested Segment  Expected  outcome
 5  minutes  Set Up

  • Introduce speakers
  • Set engagement ground rules
  • Share session overview
  Define the Process
 5 minutes  Build Consensus

  • Agree on session objectives and outcomes
  • Gain agreement from participants using the modified alignment process
  Agreement    on Session  Objectives
 45-50 Minutes  Conduct session via the guided discussion  methodology Ignite  facilitators use deploying

  • Active listening
  • Clarifying
  • Summarizing
  • Tracking 
  • Stacking 
  • Hearing from all participants

 Seed questions to gain    perspectives relative to  session goals to ensure

  • Resolve unknowns
  • Articulate guidance 
  • Refine value proposition 
  Session-specific  guidance  goals 
 5 minutes  Summary

  • Recap and confirm member guidance
  • Identify gaps and actions to close
  Proceed to next  step[s]  with  adequate member  guidance 

Benefits of a Proven Facilitator 

Facilitating a meeting doesn’t occur just within the four walls of the meeting room.  It begins to take shape during the agenda creation and well before the sponsoring company team departs for the meeting location. Among the numerous benefits of an Ignite-trained facilitator, our clients agree that the main benefits are the following outcomes.

  • Collaborate on meeting flow in advance
    • Prep the sponsoring company leadership team before boarding airplanes and again on-site
  • Ensure members have information to participate 
  • Create open environment during meeting
    • Ensure that all participants know what to expect
    • Follow the 80/20 rule – Members speak 80% of the time, while company leaders speak 20% of the time
    • Encourage all participants to participate
    • Maintain focus and productivity of all sessions
  • Ensure session objectives are met throughout meeting
    • Keep all sessions on time
  • Capture insights and actions
    • Integrate relevant insights and comments together to reflect a bigger picture
    • Develop a practical action tracker that underpins success of subsequent meetings

Pragmatic Experience Guides Collaboration

Ignite Advisory Group facilitators are mindful of both the agenda and desired session flows. Our extensive experience in managing multiple Customer Advisory Boards ensures that our facilitators are:

  • Able to listen to others without judgment, are comfortable not having all the answers and have the ability to deal with conflict and ambiguity
  • Objective and committed to the agenda and the process
  • Comfortable running the meeting by exercising trust, openness and honesty 
  • Focused on driving towards creative solutions while recognizing new ways of thinking from the vantage point of members and the sponsoring company

To learn more about how advanced facilitation can yield stronger insight and member participation for your Customer Advisory Board, contact Ignite Advisory Group today.