how to do a qbr presentation

• Marketing Strategy

How to Perform a Quarterly Business Review (QBR) in 2024 (w/ template)

In today’s business world, you are likely already familiar with quarterly business reviews (QBRs). However, I find that too often, people either don’t do them right or they don’t do them at all. If you aren’t having an honest conversation with your clients about how work is going or if it continues to be the right work, you may be setting yourself up for failure. 

In my 12+ years of agency experience, whenever a client is unhappy, I ask, “When was the last time we had a QBR?” It’s an important time to break out of the day-to-day and standing meetings. QBRs allow you to pull back from the minutiae and look at the big picture. Taking the time to do this will ultimately benefit both you and your clients. In fact, given the current economic climate this past year, running a QBR is now more important than ever to show value and retain client engagements . Running QBRs consistently will allow your clients and/or project stakeholders to see the value in your work. Keeping your success and worth in front of your client is important. You want them to advocate for keeping your services, which they hopefully will see as invaluable when tough decisions must be made. 

What Is a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)?

A QBR, short for “Quarterly Business Review”, is a presentation to clients covering how well KPIs progress toward their business goals. A QBR presentation should be done every 3-4 months and address the challenges and opportunities for achieving those goals and provide recommendations for the future.

Why Are QBRs Important?

I get a lot of questions here at Portent, but: “What defines a good quarterly business review?” is probably near the top. Another version of this question is, “Do we need to have QBRs?” I have only one answer: “Damn right, you do!”

Showcase Value

So, why are QBRs so important? Because a good QBR shows value . Value in work done. Value in the relationship. Value in the time and money that you’ve spent! Your teams have dedicated countless hours working hard to deliver on the client promise, and now is your time to highlight the fruits of your labor. 

Plus, you never know who might show up to your QBR. If a Director, VP, or C-suite stakeholder who rarely attends your weekly meetings should participate in this meeting, invite them! We’ll get into tailoring your QBR for a broad audience later.

Note : If a project or phase is ending, and you want to report on how things went, you should consider running a post-mortem or retrospective . 

Track Overall Success Metrics

QBRs are also a critical time to reflect on the work. How did your strategy and tactics perform?  Let your audience know if something went well and why. Did something fall flat on its face? Tell your audience why it didn’t work and what you learned.

Early-Warning Signals

Was there a project delayed or depreciated due to roadblocks? Use your QBR to bring light to these issues. You were hired to do something; if something is in your way, be frank about what you need to complete the work.

Alignment (or Realignment) on Goals

Finally, these business reviews are a time to evaluate the project’s scope. If your team realizes that a small or large pivot is needed, this is the time to say so.

What to Include in a QBR?

Over the years, we have tweaked what to include in a QBR. Though we have adjusted our language to describe the work, the ultimate goal is to report on what we did and how it went. Our new presentation format contains the following steps:

• Executive Summary
• What We Learned

1. Executive Summary

At Portent, we start our QBRs with a high-level summary of essential topics. If we have something to celebrate here, we’ll say it. If something didn’t go as expected, we’d mention it here too. Don’t bury the lead in the 20-40 slides that follow. And please, please ensure that the main takeaway of the QBR is bolded for emphasis .

In this section, we use two slides to reaffirm the goals that we are working on for our clients. The first slide shows our high-level goals in plain language. We may have specific KPIs that may fall under each category, but this section is for your daily contacts and high-level ones.

Our second slide explores how we can affect these goals as a marketing agency. For example, increasing leads for your sales team is something we can only partly affect. We can’t control how a client’s sales team qualifies leads. We can, however, influence conversions. So for clients with goals we can’t influence directly, these two slides are critical to ensuring they understand what we can affect and how we help them meet their goals.

3. What We Learned

In the “What We Learned” section, our team looks at our roadmaps, projects, and initiatives to see how they performed. We describe projects important to your work. You should identify them by name, when the project ran, what you did, and why you did it. 

We highlight this project information in our first slide:

As a follow-up, the next slide presents the supporting data. Ideally, you’ll have a graph line going straight up and to the right. But we’re looking for any data that shows why we’re highlighting this project. We’re big advocates for data visualizations here. So whether the data indicates a clear win, a near loss, or something that needs additional time, show it here.

Finally, it’s time to discuss the takeaways from this project. Deliver your observations and what you and your team learned from your project. However, you must include an explicit “so what” and “what’s next” here.

Highlighting your work without saying why it’s crucial wastes your time and your client’s.

