President & Founder
Jane has more than 20 years of experience building marketing and communications strategies for leading technology, healthcare and financial services brands. Her early work was with business-to-consumer (b2c) companies like Perrier, Rollerblade and Black & Decker. She took her market testing b2c expertise to the business to business space helping large enterprise brands like IBM, Morgan Stanley Capital International, Fidelity and Microsoft Health to transform their client experience.
For fun:
Jane is an avid runner and cyclist and can be found on the soccer pitch. She enjoys traveling and exploring new parts of the world with her family.
Professional organizations:
EO (Entrepreneurs Organization), The Boston Club, The Commonwealth Institute, Boston Chamber of Commerce. Jane is also actively involved and on the boards of several non-profit organizations.
Education:
Jane has a BA from the University of Western Ontario, Canada and an MS from Boston University.
Most people and businesses are event driven. The excitement of getting started on something new, culminating with an event – where all the hard work will be recognized (new product rollouts, new client engagements, successful case studies, etc.) – is »
“Getting closer to the customer” is an all-too-common goal of companies. While the refrain has a nice ring to it, enabling a strategy to deliver on the promise is not trivial. After all, we know that customers have more choices »
In this era of social connectedness, opinions and input from peers are of paramount importance to driving buying decisions and the adoption of new enterprise products and services. In working with executive engagement programs, the power of peer connections is »
Customer experiences are often judged by the closing experience. Done well, the experience is deemed positive. Too often these experiences are forgotten.
If customers take the time to tell you, take the time to listen. Whenever a customer provides feedback, take the time to listen. In a recent meeting a company told me they had “piles of feedback” but no way to »
Effective sales people will tell you that selling is as much science as art. Selling to the C-Suite even more so. Done well, it requires a system that can be planned, delivered, measured and repeated. Yet often, sellers fear they »
Designing a customer experience model that works, and finding a lever to get traction at a strategic level provides both challenge and opportunity for marketing leaders. In a recent interviews conducted by Farland Group with leading Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) »
Executive engagement is increasingly on the radar of B2B leaders who are experiencing a positive impact on their top and bottom line. Yet while the CEO may be clear on the impact and success of executive engagement, how to build »
The vaccines are here and our positive human nature has us thinking about what’s next. When can we get back to “normal” and what will that normal look like? For Customer Advisory Boards, we recommend that you work with your »
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?
If you are looking to launch a virtual Customer Advisory Board here are five things to consider before you do so.
Meeting facilitators are critical assets for in-person and virtual board meetings. Farland Group has facilitated virtual sessions successfully with executive leaders for more than 10 years. Here are some tips on how to do it well.
My Nanny McFarland, after whom I named Farland Group, used to sit with me and play cards for hours on end. In hindsight, her patience at the age of 90 was inspiring. Even more amazing was her graceful way of »
‘Closing the loop’ is a phrase we use frequently at Farland Group. The point of this phrase is to emphasize that an engagement with a client is only as good as the action taken after the customer advisory board meeting. »
Good relationships are about honesty, trust, and a shared commitment to agreed upon goals and mutual success. For clients to trust you, or anyone for that matter, you need to make commitments and follow through on the promises made or »
Understanding what your customer values is critical to building trust, winning the sale and sustaining a relationship over time. Often sales leaders can assume what is valued without asking the questions required to know for certain.
We facilitate many Customer Advisory Boards with C-level audiences (CIO, CMO, COO) who are critical to the future of our clients’ businesses. In a recent meeting a Board member asked me a simple question – “what makes this work so »
An ongoing customer engagement strategy requires planning and an investment in the development of compelling content and interactions that keep your customers coming back. Here are tips in building a more systematic engagement approach with your customers.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty measurement that brings great value and a simple measurement for organizing companies around customer centricity. Here are some pros and cons to the metric.
Customer Advisor Boards serve as an excellent source for driving internal alignment and sparking organizational change.
Customer Advisory Boards can drive new thinking and innovation if you consider a different approach to membership and content.
Businesses today are moving through a lot of change, but this is distracting employees to focus internally and forget about customer engagement approaches that are needed to retain and grow the business.
For B2B marketers and sellers, getting access to the C-suite and developing strong relationships with those leaders can often serve as the starting point of a long-term relationship between the individuals and the companies involved. The three most important reasons »
Farland Group has the honor of helping our clients host forums that convene the top 20% of their customer base. At a recent gathering of 150 CIOs, it struck me that CIOs were engaged in a different set of discussions »
If your advisory board is struggling—or you’re just getting started and want to avoid the most common pitfall—consider carefully:
Is the person in the facilitator’s chair really ready to…facilitate? We share some of the common downfalls of board leaders and facilitators—and a checklist of characteristics that strong leaders share.
Heather Higgins , Global Marketing Leader, Strategy & Analytics, IBM and I spoke last week at an ITSMA event on the importance of customer engagement strategies. We shared examples of how IBM is building a very deliberate customer engagement approach targeted »
It’s a truism in B2B companies that a handful of customers generate the bulk of the revenue, and that keeping and growing a loyal client is far less expensive than finding net new clients. That’s why B2B marketers must develop strategies that help them listen to and engage customers actively in their marketing programs. As you listen, you will find that your customers are as vested in your company’s success as you are in theirs. That common interest is a basis for what we call reciprocal value: the powerful exchange that occurs when both parties get sufficient value out of a program for it to become self-sustaining.
“Shock and surprise me,” was the advice a COO from a large financial services firm offered recently when I asked what he recommended for an upcoming meeting with 15 Fortune 500 CXOs. “We see a lot of great things everyday—this »
Most people and businesses are event driven. The excitement of getting started on something new, culminating with an event – where all the hard work will be recognized (new product rollouts, new client engagements, successful case studies, etc.) – is »
“Getting closer to the customer” is an all-too-common goal of companies. While the refrain has a nice ring to it, enabling a strategy to deliver on the promise is not trivial. After all, we know that customers have more choices »
Looking to set up an Account Based Marketing program? Think about a Customer Advisory Board as an anchor program.
Things that seem simple, rarely are. Some tips to put the ease into your Customer Board experience with the rigor needed to get there.
In this era of social connectedness, opinions and input from peers are of paramount importance to driving buying decisions and the adoption of new enterprise products and services. In working with executive engagement programs, the power of peer connections is »
Customer experiences are often judged by the closing experience. Done well, the experience is deemed positive. Too often these experiences are forgotten.
Often as companies work to build out their Customer Advisory Board meeting agendas there is a desire to pack in the content for fear there will be silent, with no one offering their comments or perspectives. The remedy – most »
Customer centricity is not as simple as making it your mission statement – done well it often requires a change in incentive structures and organizational design.
In this podcast, Jane Hiscock speaks with Bev Burgess of Inflexion Group. Bev has over 30 years of experience working in B2B marketing, both on the client side as well as consulting and training, and is best known »
The thing about Customer Advisory Boards is you just might get what you wished for: unvarnished advice about your strategy and your business. And while this is the very reason to create a Board, it can sometimes be hard to »
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