From Feedback to Strategy: How Global Brands Lead CABs to Win with Sharon Markowitz

In this powerful 20-minute conversation, Sharon Markowitz, a global marketing leader and former Intuit and LinkedIn executive, sits down with Irene Yam to share how Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) directly influenced messaging, product direction, and international expansion. Sharon unpacks how brands like LinkedIn and Intuit use CABs to build stronger relationships, speed up decision-making, and validate go-to-market strategies in real time.

Whether you're expanding into new markets, launching an AI roadmap, or trying to build stronger advocacy, Sharon brings real-world examples and practical playbooks. This conversation is a must-watch for product marketers, CAB program leaders, and go-to-market teams looking to drive impact through executive engagement and strategic feedback.

From Feedback to Strategy How Global Brands Lead CABs to Win - Transcript

Irene Yam  0:00 

So I'd love to introduce Sharon. She's our guest here for our Global Product Marketing viewpoint on how to build customer advisory boards, how to lead them. So she, you know, driven many major go to market initiatives. She's also been asked to go to Australia, to relocate to up to for QuickBooks to run international expansion there. She didn't think about sales, but she really thought about how to bridge advocacy and build a relationship. She's really known for being customer first, very thoughtful, thinking about both wins, and that's how she's been building customer advisory boards. I am thrilled to have her here, because a lot of experts sort of kind of keep to themselves and it's just something we do, but it's time for us to share, to get out there. Let's share what happens in the advisory board. And she's also the founder of your career wings. She's providing career coaching for people who are looking for that next level of growth. So welcome Sharon.

Sharon Markowitz  1:02 

Thank you. Thank you Irene, so much for having me, and thank you for everyone that joined and excited to connect.

Irene Yam  1:10 

Yeah, alright, so let's dive right into it. Like, can you share a time when you know these cab insights that you've you know created? Like, did they help you with messaging, product direction, campaign strategy, because I think a lot of the product marketing does a lot of the heavy lifting to build the connections and the cab slides,

Sharon Markowitz  1:29 

definitely no great question. So yeah, I can provide you a few examples in terms of how customer advisory board or cabs insights have actually influenced strategic decisions as well as business outcomes. So as a first example, when I was at LinkedIn, you know, the we were looking to roll out a new product, and LinkedIn already had a quarterly cadence with the customer advisory board, which really allowed marketers as well as product managers, to have quick access to insights. Not much red tape, which is just super important and super efficient. So with that, when we were rolling out a new product, it was important to engage them, particularly to refine our customer segment in terms of the launch, as well as to make sure we had the right messaging. And that, in addition to getting that input, what was really helpful was that you then had, because leadership team already knows who's on the customer advisory board, you have your internal team that you're working with in terms of your cross functional stakeholders, but also leadership, just to have more confidence when you're going to roll out. And so after that launch, we were able to improve our CSAT scores, which is customer satisfaction scores. So just very impactful. I think that at the end of the day, when you do have a very structured customer advisory board program like that, it just really allows you to get that input when you need it, and then make those, you know, impactful decisions. I think when we talk about my time at Intuit as it relates to engaging, you know, like shaping a customer advisory board, we can talk more about how they actually did more so influence the product. Well, I guess was going to ask you, since you're asking me questions, I was going to ask you, obviously, you know, you've been really working with a lot of different clients. And I think on everyone's mind right now is the AI narrative, and I'm curious if you have worked with any clients on that, and to talk a little bit about your approach,

Irene Yam  3:53 

yeah, I'd love to give you a couple examples. One's in cybersecurity, and the other is in SaaS. And what's really interesting is this discussion, the C suite discussion on still, governance, change management, they're exchanging ideas. So both the vendor who's running the customer advisory board, they're showing, hey, this is how we're using AI. This is how we're building AI into the platform. What do you think? But they're also building a lot more connection and trust, because they're exchanging ideas on how do you govern AI inside your teams? How do you get other people to run AI on because there are a lot of people that are still very leery about AI and they don't want to embrace i ai. So we talked a lot about that. You know, cabs are somewhat like therapy, but they also create this new human trust in a board. And so now we have, whether it's the cybersecurity or the SAS, these. Customers raise their hand. They said, hey, I want to work to with you. I want to be on your early design or your beta. I want to actually apply the AI. Send us your addendum for AI. We'll review it, and we'll start working together. I think that that's like the new topic for cabs. It's not just the roadmap. It's really coming together to talk about and learn from both sides, the vendor side and the customer side. But yeah, so let's actually kind of move on to you. I wanted to ask Sharon, you know, to quantify value you've probably been put like when you went to Australia, right? Like or, or any, any company when running a cab. I'd love to explore how you've been able to measure success, because that's always right now, especially in these economic times, what should they do this? Should they do that? No,

