Customer Advisory Board FAQ

A customer advisory board is a strategy-level listening and sounding board that builds relationships between key, senior customers and your leadership team or internal stakeholders. It meets multiple times a year to advise on strategy, product direction, and innovation, fostering ongoing collaborative dialogue about the market in a pitch-free, confidential setting.

The decision to launch depends on having compelling business reasons (strategy changes, new products, market shifts), compelling customer reasons (mutual value creation), and organizational readiness including executive commitment, strong customer relationships, and internal capacity to act on advice.

Advisory boards create value through stronger account relationships, better-informed strategies, and new business opportunities. Well-designed programs yield initial benefits within the first few meetings, with value compounding over time as trust builds and insights are implemented.

Advisory board members should be senior executives from your top strategic customer accounts who are industry leaders, can advise beyond their own account issues, and consider each other peers. Avoid prospects and external thought leaders who lack skin in your success and may undermine other advisors' participation.

Customers join advisory boards for influence on strategies they have vested interest in, in-depth interaction with peers, co-created agendas targeted to their business challenges, direct access to your executives and experts, and a pitch-free, constructive, confidential setting for strategic dialogue.

Senior executives provide stewardship, demonstrate commitment, ask questions, listen intently, and act on advice. At least one senior executive serves as board chair. Sales teams identify advisors and apply insights but typically don't participate in meetings to maintain the board's pitch-free, confidential nature.

Advisory board launch speed depends on executive commitment, relationship strength with potential advisors, clear value proposition, and initial meeting topics. With solid preparation, boards typically launch within 3-6 months, but sacrificing foundation for speed makes boards harder to sustain.

A successful format is 1-1.5 days in person, 1-2 times per year, often supplemented with 60-90 minute virtual meetings. The exact cadence should balance meaningful, in-depth discussions with respect for advisors' time and schedules.

Advisors may struggle due to mismatched seniority, reluctance to help, disruption, or relationship issues. Minimize challenges with clear charters and wise selection. If problems persist, offer graceful exits quickly and tactfully—the board's quality membership is critical to success.

Struggling boards typically suffer from waning internal focus, lack of fresh topics, member retention issues, or insights that don't drive action. Solutions include recommitting with renewed stakeholder alignment, redesigning the charter and format, or gracefully retiring the board if it has run its course.

You can run advisory boards internally, but success requires dedicated resources, senior-level champions, genuine feedback culture, strong facilitation skills, and clear accountability. Many companies find external partners create better conditions for candid dialogue and strategic insights.