Instead of saying, “Bounce Rate went down,” consider saying, “Bounce Rate has decreased since we deployed our new content on these pages. We must continue this project and recommend revamping an additional 20 pages.”

4. Next Steps

With the information from your learnings section, it’s time to present your next steps. We break these down into three sub-sections: what we’ll keep doing, stop doing, and start doing.

Each current process or project should have its slide, and you can combine like topics if you recommend keeping, stopping, or starting them as a whole.

1. What We’ll Keep Doing

As mentioned, our “What We’ll Keep Doing” slides highlight your successes and why they’re essential. For these slides, call out:

• What did we do?
• Why was it successful?
• Why will we keep doing it?
• How will we keep doing it?

Bolding the one phrase that you want people to remember from this slide.

2. What We’ll Stop Doing

In your “What We’ll Stop Doing” slides, it’s time to be honest partners and call out what didn’t work. Whether the work was a legacy holdover that the client was working on or something you recommended, if it isn’t working and you need to pivot, here’s your chance to say so. For these slides, we suggest the following information:

• Why wasn’t it successful?
• What will we do instead?

Again, bold the one phrase you want people to remember from this slide.

3. What We’ll Start Doing

Use the “What We’ll Start Doing” section to call out net-new suggestions based on learnings or as pivots away from tactics in the “What We’ll Stop Doing” section. For this section, the process looks like this:

• What do we want to do?
• Why do we want to do it?
• How will we do it?
• Bolding the one phrase that you want people to remember (are we making this clear enough?) from this slide.

This section can and should incorporate items from your Next Steps part of the presentation. I’d say that this can be a high-level snapshot of the work you’d like to do in the next quarter. You may have a more tactical, existing roadmap, but you can paint in broad strokes for this broader audience.

6. Appendix

You can add or remove this section depending on how you run your presentation. We use this section to link to data that would otherwise crowd out important messaging.

Again, with attendees ranging from in-the-weeds participants to once-a-quarter contributors, some may demand a complete explanation, while others may be content to move on.

How to Prepare for a QBR?

While there are many ways to prepare for a QBR, at Portent, we encourage our teams to proactively plan these meaningful discussions. 

Previously, we’d ask folks to come to these meetings ready to talk about what they’d done in the past quarter. The hope was that discussion would spark ideas in others and that a beautiful freeform, brainstorm session kind of jazz would happen, with folks layering on their parts. Sometimes, it works that way, and it’s lovely. And… sometimes it doesn’t. Especially once remote-first and hybrid work became the new reality. So now we do it a different way. Now, we have our team fill out a spreadsheet before we meet.

One Month Out – Ask Your Team to Fill Out Their Notes

About a month before your QBR, send a notes spreadsheet to your team. Ask them to fill in their What We Learned and Next Steps sections. These ideas and topics don’t need to be fully fleshed out, but each team member needs something to bring to the brainstorming session.

Three Weeks Out – Hold a Brainstorming Session & Assign Slides

You should hold your brainstorming three weeks out, provided you have a completed spreadsheet. I’d highly suggest you look at the sheet in advance. If it’s not ready, do not hold your brainstorm: you’ll waste your time and your team’s. 

Once prepared to meet, ask that your team read their ideas out loud. The idea here is to have people in different areas recall all the work they did in the past quarter. Though teams may operate in their silos, the reality is that there’s a ton of cross-team collaboration that happens. 

For example, most PPC campaigns have analytics or content support attached to them. And that same campaign may have an organic counterpart. If so, is there a way to highlight this as a larger, holistic initiative in one series of slides? Look for common themes here and dig in! If an initiative worked in one area when it didn’t work in another, can you and the team determine why? Do you need to shift resources from one channel to another? 

Once you have your ideas fleshed out, determine who will create these slides and assign them. Again, using the PPC/Analytics example, you can have your PPC specialist as the primary slide creator, with your analytics team completing them by creating supporting graphs or images. 

Two Weeks Out – Schedule Internal Delivery Date & Practice Presentation

Schedule an internal slide delivery date. We typically ask that our teams deliver their slides to the account manager two weeks before the final presentation. Ensure that your team’s slides are rooted in the client’s vocabulary and tie tightly back to your client’s goals and KPIs. Don’t just add sexy numbers. Show your client the “so what?”

Next is your internal team presentation, which is your chance to give your QBR a dress rehearsal. Your team should be prepared to speak to their sections. We also suggest involving senior leadership or other stakeholders from your agency or company. These additional eyeballs provide an objective perspective that ensures your presentation delivers on your company’s promise. Implement any final feedback following this meeting.

