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
|
Define the Process |
| 5 minutes | Build Consensus
|
Agreement on Session Objectives |
| 45-50 Minutes | Conduct session via the guided discussion methodology Ignite facilitators use deploying
Seed questions to gain perspectives relative to session goals to ensure
|
Session-specific guidance goals |
| 5 minutes | Summary
|
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.