Are you creating a seat at the table for your best customers

Strategic leaders don’t just serve customers—they learn from them.

THINK ON IT: Are you creating a seat at the table for your best customers? 

You spend countless hours shaping your offer and planning your next move. But how often do your best customers get a real seat at that table?

Not a survey link. Not a quarterly check-in.

An actual seat.

Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) are one of the most underused strategic assets in a CEO’s toolkit. Done right, they’re not a PR stunt or a sales tactic—they’re a source of foresight. They help you see around corners, validate big bets, and uncover blind spots in your strategy.

But too often, they’re designed for optics, not insight. A performative gathering of “happy” customers who nod through a company update. That’s not a board—it’s a cheerleading squad.

Strategic CEOs use CABs to ask harder questions:

• What’s changing in your world that we’re not ready for?

• What would make us irrelevant to you in three years?

• Where are we falling short—not just in service, but in relevance?

They know that real strategic advantage doesn’t come from guessing what customers want. It comes from inviting them into the process of shaping the future.

This kind of structured feedback isn’t just market research. It’s co-creation with your most discerning, invested buyers. It’s not about building consensus—it’s about sharpening your edge.

And the benefits cut both ways. Customers gain insight into your roadmap, build trust in your leadership, and often deepen their loyalty—not because they’re being sold to, but because they’re being listened to.

So ask yourself: Are you merely reacting to customer churn and feedback loops? Or are you proactively creating a mechanism to learn from the right customers, in the right way, at the right time?

Because in a shifting market, strategy can’t be formed in isolation.

It must be shaped in collaboration.

Think a CAB sounds like a luxury? The Act on It section below will show you why it’s one of the most strategic decisions you can make—and how to do it right. (Premium Members only. Become a Premium Member. Paid subscribers get access to over 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

“People support what they help create.”

— Dale Carnegie

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