One to Two Days Before the QBR – Send Your Presentation to the Client Early

Send your deck to the client contact. Sending it early serves two purposes. First, it allows you to ensure that you have covered all angles. Your primary stakeholder may ask that you cover additional topics or clarify existing ones.  Second, should you be presenting remotely, they’ll have it if your connectivity goes down.

Day of the Presentation

You will likely want to schedule 90 minutes for the presentation. The first 60 will be for the QBR itself, while the remaining 30 will allow plenty of time for Q&A.

That’s All, Folks…? – Send Follow Up Notes & Assign Tasks From Roadmap

You’re not done just yet. Be sure to see if your client has any edits to the presentation. Within a week, it would be helpful for you to update your deck and send them the final PDF for their records. Don’t forget to assign all tasks from your roadmap.

QBR Best Practices & Advice

If you take nothing else away from this article, please take note of the following advice to create an engaging QBR presentation . This is your chance to say the things you need to say. If things are going swimmingly, let people know what you did and why it worked! And again, if something is getting in your way, DO NOT be shy in identifying it.

Have an Opinion

As we like to say around here, if you’re showing numbers or a graph on a slide to someone, you better have either a “so what” or a “why does this matter” statement attached to it. Your QBR is your chance to be honest about progress and the road ahead. Even if your “hot take” may be unsettling for some, you are the expert here. Say what needs to be said.

Executive Summary = TL;DR

Again, don’t shy away from showing your cards right at the top of the presentation. Summarize what went well and what didn’t. Some QBRs can reach up to 90 slides, so call it out in bold if you need your client to hear an all-encompassing theme or issue. Remember, have an opinion, and don’t bury the lead .

If you’ve built enough trust and rapport with your client leading up to your QBR, you should give yourself a little free reign to have fun with your presentation. Don’t go overboard, but if your gut tells you that one animated gif or funny photo will get the point across, give it a try. You might just see a smile or two.

Portent’s Free Quarterly Business Review Template

Ready to up your quarterly business review game? Check out Portent’s QBR Slide Template to get started!

Final Thoughts

In my experience, I’ve found that sticking to this schedule and format has made for some transcendent QBR conversations. The “What We’ll Stop Doing” and “What We’ll Start Doing” sections allow you and your client to discuss what fine-tuning your relationship needs, and you’ll both be better for it. 

Moreover, don’t forget to take credit for the beautiful work you’ve been doing. Your Quarterly Business Review is the perfect time to show the value you bring to your client.

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Matthew Taufa'asau

Matthew is a Client Solutions Architect at Portent with more than nine years of account management and digital marketing experience. When he's not busy consulting with his clients, he loves traveling the world with his family. A native of Hawaii, he survives cold Seattle winters with karaoke, outrigger canoe paddling, spam musubi, and cheesy sci-fi shows.

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Hi. Really useful information. As part of the QBR session, would you expect the client to have a presentation to address the concerns raised by you? Or is it better to handle that after that QBR?

Typically we can address our concerns in future meetings with the client. If there’s any work that needs to be added for either party, we would plan it and then add it to the roadmap.

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A Complete Guide to Create a Quarterly Business Review Presentation

The quarterly business review (QBR) meeting is the time for organizations to reflect on the progress and achievements made in the last quarter and the goals and plans for the next quarter. It is an opportunity for companies to take a closer look at how successfully they met their OKRs (objectives and key results), KPIs (key performance indicators), and revenue targets set previously and prepare future strategies based on those insights. 

The QBR meetings are all about numbers and statistics, and presenting them in a way that keeps the audience hooked and encourages them to take note of what you have to say is an arduous task. Here a well-designed and well-structured presentation can change the game!

If you are presenting the QBR for the first time and need help deciding what to include in the presentation, here is the complete guide! Go through it and learn how to prepare the quarterly business review presentations, how to deliver them, and the best practices to follow. 

Let’s begin!

Tips for a Spellbinding QBR Presentation

Remember, a quarterly business review presentation is not a bragging session, a networking event, or a sales pitch. Instead, it’s the representation of the value you delivered to customers, the impact or difference your product/service made on clients’ businesses, and goals for the upcoming 90 days. 

So, don’t make the QBR presentations self-serving. Follow the below-given tips for creating a winning one-

1. Know Your Audience

Spending time and exerting efforts to get to know your audience is the make-or-break factor for a successful QBR presentation.

Undoubtedly, as a speaker/presenter, the spotlight will be on you, but remember, the audience is the ‘other half’ of your presentation. They want to take away something valuable from your session in lieu of their precious time and undivided attention.