Sharon Markowitz  5:54 

definitely figure out how to allocate resources. I think that's a good question. I think sometimes, you know, customer advisory programs can fall short. As it relates to that, I do think it is important to tie when you are getting customer insights to business outcomes. So as an example, right at LinkedIn, you know, if you're if you're getting input on messaging, you know you might be able to look at pre and post conversion rates if you are getting input on, you know, new product feature, how does that reflect the broader market when you roll that out, and what does adoption look like? Those, I think are important things. I think also you're bringing like, you said, like going to the therapy session. I don't know if it's a therapy session, but ultimately, when you're bringing a team together, it's also like, how well are you engaging the customer, the members right of the customer advisory board, and how quickly are you taking the actions that you've prioritized into market or into the internal team to figure out how to take it to market? Those are some examples. I do think, though you know, you're also like, beyond just the numbers, you're getting a certain level of unfiltered feedback from customers. It's meant to be a trusted space, yes, for conversation, there's this incredible team alignment that I think does happen as a result of it, and it's hard to place a value on that, but I think that's really important. I also think that when you do have a customer potentially giving feedback that is prioritized directly to the CEO, that might happen pretty quickly and move move things faster than an internal memo or something like that. So those are things, I think ultimately it's just figuring out. How are those impact, excuse me, how are those insights impacting different go to market initiatives, and how can you measure that? Yeah, I don't know if you would add anything to that. Just from your perspective, and working with cabs,

Irene Yam  7:58 

you actually said it so well. But I think also I just want to talk about time. There's so much like decision making, there's short term there's long term, strategies, there's tactics, and I think all coming together, both the customer and the the vendor gets to validate a lot of things, like different use cases. How should they look at the market? Um, you know, then you build this sort of small cadre, this group that you can have these ongoing conversations. So it is a very, in a sense, soft metric. But these metrics really help shape, like this long form, long tail thinking, the strategy that you have in mind, asking customers about their thoughts of competition. And then the other thing is, if you actually look like six months later, you'll notice actually the ROI will pay for itself, meaning the the cab will pay for itself, because a lot of the customers by exchanging ideas and learning from their use cases, end up actually holistically buying new product or more product. And that just happens, not from us. Yeah. So we both have so much passion around customers, global markets. You've been even been asked from Intuit to go out and establish, or I think maybe reestablish this customer marketing, or you really took a lead. Can you kind of go into your experiences around that?

Sharon Markowitz  9:31 

I basically led the QuickBooks expansion internationally with a focus on Australia, and at the time, Australia was considered a challenger market in which, you know the customer segment, which are primarily accountants that support small businesses, already had the tools that they were using and that they felt that they needed. And so, given it was a challenger market, it was important for me to actually relocate there to. Understand the local market as well as just get to know the team. And so where, you know, part of my role was also, you know, looking into the customer advisory program and understanding what's working and what's not. And I think that the cab that was set up in Australia particularly, was very training focused, which can be helpful. However, if you're already in a very competitive market, it's extremely important to have members of your cab be advocates, because no one's really maybe heard of intuit or QuickBooks. They you want to hear it from the customers. I mean, you always want to hear it from the customers. But it from the customers, but even more so in that type of an environment. So to really shift, if you will, from a training oriented program to one that's more of an advocacy program, where they're speaking engagements or different ways they can, you know, the show, verse, tell was really important.

Irene Yam  11:03 

I love that. Well, first I want to say that's so powerful, because you actually said, Hey, this is not the right thing to do in terms of, it's not no training. But I think you brought up a really good point. You have to speak up. And I think oftentimes when you're building out a cab program, kind of comes from the top up. We should have a cab. This is what we should do. But then, after learning about that market and learning that it's a challenging, Challenger market, you made a change, and you wanted to be thoughtful, like, hey, let's actually have more conversation. Let's learn from each other. And yes, training can be

Sharon Markowitz  11:36 

a component, but it shouldn't be lead, right? So I love that, right? Okay? And I think also as it relates to that, you know, as you think about global and scaling, it is important to really listen with intent, observe and make sure you're doing things globally, but executing locally. And so I think one of the things that came out of that was also just connecting the members of the Australia cab with the US cab, just to have that community connection, and then you still get learnings from that region that you could probably apply to other regions like the UK or another one where the US already being quite established had kind of a different maturity level,

Irene Yam  12:20 

absolutely. Or there they need to validate something because maybe, like so, for example, Macquarie Bank might have an office in San Francisco, in New York, and they want to figure out, Oh, should they buy tier two storage, or should they be adding, I don't know, this new cloud, right? And so they want to actually get a sense from colleagues outside of their probably business groups, to network right and get advice when you started a cab. Did you have resources? Are there any resources today, like, if you were to run a cab? I'm just curious. And what would you do now differently?

