“It’s really important that the leadership team think of this as a program, that they have a dedicated owner, ongoing budget — like budget for a year, not budget for a meeting, or budget for a month, or budget for a quarter.” – Sarah Moody

Sarah Moody is the CEO at Customers Always First, a consulting agency that specializes in designing customer and executive programs that impact the business. Sarah has worked with some of the most successful tech companies in the Valley, including Palo Alto Networks, Hewlett Packard, and VMware, and her services have generated some incredible results, including over a billion dollars in revenue impacted and more than 620 product innovations.

Sarah is a force of nature and it was such a treat having her on the pod. You can find her on LinkedIn.

On this episode, we really dive deep into the topic of customer advisory boards (CABs), including:

• Best practices for virtually engaging with your CAB (especially relevant in the age of COVID-19)
• Why it’s crucial to have clearly defined personas when recruiting CAB members
• The 3 components she looks at to evaluate whether a company is customer-centric and truly devoted to the success of their CAB (also helpful for customer marketers deciding where to go next!)
• Her must-have agenda topics (including some inspiration from the television show, Shark Tank)
• Metrics for defining CAB success

Sarah also recommended the iconic book, Crossing The Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore. “I love his views around building deep, deep relationships with customers and turning them into fans and what that journey looks like: how you start to build a relationship, and then you nurture that relationship. And then you really leverage that relationship in so many ways and have your customers be your brand ambassadors, and the list goes on and on.” 

You can find the full transcript of the episode here. 

Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoyed this podcast, I would be over the moon if you could share it with others, especially those in the customer marketing and advocacy space. For more interviews with advocacy leaders and tips on creating customers that will sing your praises, head on over to beatingthedrum.com.