So, it’s always good to get an idea about your audience to create a relevant and meaningful presentation. It will also help you define your presentation’s goals and decide what content should be included. 

The quarterly business review presentation may be for internal employees (team members, department heads, senior executives, CEOs, etc.) or external stakeholders (clients, customers, suppliers, etc.). 

2. Define Goals

After gaining an understanding of the audience, set your presentation goals. A clearly- defined goal provides the right direction to your review, veering off unproductive and meaningless discussions. 

For example, suppose you are the CEO of the company and want to present a business review for the past quarter to your team; your presentation goals may be-

• showcasing the performance of each team member and the team as a whole.
• presenting the goals that were met, exceeded, or not met and reasons for discrepancies.
• highlighting the profitable customers of the last quarter and strategies to nurture them in the next 90 days.
• shedding light on strategies that are doing good and that require changes.
• depicting the latest trends and areas of improvement, etc.

And, if you want to present a review to your business partners, your presentation goals may be- 

• showcasing the organization’s performance in comparison to competitors in the industry, highlighting the areas where the business is excelling and lacking.
• depicting the performance of individual services or products in terms of market demand, sales, revenue, and profitability.
• presenting operational metrics relevant to your business, such as customer acquisition, production output, customer retention, and conversion rates.

3. Include the Right Content

You have worked hard throughout the quarter and must have much to share in your presentation. But hold your temptation, and include information that is closely relevant to your audience and fulfills your presentation goals. Choose the content keeping the context and connectedness in mind. 

Typically, a QBR presentation includes the following information-

This slide showcases the purpose and agenda of the QBR meeting. Depicting this information is important to set the tone and stage for the rest of the presentation. It also gives the audience a snapshot of what they can expect and keeps them focused without getting distracted.

b). Executive Summary

This section presents the accomplishments and challenges of the last quarter. It also throws light on critical insights, milestones reached, and major breakthroughs.

In a nutshell, the executive summary is the brief abstract or outline that gives the audience a glance at the recap of the previous quarter and a glimpse into the upcoming quarter. 

c). Quarterly Goals

This slide depicts the goals of the previous quarter and their status. You can portray the goals that were met, unmet, or exceeded and reasons for inconsistency or deviation.

d). Key Business Accomplishments

In this section of the presentation, elucidate the key achievements of different departments, such as HR, IT, operations, finance, etc. You can also highlight the significant projects completed, new technology implemented successfully, partnerships with the key players of the industry, and other business-specific accomplishments. 

e). Challenges and Learning

Demonstrate the obstacles and hurdles you faced in the previous quarter and what lessons you learned in the process of overcoming those challenges. You can also explain how this learning can help you in the future course of action.

f). Risks and Opportunities

Accentuate the risks you uncovered while working on a project or using a technology that must be paid attention to in the next quarter. Also, depict the untapped opportunities (unmet customer demand by the competitor, investment opportunity in a new market segment, etc.), which the business can grab in the upcoming 90 days to unlock doors to new revenue streams and growth. 

g). Financial , Sales , and Revenue Forecasting

Provide a bigger picture to your audience by sharing information about what is about to come. You can present future predictions related to sales, profits, and expenditures. You can also explain how political upheaval and fluctuations in economic activities will impact business operations and functions.

h). Next Step

Present your future course of action. You can cover it in three parts – Start Stop Continue .

Highlight the following-

• What activities did you perform, and why were they successful? Why and how will you keep doing them?
• Activities that were not fruitful, which you will stop doing in the next quarter.
• Activities you haven’t yet started but want to initiate.

i). Roadmap

Present the strategy to achieve the set goals and mitigate the potential challenges. The roadmap must depict the next steps with a defined timeframe, considering the lessons and reflections from the last quarter.

4. Pick the Relevant Visuals

Visuals, such as graphs and charts, make your boring statistics visually interesting and understandable. However, it is important to choose the right visuals to represent a specific set of data. Also, the graphics must be of high resolution so that you can deliver presentations on any screen size without affecting visual quality and readability.

For example, if you want to show the comparison of sales of two quarters or more product categories, you must use a bar graph in your presentation.

If you want to depict future trends in technologies, you can use a trends chart.

5. Use the Right Presentation Template

A well-designed template with the right layout and visuals is the backbone of any presentation. A good template helps you order your points and structure your thoughts, keeping you focused. In addition, it gives your presentations a stylish yet professional and consistent look, empowering you to leave a lasting impression on the audience.

Wondering where you can get the right template for your QBR presentation? Worry not! You can choose from a wide range of pre-designed and 100% customizable PowerPoint and Google Slides templates available online. You can save tons of hours by using these templates.

6. Keep it Concise and Short

Remember, your clients and stakeholders are busy people, and they will appreciate it if you present your quarterly review in a crisp and concise manner, covering all the relevant and important information that matters to them.

Your presentation must not exceed more than 1 hour, as the attention span of the audience begins to decrease gradually. Also, present the most crucial highlights in the first 10 minutes to get the complete focus of the audience.

Deliver a Stellar QBR Presentation

1. memorize presentation highlights.

Certain highlights, such as key points of analysis, specific KPIs and metrics, and actionable metrics, play a pivotal role in the success of your review presentation. If you miss out on them while delivering your talk, the entire essence gets lost, diluting the overall impact of your presentation. 

As a presenter, you would not want to look at hand-made notes to convey these highlights to your audience because it gives an impression that you are not prepared for the presentation. So, for a smoother and more persuasive and professional delivery, memorize the key highlights (not the entire presentation). Rehearse your presentation well so that you don’t have to struggle to recall the highlights while delivering your QBR.

2. Share the Most Important Data in the First 10 Minutes

As you proceed with your presentation, the audience’s attention begins to shrink gradually, and they are less likely to listen to you with the same enthusiasm as they do in the first few minutes. So, utilize the initial 10 minutes of your presentations optimally and wisely. Reserve this time for showcasing the most important information on which you want your audience to pay 100% focus.

3. Narrate a Story

Make your QBR an aha! moment by narrating a spellbinding story, covering what happened (outcomes of the previous quarter), what should happen (goals of the previous quarter), and the glorious future (goals of the next quarter). Conclude your story with an inspiring summary and a CTA (call to action).

4. Be Honest and Transparent

Showcase accurate and transparent data in your QBR presentations; otherwise, you will end up ruining your trust and relationship with the client. 

Let your clients know very clearly if the sale is declining, the customer base is reducing, or the profit is diminishing. To communicate negative figures on a positive note, share your plans to overcome the issues and bring things back on track in the next quarter. You can also tell the clients if you need their help in improving some specific areas.

5. Use Body Language and Gestures Aptly

You can make your QBR presentations more effective by altering the tone and pace of your volume, making eye contact aptly, and conveying your passion and enthusiasm through your body language.

Talk fast if your audience already knows the information, take a pause to stress important points, and talk slowly to encourage discussions. Move around the room to shift your energy and keep the audience focused on you.

Best Practices to Follow

1. invest time in preparation.

The data and statistics you present in your QBR presentation serve as crucial factors for business decision-making. If not delivered aptly and accurately, it may leave decision-makers in confusion. Therefore, owing to the sensitivity of this presentation, you can’t leave its preparation for the end moment.

Start gathering data early to avoid the last-minute hassle. Take out time to practice your presentation well and work on loopholes so that you can present confidently on the big day. After all, your audience deserves more than a briskly made slideshow!

2. Get the Slides Previewed by Relevant Teams

Schedule a meeting with the sales team, marketing team, and customer success team to brainstorm and discuss the KPI data and understand their analysis, evaluations, and suggestions. It will help you ensure that all important points have been covered and everyone has a good understanding of the data. It will also assist you in delivering your presentation with authority.

3. Invite the Relevant Attendees

Don’t invite people just for the sake of increasing the number of attendees. Instead, invite limited people and decision-makers who have a genuine interest in your QBR presentation. It will aid you in keeping the meeting relevant and manageable.

For example, the QBR presentation intended for a SaaS B2B client may have tech support personnel, investors, CEOs, managers of specific departments, procurement managers, chief financial officers, and other stakeholders as attendees.

4. Send Agenda Ahead of Time

The agenda provides a clear outline of the topic/points that will be discussed in the QBR presentation. Sending the agenda in advance to the attendees will help them share their feedback and suggestions, which you can incorporate into your presentation before the big day.

In addition, the agenda gives a glimpse of what attendees can expect in the meeting and the timeframe of the presentation. It is particularly useful for those attendees who have packed schedules and have to travel to your place to attend the QBR meeting.

5. Focus on Strategy Instead of Tactics

To make your QBR meeting more productive, focus on discussing progress towards goals, performance, potential bottlenecks, ROI, and future opportunities instead of highlighting operational matters and problems to solve.

If you want to keep your QBR a high-level review, talk about the positive things you and your client can accomplish together.

