Ask Eyal
Eyal Danon is the President and Founder of Ignite Advisory Group, and a world-renowned expert on customer and partner advisory boards.
Question: Eyal: My company is about to initiate our first-ever customer advisory board. Can you share a common mistake that companies make with inaugural CAB meetings, and how to avoid it?
Answer: A common new CAB program mistake is not allowing enough time for agenda preparation. The process can take about 6-8 weeks, if done properly. So you need to start this about 3 months prior to the face to face CAB meeting. The initial stage involves gathering key topics from your internal CAB steering committee, as well as outside business partners or industry experts. For your company, what are the critical business decisions that need to be made in next 12 months, and how can advisory board insights help?
With these questions and issues in hand, you need to create an interview discussion guide with these 6 or so proposed agenda topics and interview the CAB members on the phone – an online survey just will not get you close to understanding their real perspectives on key business challenges. Then you’ll need to analyze the interview surveys to determine what topics should be on the agenda, what topics can be dropped, and then get the exec sponsor and CAB steering committee to agree to the agenda. While this process takes time, it is critical to ensure you have an agenda that is mutually beneficial for both your internal team and the advisory board members.
Got a CAB management question for Eyal? eMail him at eyal.danon@igniteag.com. Your question could be included in the next CAB Connection.
“Ignite was instrumental in helping us design and deliver a best in class partner advisory board program globally that took our partner go-to-market strategy to the next level.”
