Why is it so powerful?

In a nutshell, it’s from the “horse’s mouth”. You could spend thousands doing market research to determine the demographics and psychographic of your target market, but why bother when you’ve got an infinitely more powerful source of market research at your fingertips … your clients.

A “Client Advisory Board” enables you to get inside the heads of your buyers and find out what’s important to them, what they like about your business, what they want in the future, and what you can improve on. 

Not only that, it also gives you great copy that you can almost use verbatim in your promotional material. In the past I’ve used comments from clients as the main focus for a sales letter … and it worked a cracker.

Here’s how it works…

Get a group of your clients or customers around a table and ask them to tell you “warts-and-all” what they think of certain aspects of your business. Actually, it’s much less confrontational if one of your team members or someone external facilitates this session.

Ask them:

• How you can improve the way you serve them?

• What other services they’d like?

• What they think of your competitors?

• What things went through their mind when they were making their purchasing decision?

• How they’d run your business differently if they owned it?

Once it’s over, send “thank you” gifts to all participants. And finally, sort through the ideas and implement the good bits. Make sure you keep clients informed of the outcome so they know that their comments were valuable and appreciated.

What can it uncover?

• Feedback on a new advertising approach before it hits the streets

• Feedback on positioning, pricing structures etc

• Solutions for operational or delivery problems

• New markets to tap into

• How to relate better to their fears and frustrations and therefore enhance the effectiveness of your sales processes

• New ways to cement client loyalty

It’s really a good idea if you can get an impartial party to set up and organise your Client Advisory Board, as it gives a much better representation of the client’s true feelings. You see, in order to be as “representative” as possible your Client Advisory Board should include a selection of your clients, some of your best and some of your average.

We regularly conduct and facilitate CABs for Small Business.