6. Encourage Active Participation

A responsive and active audience is the best encouragement for a presenter. Therefore, don’t make your QBR presentation look scripted. Share stories and anecdotes and incorporate icebreakers to give it a personalized touch.

Remember, your attendees have not come to hear the recitation of the statistics and data showcased in the slides. So, instead of reading what is written on slides, share your understanding and personal thoughts and opinions to engage your audience. You can also encourage them to ask questions.

7. Schedule the Next QBR

When your QBR is over, share the schedule of the next QBR with the attendees. Communicate the SMART goals with measurable outcomes to make it clear to the audience what they can expect in the upcoming quarter.

8. Share the QBR Session Updates

It is important to share the updates of the QBR session with relevant teams to make them aware of the feedback, plans, or goals shared by the client. It will help team members plan effectively, take ownership of their responsibilities, and contribute to driving positive outcomes.

The Bottom Line

The QBR presentation is a big opportunity to showcase the value your product has generated for the clients and customers and strengthen your partnership with clients. It’s also a chance to reveal important information or data that serves as fuel to push your internal teams to carve out strategies and plans that fit your broader growth and expansion plans. So, it must not be a mere formality; rather, it must be a productive and exciting event. 

Follow the above-mentioned best practices and tips to make your next QBR presentations stellar!

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How to Run a Quarterly Business Review Meeting [+ QBR Template]

Strengthen customer relationships. Keep everyone aligned. Improve retention. Communicate your value. The QBR is a big customer meeting with big goals. Learn how to ace it.

A methodology for amazing meetings. Say goodbye to boring, long, and unproductive meetings.

Over the course of a customer’s relationship with your business, their needs and goals will almost certainly change and evolve. Fluctuations in the market, shifting consumer demands, and business successes and failures all shape outlook and operations.

If you’re not checking in with customers on a regular basis, it’s easy to miss when these changes affect how your customer interacts with your products or services. Depending on how their goalposts move, the value of your offerings can also change.

Quarterly business meetings, or QBRs, are one way to ensure you have a pulse on developments. Regular QBR meetings support customer success and provide valuable insights for your business.

• What is a QBR Meeting?
• Why should I conduct quarterly business reviews?
• What to cover in a QBR Meeting
• Customer Success and QBRs
• How Customer Success Managers Ensure Productive QBRs
• Quarterly Business Meeting Template
• Perfect Your Quarterly Business Review With Meeting Software

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1. What is a QBR Meeting?

Not to be confused with a sales pitch, social get-together, or executive business review, a QBR meeting is a strategic session held every quarter in the interest of customer success . A quarterly business review should cover the customer’s current business goals and address how you can support them in reaching those goals.

Quarterly business reviews allow you to maintain an ongoing understanding of your customer’s business needs. With this understanding, you can strategize the best application of your offerings to meet their goals.

In this way, QBR meetings look much more like advising and strategizing sessions than simple updates and reviews. Instead of going over key performance indicators and recycling the same ideas, you’re working with the customer to ensure their future business success.

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2.Why should I conduct quarterly business reviews?

There are many benefits to conducting QBR meetings with customers. These include:

1. Strengthening customer relationships.

Meeting every three months creates an opportunity to touch base, connect, and reinforce your business relationship with customers . This isn’t just an opportunity to be social, however. It’s also an opportunity to have important conversations that lead to real action and results for your customer.

2. Keeping everyone aligned.

With regular QBR meetings, it’s easy to check in on business needs and goals and make whatever adjustments are needed to meet them. It also keeps your customers updated on your own business and product developments so they can plan to make the most of your offerings.

3. Increasing retention.

Stronger relationships and alignment mean better customer retention. It can even rise exponentially if you introduce quarterly business review meetings when they weren’t previously happening. All the added attention on customer needs is sure to help with achieving results and creating sticky customers.

4. Communicating value.

Not only are you demonstrating investment in customer success with QBR meetings, the adjustments you make based on communicated needs also show that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to help them reach their goals. If your offering already does most of the work for you, it’s also a recurring opportunity to showcase that ROI.

5. Providing insights.

Conducting quarterly business reviews does more than support your customer’s success. It also provides you with important insights. Is your company consistently delivering on promises? What adjustments have been made based on QBR meeting discussions that could be applied more broadly to ensure better customer experiences for everyone?

The more you know about your customer’s business, and the more you leverage that knowledge to better serve them, the more trust you build. Establishing a regular cadence for checking in on deliverables and requesting feedback makes QBR meetings the perfect practice for ensuring wins all around.

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3. What to Cover in a QBR Meeting

It can be easy to get sidetracked in a quarterly business review with social niceties and the desire to pitch new ideas. However, these aren’t main functions of a QBR meeting.

Rather, your objective is to center the customer and find out where you’re meeting expectations, and where you have room for improvement. This makes the QBR meeting a perfect place to lay out a plan for making those improvements.

In terms of what gets talked about in a QBR meeting, here are some common topics:

Previous goals

One main function of a quarterly business review meeting is to track all the progress towards goals. These can include goals around implementation, product usage, or anything else your customer feels is important. Check in on which goals have been met, which are on track, and which need a recalibrated route since the last QBR meeting. A QBR presentation may be helpful here.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

While reviewing goal progress, you and your customer will likely look over KPIs to measure success. Dedicate time to reviewing past performance over the last few months or even year. This is also a good time to look at fiscal performance and quantify your customer’s ROI.

It’s important the customer understands what challenges are in the way of any unmet goals. Without clear communication of obstacles, it can appear that your business is simply not putting in the work to ensure customer success. Be upfront and clear about what’s holding you back to maintain trust.

Opportunities

Of course, wherever there are challenges, there are often also opportunities. Plan ahead of your quarterly business review meetings to bring opportunities to the table after talking about challenges. Explain how these opportunities can be leveraged for your customer’s benefit.

Based on existing progress, challenges, and opportunities, you and your customer will likely need to update your shared goals for the next QBR meeting. Ensure that you clearly understand their business needs and goals so that you can create an executable plan for success.

Once new business needs are understood and goals defined, make sure everyone in the room is clear on what happens next. Plot out the first few steps towards success, and assign tasks to people qualified to tackle them. Prepare to track the progress of these steps to report at the next quarterly business review.

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4. Customer Success and QBRs

The relationship between quarterly business review meetings and customer success is undeniable. A regular QBR meeting helps ensure customer success by:

• Building trust. Over time, delivering on next steps and other agreed-upon action items in QBRs will demonstrate trustworthiness to your customers. This trust empowers customers to lean into your offerings, knowing they’ll deliver. With that confidence, they increase their chances of success.
• Offering regular check-ins. If things aren’t going as planned, quarterly meetings make it possible to catch problems early and make a plan to address them. With this practice, it’s nearly impossible to fall too far off the path towards customer goals. If they do, it won’t happen for long. Keeping them on that path with regular check-ins and adjustments makes it easier to hit milestones consistently.
• Providing an opportunity to own issues. If issues come up on your end, a QBR meeting provides the perfect context for owning and addressing them. Once you’ve learned from these experiences, you ensure smoother sailing ahead by working to prevent the issues from happening again. All of this fuels customers towards their goals.
• Regularly acknowledging achievements. It’s sometimes easy to forget how far you’ve come when all you can see is how far you have yet to go. Quarterly business review meetings make it easy to look back on previous meeting notes and illustrate progress over time, boosting customer confidence.

Again, these regular meetings let you and customers touch base often, assisting your customer health index along the way. With the right approach and agenda, you can achieve clarity on important issues on an ongoing basis, lighting the way to success.

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5. How Customer Success Managers Ensure Productive QBRs

Ultimately, the responsibility of ensuring productive quarterly business review meetings falls to the customer success manager (CSM). Whether they delegate the meetings to members of the team, assigning each one or more customers, or conduct meetings themselves, the CSM needs to be invested in QBRs to get the most out of them.

Without a QBR meeting, it’s hard for a customer success manager to predict potential pain points and bottlenecks for customers. By contrast, keeping a quarterly business review on the calendar with every customer gives customer success managers a regular touchpoint to ensure delivery of more value and renewal.

While it can be hard to introduce a QBR meeting to customer success management when it’s not already a practice, getting the manager on board makes all the difference. Your first QBR will also serve as a first step towards creating a structured approach to customer success, prioritizing one to one touch with your clients, and better understanding their future goals.

To get started, you’ll need great scheduling software and a quarterly business meeting template.

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6. Quarterly Business Meeting Template

Every good meeting starts with a solid agenda. If you’re looking for a free resource, try our customizable quarterly business review meeting template contributed by Nick Mehta, CEO at Gainsight.

This template includes important and helpful agenda sections, along with how Gainsight incorporates customer health and product usage data into their QBR meeting. ‍

‍ You may also want to incorporate your own agenda items, such as the the following.

Common QBR Meeting Agenda Items:

• Reviewing the agenda and confirming objectives
• Check-in and sharing good news
• Reviewing last quarter
• What to stop, keep, and start doing
• Reviewing the annual plan
• Making an execution plan for the next quarter
• Communication Plan

Create your quarterly business review meeting agenda early, filling in necessary details to ensure that both your team and the customer know what to expect. Share it well in advance of the meeting, ideally when you schedule it.

