How to prepare for Quarterly Business Reviews?

So picture this, you’ve onboarded a new customer, they’re adopting your product as per the set timelines or defined criteria of adoption, and are getting up to speed with your tool slowly and steadily.

If you have a CS tool in place, you have a good oversight of this journey and you’d of course like to keep a close eye on your customer to make sure this journey continues without any glitches.

How do you do that? By setting up a QBR or a Quarterly Business Review!

What is a QBR?

A QBR is a quarterly business review or a meeting between you and your customer to review the progress and results of your collaboration, share insights and best practices, and also make note of actionable in terms of the next steps to plan. It’s a time to connect with your customers on a deeper level apart from the daily nuances.

It’s also possible that you get Facetime with executive stakeholders whom you may not interact with daily and a QBR holds a good chance for you to apprise them of where you are at and where you are headed with your customer on their product journey.

Once you know it’s time to set up this meeting, it’s good to be aware of what all makes up for a successful review and also why you need one, and how you go about the same.

What is the need for conducting a QBR?

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to keep an open line of communication with your customers and also evaluate the progress of your partnership promptly. A QBR helps you do just that.

1. Check in on the goals

Make sure you and your customer are on the same page about expectations, milestones & outcomes.

2. Opportunities for growth

QBRs are a great time to identify to expand your offerings within the account and provide tailored solutions to drive mutual growth.

3. Mitigate risk

By proactively engaging in conversations that could arise and taking necessary action. By staying vigilant, you can prevent minor hiccups from snowballing into larger problems, thereby safeguarding the relationship.

4. Demonstrate Value

The customer needs to see their success and their desired outcomes through the effort of both the parties and this platform serves an excellent chance to showcase just that.

What to include in your QBR?

1. Preparation - before the meeting.

2. Delivery - during the meeting.

3. Data - for after the meeting. While decks are great (I’m not a big fan of them and I rather focus on conversation), it does account for good collateral to follow up and keep the momentum going.

1. Preparation

To make sure that the review is engaging and fruitful, it’s best if the majority of the time is spent gathering information, evaluating the data, and analyzing the interactions and outcomes so far. If done well, the remaining two steps don’t take too long.

2. Delivery

This is the actual meeting & includes the presentation, the speaker, the attendees, the interaction, and the critical part of demonstrating value and also going deeper into discovery as mentioned above.

3. Data

This includes the deck that you prepare.

And primarily covers numbers that showcase:

• Where you start from and where you are at
• What actions helped you get from point A to point B
• What can you do next to go further in terms of the next steps
• And a product roadmap to get everyone on the same page

Some key pointers to note while making the data definitive and eye-catching is to structure it in a way that’s easy for you to gather and deliver and also for your audience to consume

• Set the Agenda
• Share the insights
• Discuss the product roadmap
• Close with aligning on the next steps

Conclusion

Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) serve as vital checkpoints to assess progress, share insights, and plan.

These meetings are a great platform that gives both the customer and you a chance to ensure mutual understanding, foster growth opportunities, and proactively address concerns.

So, make sure you align as much as you can with the how, why, and what of a QBR to build a solid foundation with your customers so that at the end of it all, as I like to say, it’s a win-win for all and we’re all happy.