Definition: What is a Customer Advisory Board (CAB)?

A Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is a B2B sales & marketing program. The program involves regularly convening a small group of influential customers who have a vested interest in helping to shape the host company’s strategy. A well-designed customer advisory board will provide a forum for peer networking while enabling all members to develop solutions to grow their businesses.

Customer Advisory Board’s can also be called:

• Client Advisory Council
• Customer Advisory Forum
• Product Advisory Board
• Executive Advisory Board

Partner’s can also be convened in Advisory Boards, if so they would be called Partner Advisory Boards or Councils. It is far less frequent for prospects to be engaged in advisory board initiatives.

Another type of advisory board is an ‘Innovation Council’ which contains a mixture of customers, partners, industry thought leaders and disruptive technology executives who are convened with the objective of advising the host company on new innovative strategies to consider.

Customer Advisory Boards are very different from a companies Board of Directors, so the Board of Directors should never be used in the context of Customer Advisory Boards as it has a very different legal meaning.

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