One way to incent your more invested and strategic customer references is to invite them to participate in your customer advisory board. This is an activity that benefits not only your customer but is a huge benefit to your company as well! Whether you are a startup or an established company, customer advisory boards are an incredibly powerful activity that requires some investment but the payoffs are astounding. Honestly some of my favorite times in my career were when I participated in the customer advisory boards at LANDesk Software. I could spend weeks talking about this topic (and maybe I will in the future) but here are some highglights.
Customer Benefits
- Opportunity to give feedback on product development
- Exchange ideas, best practices and recommendations with other customers
- Meet company executives and senior management
Company Benefits:
- Work with key customers to ensure products meet needs
- Build relationships with key customers
- Help close sales deals in the pipeline and identify new opportunities
- Learn how your customers are using your products
- Validate ideas for new products and features
- Learn about future technologies your customers are evaluating and how this will impact your product's future
Want to read more about customer advisory boards? Learn more:
