In these days of ever-shrinking attention spans, less tolerance for sales messaging and overscheduled professionals, the era of long PowerPoint presentations may be coming to an end. Indeed, as PowerPoint is designed for one-way presentations to an audience (not unlike a class lecture), the medium is even worse for using at customer advisory boards (CABs), where discussion, feedback and brainstorming new solutions and ideas is the desired outcome.
I’ve written previously about how to avoid relying on PowerPoint slides in your in-person CABs meetings, and what to do instead. But the concepts and suggestions also apply to CAB meetings held online via today’s popular meeting platforms, such as Zoom, WebEx, Go-to Meeting, Teams, etc. As such, here are five more strategies you can use instead of relying on boring PowerPoint presentations, focused on online CAB member engagements:
1. Use the camera feature: Seeing all participants on camera allows everyone to view and interact with each other and read body language, especially excitement and the desire to contribute. Using the camera will help deliver livelier discussions, and get CAB members talking to each other instead of just with the host company or session owner. As we all know the temptation to turn off cameras in meetings, set the expectation in advance with CAB members that you will be asking everyone to use them during the meeting, hopefully minimizing (ideally eliminating) non-camera participants.
2. Convey planned discussion questions: CAB meeting session owners should always convey the purpose behind why they are covering a particular subject, their session goals, what they are hoping to learn and the questions they are attempting to get answered. Stating these at the beginning of each session is important, but be sure to write them out (even on a PowerPoint slide) and, even better, keep them visible throughout the session (e.g. on the group chat or Q&A function) so members will stay focused on the task at hand. For even better results, embed the questions from each session on the agenda and send them to CAB members in advance of the meeting, so they have some time to consider them beforehand and bring their responses and ideas to the discussion.
3. Arrange for member spotlights: CAB members always want to learn from each other in meetings, benchmark their own operations compared to their peers, and bring actionable insights back to their own companies to utilize right away. As such, it’s helpful to use one or two real-world, actual customer operations, spotlights and case studies as examples of desired concepts. Here, your CAB members themselves will lead the discussion, provide insights to where they’ve succeeded (or failed), and offer lessons learned and advice for others to succeed within their own operations. Such CAB member sessions are always very well received and reviewed by CAB member participants and help drive to the 80:20 interaction (CAB members speaking 80% in meetings; host company only 20%) that is the goal of every CAB engagement.
4. Avail the agenda in the meeting invitation: With the goal of keeping CAB members engaged throughout every session, review the meeting agenda at the beginning of the discussion and make it available in the meeting invitation for quick reference. This will allow members to take a peek at timelines to know the duration of each session, when the next break will be, what topics are coming next, and when the meeting will end. Be sure to stick to the meeting agenda too – don’t delay breaks or greatly extend the length of your meeting, as CAB members may inevitably have other commitments to attend to following your meeting.
5. Encourage chat and Q&A participation: While having about a dozen CAB member participants can generate lively discussion, sometimes the conversation is so quickly flowing that it can be difficult to hear everyone on a particular topic point. As such, encouraging your CAB members to utilize the chat and Q&A features of your meeting platform provides another way for them to be heard, provide their perspectives and get their questions in front of the group. An additional benefit here is that these items are usually captured by the meeting platform, and help with creating the post-meeting report. (Of course, utilizing the services of an experienced, professional meeting facilitator is the best way to ensure optimal member participation and meeting success.)
While PowerPoint can be a helpful tool to communicate ideas, it should never be the sole medium used with CAB members. After all, you have invested the resources to gather them together – either in-person or online – with the goal of collecting their feedback, desires, ideas and suggestions. Using the tactics above will not only help deliver that to your company but, more importantly, deliver a meeting experience your CAB members will benefit from and even enjoy.