Why Have an Advisory Board?
Successful Customer and Partner Advisory Boards allow you to draw on the knowledge and expertise of your customers and partners to gain insight and understanding to inform, test and improve company-wide strategies and tactics. Your customers and partners benefit as you use this information to create and deliver better solutions and experiences for them now and into the future.
Different Boards serve different areas of focus and have different member profiles: Strategy, Partner, CX and Product Advisory Boards are just some examples. You may want separate Boards focused on specific industries or regions. It all depends on the outcomes you’re trying to achieve.
A successful Board works closely with your executives and select customers or partners to:
Provide guidance on and validate corporate strategies and programs
Gain insight for developing new ideas, products, services and channels
Increase understanding of how products and services benefit customers and how to close portfolio gaps
Increase market and competitor intelligence
Gain alignment on GTM and demand generation plans
Test value propositions and messaging
Deepen relationships with key stakeholders.
What Can You Learn From a Partner Advisory Board?
Are you looking to grow and improve your channel and partner performance? A selection of your partners on an Advisory Board can be invaluable to your planning. You may want multiple Partner Advisory Boards so you can focus on specific segments (e.g. SMB or Enterprise), regions or industries.
Questions your Boards can help answer include:
What are partners hearing from customers and competitors that could impact your GTM plans, offerings and value props?
How can you improve partner onboarding and enablement?
What incentive programs work best?
What materials do partners need from you to be successful?
How can you make it easier for them to build their own products and services using your offering?
How can hearing the Voice of the Customer benefit your business?
How can you benefit from an end-to-end VoC program and where would you start? Have a listen to my chat with the founder of the JumpStart Collective, a group of consultants across a range of business disciplines helping Australian businesses start up and scale up.
How can customer insight improve your business?
Watch the recording of my virtual roundtable with Peter Strohkorb, Modern Selling expert, and a group of business leaders discussing why customer insight makes a difference, how you gather customer data, how you make sense of it, and how you apply it to make decisions and improvements.
More Resources
For more information about Boards and Communities visit the LinkedIn company page.