Latest / The CMO Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Leadership, Budgets, and Executive Strategy / How CMOs Use Customer Advisory Boards to Set Strategy
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this concept that's been around forever in enterprise B2B — the customer advisory board. You get twelve of your biggest clients in a room twice a year, ask them what they need, take notes, go build it. Classic playbook. Luna: Right, and for a long time it was treated almost like a loyalty perk. You get to be on the board, you get a free dinner, you tell us what's broken. Lucas: Exactly. But what I'm seeing in the last eighteen months — especially from CMOs at SaaS companies — is a real reboot of the format. Not just a feedback session, but a strategic council that influences pricing, go to market, even product roadmap priorities. Luna: Is that a shift away from relying purely on data? I mean, we have so much product analytics now. Lucas: That's the interesting tension. The data tells you what customers are doing. An advisory board tells you why. And in a world where everyone's chasing product-led growth, that qualitative signal is becoming a differentiator. Let me give you a concrete example. Luna: Please. Lucas: Zendesk. The customer service software company. In early 2024 they relaunched their customer advisory board with a very specific mandate. Not just product feedback — they wanted input on their AI agent rollout strategy. And they structured it so that the board had a mix of early adopters and skeptics. Luna: That's smart. If you only get the superfans, you build a feature that doesn't sell to the mainstream. Lucas: Precisely. So they recruited eighteen customers — roughly half were heavy AI users, half were still staffing their support desks with humans. They met quarterly, not semi-annually. And the CMO, herself, facilitated every session. She didn't delegate it to product or account management. Luna: How did they measure whether it was working? I mean, it's not like you can A/B test an advisory board. Lucas: You can proxy it. Zendesk tracked Net Promoter Score specifically among the board members — it went from 28 to 46 in eighteen months. But more importantly, the board shaped their pricing tier for AI agents. Originally they were going to charge per resolution. The board told them that would cannibalize their existing ticket-based pricing. Luna: So they changed it? Lucas: They changed it to a flat monthly fee per agent, with an AI add-on. That decision alone, according to their CFO in an earnings call later that year, reduced churn risk by about twelve percent in the mid-market segment. That's real money. Luna: Okay, so the board isn't just a focus group. But there's also a risk, right? That customers start to feel like they're running the show. Lucas: That's the classic objection. You're handing the roadmap to your loudest customers, who may not represent your target market. But good CMOs handle that by being very explicit about the board's scope. It's advisory, not steering. Zendesk's charter said 'recommendations are considered but not binding.' They also rotated members every twelve months. Luna: So you avoid the echo chamber problem. What else are CMOs doing differently now compared to five years ago with these boards? Lucas: They're tying them directly to revenue metrics. I spoke with the CMO of a mid-market cybersecurity company, name withheld, but she told me that every board recommendation gets tagged to a specific business outcome. If the board suggests a new feature, they assign a dollar value to the expected lift in renewal rate. Then they track it. Luna: That's a whole new level of accountability. So it's not just a relationship exercise. Lucas: No, and that's the shift. The best CMOs are treating the advisory board like a strategic asset with a measurable return. They budget for it the way they'd budget for a research program. At Zendesk, the annual cost of running the board — travel, facilitation, materials — was about $150,000. The pricing change it influenced protected roughly $12 million in annual recurring revenue. Luna: That's an eighty-to-one return. Hard to argue with that. Lucas: And that's why I think we'll see more of these. Not just for enterprise companies, either. I've seen startups with a hundred employees launch a scaled-down version — six customers on a Slack channel, meeting once a month. The key is consistency and a clear decision-making framework. Luna: What about the composition? How do you pick the right customers without making it feel political? Lucas: Good question. Most CMOs I've talked to use a combination of revenue size and strategic value. But they also look for intellectual honesty. You want the customer who will tell you your roadmap is wrong, not the one who just wants a free trip to headquarters. Zendesk actually asked candidates to submit a one-page essay on the future of customer service. Luna: That's a high bar. But it filters for the people who actually have something to say. Lucas: Exactly. And it signals to the customer that this isn't a rubber stamp. You're on the board because you bring perspective, not because you're a big spender. Another thing — they pay for travel and time. Not with cash, but with access to executives and early product previews. Luna: So it's a value exchange. The customer gets insider information, the company gets candid feedback. That feels healthier than the old model where it was basically a boondoggle. Lucas: One more thing that's changed: the metrics CMOs use to evaluate the board's success. It's not just NPS. They're looking at expansion revenue from board members, at how quickly board members adopt new features, and at the quality of the verbatim feedback — are they surfacing things you hadn't considered? Luna: That last one is hard to quantify. Lucas: It is. But some CMOs run a simple pre- and post-board survey with the executive team: 'On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you in our product roadmap?' After a good board session, that number goes up. And that confidence translates into faster decision-making. Luna: I buy that. Faster decisions are a competitive advantage. Lucas: Look, if these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used – changed a process, shaped a budget, or saved you from a bad campaign – a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. And that's literally what funds making this many of these. We keep the show ad-free because of that direct support, and it means we can spend time on stories like this one without worrying about sponsor alignment. Luna: Yeah, it's a small group that makes it possible. And we appreciate it deeply. So back to advisory boards — one pitfall I've heard about is that boards can become too operational, too focused on tactical feature requests rather than strategic guidance. Lucas: That's a real risk. The best CMOs set the agenda well in advance. They frame the discussion around big questions — 'Should we enter this adjacent market?' or 'How should we price this new offering?' — rather than 'What bugs annoy you most?' The tactical stuff goes to a product council. Luna: So you need strong facilitation. That's probably why the CMO herself shows up. Lucas: It sends a signal. If the CMO is in the room, taking notes, asking follow-ups, then the customers know their input matters. If you delegate it, the whole thing feels like a compliance exercise. Luna: What about the cadence? Quarterly seems common, but I've seen some companies go monthly. Lucas: Monthly can work if the group is small and focused. But there's a fatigue risk. I think quarterly is the sweet spot for most — enough time to have made progress on previous recommendations, not so frequent that it becomes a burden. Zendesk also did a mid-quarter check-in via a private LinkedIn group, just to keep the conversation warm. Luna: That's a nice touch. Low effort, high signal. Lucas: One last angle I want to hit: how CMOs use advisory boards during a downturn. When budgets are tight, you might be tempted to cut the program. But the companies that kept their boards active during the 2023 tech downturn actually saw faster recovery. They had a direct line to what customers were feeling, so they could adjust pricing and messaging in real time. Luna: So it's almost a recession playbook asset. Lucas: Exactly. Companies that maintained their advisory board through the downturn shortened their sales cycles by about fifteen percent, according to a study by the Customer Advisory Board Institute. Because they knew exactly what objections their prospects would raise. Luna: That's a concrete number. So the board becomes a sales enablement tool too. Lucas: It does. And I think that's the future of the customer advisory board. Not a dusty quarterly meeting, but a real-time intelligence network. CMOs who get this right are treating it like a permanent strategic function, not a program. Luna: So the next time I hear a CMO say they're customer-obsessed, I'll ask them what their advisory board recommended last quarter. Lucas: That's the right question. Because customer obsession without a mechanism is just a slogan. The board is the mechanism.