Forming an Advisory Board

Ask key customers and industry leaders for counsel

By Jaye Scholl

Advisory board members can answer your questions, analyze your business plan, recommend new markets and introduce you to useful people. Board members could be customers, industry leaders or other experts who come together to help guide a CEO through major decisions.

Advisory boards, unlike boards of directors, have no legal responsibility and usually get paid much less, if anything.
Choose your advisory board members carefully. There's no need to fill the board immediately.
Appoint experts from different fields.
Don't waste your advisory board members' time. Keep travel to a minimum and stick to the meeting's agenda.

Determine the purpose of your advisory board

Some advisory boards get deeply involved with daily decisions, while others meet a few times a year. And as your business grows, you might want to add or remove members of your advisory board.
Try: See six tips for selecting a board from Entrepreneur.com.

Tap your connections for advisors

Your investors, if you have any, are obvious candidates to serve on your advisory board. They want you to succeed and they have expertise. Or ask people already serving on advisory boards of similar businesses. Ask for help from your local chamber of commerce.
Try: See The US Chamber of Commerce for a directory of local chambers, listed by state.

Hire a recruiter

Headhunter firms can find you advisors beyond your personal network.
Try: Geehan Advisory Boards and Partner Com specialize in recruiting advisory board members.

Show your appreciation to your advisory board

Announce the appointment of advisory board members on your Web site and in your promotional materials.
Try: Follow the steps to writing a press release for a newly-appointed board member at eHow.com and send it to his or her local newspaper.

Make meetings purposeful

By definition, your advisory board members want to help. Reward their efforts by not wasting their time.
Try: Six timeless rules for holding effective meetings are eloquently presented at GovLeaders.org.

Use online videoconferencing to cut your advisory board's time and travel costs

When you need advice from your board in a hurry, hold a video conference on the Web.
Try: As many as four participants can be on-screen simultaneously at SightSpeed, an inexpensive but high-quality desktop online video conferencing service. WiredRed and WebEx also offer Web videoconferencing services.

Quickly relate important information to advisory board members in conference calls or emails.
Structure your advisory board with staggered terms so that members rotate off the board within two years.
The rising importance of advisory boards is covered in "The Director's and Officer's Guide to Advisory Boards" by Robert K. Mueller.