To stay ahead in a competitive business environment, organizations need to improve how they train their sales teams regularly. One effective approach is using the Field Advisory Board. This board consists of industry experts who offer valuable insights and new ideas to achieve better results.
In this blog, we will explore what a field advisory board is and share how field advisory boards are used to increase the impact of sales enablement.
What is a Field Advisory Board?
A Field Advisory Board (FAB) is an organized and collaborative group created to help boost sales in a company. It includes a chosen group of experts from different roles in the company, and its purpose is to provide a platform for sharing insights, experiences, and important guidance.
Advisory board meetings play a pivotal role in enhancing long-term planning for sales training initiatives. During these sessions, advisory board members, who are key contributors to the effective advisory committee, share industry insights, discuss proven methods, and make important decisions for the organization’s success.
One key aspect of an effective advisory board is its ability to provide feedback during advisory board meetings. This feedback helps the organization make smart choices, increase sales, and contribute to overall success in the market.
The board focuses on promoting communication and collaboration among different stakeholders. By bringing together professionals with diverse skills, the FAB seeks to provide a comprehensive view of the challenges and opportunities in sales enablement.
Why you need a field advisory board?
Creating a Field Advisory Board can be very helpful for you and your organization, especially in sales support and long-term planning. Here are some important reasons for you to consider having this advisory board:
- Diverse Expertise: A Board of Advisors in the field gathers people with different jobs and skills in your organization. Having a mix of experiences ensures you completely understand different parts of your business. It provides you with special insights that can improve your decision-making.
- Insights and Best Practices: When you have a Field Advisory Board, you benefit from its members’ rich industry knowledge and hands-on experience. This combined wisdom helps you uncover the best ways to do things, stay informed about market trends, and tackle new challenges, keeping your organization ahead of the game.
- Strategic Guidance: The advisory board advises on sales training, how to position in the market, and strategies for better sales overall. This advice helps ensure your goals match what’s happening in the industry and what customers expect.
- Collaborative Problem-Solving: Your Field Advisory Board encourages teamwork in solving problems. You and the members can talk about issues your organization is facing and come up with solutions together, using the different perspectives and experiences of everyone on the board.
- Improved Sales Training: By using the knowledge of board members, you can customize training programs to be more useful, applicable, and in line with the changing needs of the market.
How to Use a Field Advisory Board?
Effectively using a Field Advisory Board (FAB) requires careful planning and execution. Here are some ways on how to use a Field Advisory Board to improve sales support and achieve success:
- Set Clear Objectives: Clearly state the goals you want to achieve with the FAB, such as improving your sales training, refining your marketing strategies, or gaining insights into industry trends.
- Choose Important People: Pick and invite key people from different roles in your organization to get diverse perspectives and expertise on the advisory board.
- Hold Regular Meetings: Set up regular meetings, preferably every month, so you and your FAB members can collaborate and share knowledge consistently.
- Review and Analyze Metrics: Regularly check important performance metrics for your sales training to find areas for improvement and see how your training initiatives are making a difference.
- Share Field Experiences: Encourage you and your fellow members to talk about your successes and challenges in using new skills in the field, creating a culture of creativity and problem-solving.
- Evaluate Training Tools: Work together to assess how well your training tools are working, find any problems, and improve them for real-world situations.
- Support Skill Adoption: Discuss what’s needed to make sure everyone in your sales force can successfully use new skills, whether it’s more resources, coaching, or specialized training.
- Plan for Future Growth: Work together on a long-term plan for improving your sales, including things like more resources, training for new hires, and ongoing support for your current sales team.
Impact of Field Advisory Boards
A field advisory board can play a crucial role in attaining different positive results that help boost the success of sales support. Here are some of the main points:
Communication and Ambassadors
An advisory board member can be an important messenger who can share the advantages and real-world uses of training with the larger sales team. They motivate others by sharing their experiences and success stories, encouraging more people to learn and apply new skills across the organization.
Tool Customization and Adoption
The advisory board can share insights about customizing training tools and checklists, making them more widely used by sales professionals. This way, the tools match specific sales situations, giving the most value and achieving good outcomes.
Identifying and Solving Field Obstacles
The advisory board acts as a platform to find and tackle problems that sales teams encounter while working in the field. Members can create plans to overcome common obstacles through collaborative thinking, leading to better sales outcomes overall.
Coaching Roadmap
By discussing with an advisory board, you can create roadmaps to improve specific skills. These roadmaps outline the coaching steps and resources required to help sales professionals enhance their abilities and attain lasting success.
Planning for Success
Advisory boards help create effective plans for measuring success in sales training. By evaluating key performance indicators and measuring the results of training efforts, your organizations can improve in planning and achieve lasting success.
Continuous Training Programs
Effective sales training isn’t a one-time event; it requires continuous support to enhance the sales team’s skills and ensure consistent success.
Advisory boards are essential for developing and organizing continuous training programs. This ongoing support is crucial for strengthening and sustaining the sales team’s skills over the long term.
Enhancing Field Advisory Board collaboration with QuestionPro
QuestionPro is a survey and research platform that provides a range of tools for creating, distributing, and analyzing surveys and questionnaires. It offers features for data collection, analysis, and reporting, which is a versatile solution for organizations seeking insights from their stakeholders.
By leveraging QuestionPro, organizations can strategically gather valuable feedback, opinions, and insights from advisory board members, fostering a collaborative environment for informed decision-making. Here’s how QuestionPro can be beneficial for a Field Advisory Board:
Survey Creation
With QuestionPro, you can make surveys that match the unique requirements and objectives of your Field Advisory Board. These surveys can cover topics like how effective the training is, how tools are used, challenges faced in the field, and more.
Feedback Collection
Utilize QuestionPro to gather feedback from FAB members on different topics discussed during meetings. This may involve gathering their thoughts on the effectiveness of training sessions, the usefulness of tools, and the overall impact on their roles.
Anonymous Feedback
When it comes to getting truthful and impartial feedback, QuestionPro offers features for anonymous survey responses. This encourages FAB members to express their thoughts freely.
Create reports and dashboards in real-time to swiftly analyze survey responses. This helps identify trends, common challenges, and areas for improvement discussed in FAB meetings. This helps organizations in making informed decisions based on the insights gathered from those who attend meetings.
Real-time Reporting
You can create reports and dashboards in real-time to swiftly analyze survey responses. This helps identify trends, common challenges, and areas for improvement discussed in advisory board meetings.
Easy to Use
QuestionPro is designed to be user-friendly, making it accessible for both survey creators and respondents. This simplicity can lead to higher response rates and more meaningful feedback.
Using QuestionPro in your Field Advisory Board operations can greatly improve feedback and collaboration. With QuestionPro, your FAB becomes more active and data-driven, which can promote ongoing improvements in sales support and encourage teamwork for lasting success.
Ready to transform your business and create a memorable impact?
