Prior to COVID, I would have told you collaboration is sitting around a conference room table and utilizing a whiteboard to brainstorm — whether for upcoming customer advisory board meeting topics, volunteering opportunities or what the next client team call should entail. However, if you take that whiteboarding exercise and conference room out of the equation, what are you left with? Your team.

Executive engagement strategies should largely focus on existing customers. Sometimes, prospects are a good add to the mix and can bring forward new results

Growing up, I would often hear the saying that “honesty is the best policy.” It’s always best to be upfront, otherwise you’re only masking underlying issues and more often than not, that lid won’t remain closed. As an adult, I can attest that I remind my six-year-old of this…. on a near-daily basis.

have an even greater understanding of the value that our clients and their customers who participate in customer advisory boards gain from attending shorter, but more frequent virtual sessions.

I once considered January to be a sort of “regroup” month. I had some extra time to dig out from emails that I received during the holidays, look ahead to what was on the horizon for the coming weeks and plan accordingly. That was then and those were different, pre-pandemic times.

As we look to the dawn of a new day when people are vaccinated and COVID is not a daily worry, we ask ourselves – will we go back to an office to work? Will we ever be on planes as often as we were in 2019? Will we have Board meetings in person again?

As we at Farland Group gear up for the end of 2020, and prepare for customer advisory board meetings for 2021, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would best describe this year in one word — adaptability.

In a world that is full of tension and polarization, we look to our work to bring us salvation, sanity, and a sense of working toward a shared set of goals. We need to enter discussions willing to take feedback, and willing to be curious.

Co-creation, brainstorming and an interactive give and take that occurs in a successful sales exchange is a very successful approach for presenting to a Customer Advisory Board. Here are tips of what works and doesn’t work in developing a powerful presentation to a Customer Advisory Board.  

Before COVID, we would often hear from business leaders about the challenges they faced surrounding talent and resources. Executives were seeking peer advice on how to invest in current employees to keep skills fresh and up to date. They wondered if new entrants in the market had the more creative, innovative skills needed. And, they wanted to understand the best way to reskill employees — through in-house training, external partners or a combination of both.