Sharon Markowitz  12:59 

Yeah, I think that, as a product marketer, I think it's very important, if you do have an existing cab at your company, to make sure you're included. You know, as you can't be a part of, literally, a seat at the table, you can at least still offer input in terms of getting feedback and getting insights that you actually can take action on, whether it's the short term or the long term. I think that's the first thing. I think you know, the second thing is, if you don't have a cab, start with a customer. And it's better to start than not start. So I know we all like things to go a certain way, but I do think it's just think about your customer, start to listen, start to get a few few folks together. You don't necessarily have to completely formalize it just yet, because you're also learning together and learning who puts in the time and how you are engaging. But But to me, it's just start, start to learn, start to set up. What are the objectives of the cab and so forth. Um, obviously you have your, I see right next to a banner of build a world class customer book. Yes, yes. Now I think the book is actually a great how to there's no fluff. So I think whether you're an executive, and you know, you need to flip through a few pages to just get a sense of what are we talking about here, or how can I best engage the team to move forward on it? It works as well as someone that's like, Wait, how can I really get started here? Like, what, what happens in this situation versus that? Think it's an amazing you know, and I think again, foreflight, probably, for those that have joined the call today. You know, feel free to reach out to me if you are currently in the process trying to figure out, like from a customer marketing or product marketing perspective, how to engage your cab. I'm happy to chat if you're also I know that you know some people are looking to transition or upskill. I do offer coaching. So also happy to engage on that, right? Yeah, but overall, I'm just really appreciative that we could have a quick chat about, how do you actually take insights to action, leverage a cab from a product marketing perspective, to really drive results?

Irene Yam  15:14 

Yeah, I think it's a, frankly, a call to action. If you're in Product Marketing, don't let all the product management people have all the fun. Get in there. Roll up your sleeves. Help. When I build a cab i Well, when I started my career in customer marketing, I was under Product Marketing, and so we actually did a lot of the field work in building up the customer advisory board often. Now they're led by product management, but I think product marketers need to also build that partnership, and it should be 5050 because there's this great synergy where it's not always about the product. When you're talking to business people, you're also learning about what their their pain points, what? What are they thinking about? What are their challenges? And that for us to listen, not on just the product side, but also helps us with positioning, because they might change their whole positioning. I mean, they might give us an idea where we might have to change our positioning, or it might help us with a new campaign, or how to reach out to customers, or existing customers or net new customers. So thank you for bringing that up. I really appreciate it. I love it. I love that lens that you bring and that international lens i i totally agree that's like a bumper sticker, you know, like, think globally, but act locally. I love that there is a question to how do you how? How have you positioned the cab as a value so to your customers? So,

Sharon Markowitz  16:50 

an example, when I was in Australia and we, we had an existing customer advisory board of a few folks, you know, a lot is actually it was interesting. I actually interviewed them, as well as, you know, key stakeholders internally to understand what's working, what's not, to then figure out what is that right value. Because what was happening is the training program, it just wasn't enough from a company perspective. And I think it also really wasn't enough from a from from the members. So I think it's trying to figure out, like, what are you solving for and what's in it for them versus what's in it for you? And how do you kind of bridge that gap or blend that together, if you will, for moving forward? So it's really having that common, common understanding.

Irene Yam  17:43 

Well, that that's like, perfect. I think we should do more. We should, we should have more of these live events, because it's that mission. Gotta build that cab. Mission Statement, first, internally, what's the North Star? Why are you coming together to build this cab? And it takes a little, or maybe actually a lot, of vulnerability when you're having those one on one conversations with those CAB members who've been nominated. Why are you doing this? So you usually formalize the mission beforehand, you read it out to them, and then you kind of want to share around that. Well, how did you get to that? You know, hey, we're struggling. We want to go up market, but we we don't know what we know. We need your help to help us how to get there. That's happened at Ring Central. They were growing really fast. They wanted to go up market. They invited a lot of new leaders to join, but we all had different thinking, so we needed to sit down and talk to our customers to lead us to building that up market. And we did that. We listened, we had ongoing conversations. So with the question, back to Carolyn's question, what's in it for the customer? Or how do you drive the value? Is that mission statement be vulnerable. Show them you know what the agenda is going to be like, and ask them to pick it apart. Because by having that conversation, having that exercise, that back and forth, you can actually see if that customer is really engaged, what kind of both what kind of value that they can bring and what kind of value that you can bring. So sometimes I say, Okay, that was a great idea. Let me take that idea back, and maybe we might change or add that to the agenda. So I want CAB members to feel that they have a say even early on when we build out the agenda, we think, we think we know right as the vendor. But I think it's also really important when you're talking to customers ahead, to show them the value that you might get new insights to change and make your your agenda, your cap agenda, even better. Yeah, thank you for that question. Sharon. Tell me like, do you get, like, folks that are kind of coming out of college these days, looking for help, for for career coaching? Are you looking for? Are there people kind of. You know, wanting to change careers,

Sharon Markowitz  20:02 

or, yeah, like, so I think that, yeah, I don't really work with marketers, but ultimately, I, you know, having worked in the industry, having dealt with my own transition, whether it's function, geography, industry, oftentimes, I'm working with clients, you know, who are going, you know, saying, Well, I'm currently in this job, but I want to go to this. How do I get there, right? What are those transferable skills, as well as people that want to upskill? So, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So, you know, in certain fields, particularly product marketing, partnership marketing and so forth. You know, how do you start to make sure you understand your gaps, and how can you solve for those gaps to make sure you have the skill set and the confidence to succeed in that next role? So it's really solving for each client and what they're looking for. So usually you would already have a few years of experience and so forth for engaging a career

Irene Yam  21:04 

coach. All right? Well, you hear that you get a real insider with sharing yourself when you're trying to transition or look for something new. So thank you. I'm taking this session, but I think you'd be fantastic as we're practicing and doing this dry run, I've just learned a wealth of just who you are, and I'm just so grateful that you you came on here to share. It's always important, and I just love getting to to know you. And I'm so glad that we got to connect over LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a small world, guys, you can find Sharon and you know, hit it

Sharon Markowitz  21:41 

off. So, and Irene is all about building community, and I think that's such an important lens when you think about customer advisory board. So whether it's taking a look at the book or, I trust, just reaching out, I'm sure she's more than happy to have a conversation, because, you know, we need to learn together, and that's part of I think being in a community

Irene Yam  22:04 

absolutely All right. Well, I think we should let everyone go back to their day or their evening, and thank you everyone, and sorry for the mix up, and have a great day. And again, Sharon, thank you for this time. I really appreciate

Sharon Markowitz  22:18 

Thank you.

FAQ

1. How do global companies like LinkedIn and Intuit use CABs to shape product strategy?

Global brands integrate CAB insights into product launches, messaging refinement, and feature prioritization. At LinkedIn, Sharon shared that CAB feedback directly impacted the success of a new product rollout, including improved CSAT scores and executive confidence. Intuit used CABs to pivot from training-focused sessions to advocacy-driven strategies when expanding in challenging markets like Australia.

2. What value do CABs bring beyond product feedback?

CABs offer more than product input—they foster trust, advocacy, and speed. Sharon emphasized that CABs create space for unfiltered customer feedback, team alignment, and faster decision-making at the executive level. CAB members often volunteer for beta programs, co-design sessions, and AI governance discussions, which build deeper partnerships and accelerate innovation.

3. How do you measure success from a CAB program?

CAB impact is both quantitative and qualitative. Metrics include:

• CSAT improvements post-launch
  
  

• Product adoption rates for CAB-informed features
  
  

• Conversion lift from messaging tested with CAB members
  Sharon also highlights soft metrics like customer engagement, cross-regional collaboration, and the internal alignment CABs create across product, marketing, and leadership teams.
  
  

4. What’s the right way to position CABs for customers to join and stay engaged?

Sharon recommends co-creating value by clearly articulating the CAB’s mission and involving members in agenda-setting. She advises listening with intent, observing customer needs by region, and shifting focus from training to storytelling and advocacy—especially in challenger markets.

5. How should product marketers and CAB leads get started with limited resources?

“Just start,” says Sharon. Even without a formal program, begin with 1:1 conversations, gather initial feedback, and define a purpose. Over time, formalize structure, define shared goals, and lean on resources like Build a World-Class Customer Advisory Board for step-by-step guidance. Don’t let perfection stall progress—momentum and curiosity go a long way.