You can invite everyone to offer feedback on the agenda to get the best results. This way, your customer can raise any issues they’re having that you may be unaware of.

Your team can also share documentation on KPIs and other metrics. They can even put together a quarterly business review presentation in advance to expedite the meeting and make the most of everyone’s time.

Ideally, a strong QBR presentation will keep decision makers on both sides of the table well-informed of current issues as well as future opportunities. Followed by strong action items, you can end the meeting on a positive note with key stakeholders.

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7. Perfect Your Quarterly Business Review With Meeting Software

Scheduling, sharing agendas, and tracking action items for frequent meetings like QBRs is much easier with meeting software built for those tasks. Fellow is a meeting notes app that simplifies your quarterly business reviews with ease.

Access free meeting templates , collaborate on agendas, and assign action items all in one place with an easy-to-navigate interface. With Fellow, meetings don’t just get easier—they get more productive.

Don't let unproductive meetings slow you down

See the impact of fewer, shorter meetings, increased accountability, and enhanced productivity with Fellow.

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Quarterly business review (QBR) presentation: The all-in-one guide

Learn to create and deliver winning QBR presentations, everything from planning and preparation

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Welcome in our guide to quarterly business reviews (QBRs)!

If you've ever been stuck in a never-ending, yawn-inducing QBR presentation, fear not. In this comprehensive guide, we're going to transform your QBRs from drab to dynamic using Prezent, the ultimate AI presentation software for enterprise teams.

Get ready to learn how to structure an effective QBR presentation that keeps your audience engaged and informed.

What is a quarterly business review (QBR)?

Let's start with the basics. A Quarterly Business Review, commonly known as a QBR, is a crucial business practice where teams and stakeholders come together to review the performance and progress of the past quarter. It's not just about crunching numbers; it's an opportunity to assess your company's quarterly journey, your client's success, and your team's achievements.

Is your QBR boring?

Before we dive into the details of creating an engaging QBR presentation, let's address the elephant in the room - boring QBRs. You know the ones - never-ending slides filled with jargon and mind-numbing charts. It's time to say goodbye to those snooze-fests and say hello to dynamic, compelling QBRs that leave a lasting impact.

How to structure an effective QBR presentation

Creating an impactful successful quarterly business review presentation is an art, and we've got the palette and canvas ready for you. Here's a step-by-step guide to structuring your QBR presentation for maximum impact:

• Start with purpose : Your QBR should have a clear purpose. Are you celebrating successes, addressing challenges, or planning for the future? Define your goals.
• Know your audience : Tailor your presentation to your audience's preferences and needs. Understand what matters most to them.
• Structure matters : Organize your presentation logically, focusing on key sections like goals, achievements, challenges, and next steps.
• Visual appeal : Use Prezent's 15 slides to create a visually appealing presentation. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• Tell a story : QBRs should be more than just data dumps. Craft a compelling narrative that takes your audience on a journey.
• Highlight KPIs and metrics : Showcase key performance indicators and metrics to demonstrate the impact of your efforts.
• ROI insights : Discuss the return on investment (ROI) and how your work contributes to the company's bottom line.
• Actionable takeaways : Provide clear action items and next steps to drive progress.

Do’s and don'ts on a QBR presentation

Now that you have the structure in mind, let's explore some do's and don'ts for creating a memorable QBR presentation:

• Share best practices and a roadmap for the future.
• Engage your audience with high-level insights.
• Encourage interaction during the QBR session.
• Utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) effectively.
• Use Prezent's QBR template for a professional and branded look.

Don'ts:

• Overwhelm with data; keep it concise.
• Make it all about your sales pitch.
• Neglect to discuss challenges and opportunities.
• Forget to let your audience know the impact of your product or service.
• Stray from the purpose of the meeting.

Summarizing key takeaways

To sum it up, your QBR presentation should serve as a powerful instrument, one that brilliantly highlights your team's accomplishments, candidly addresses challenges, and charts the path forward towards a promising future. By adhering to best practices and harnessing the capabilities of Prezent's tools, you can masterfully execute your upcoming successful QBR, ensuring it becomes an indelible and remarkable experience.

The Quarterly Business Review (QBR) presentation transcends the ordinary; it's an opportunity to put your team's immense value on display, harmonize your objectives, and propel your organization towards triumph. Armed with the correct framework, the art of storytelling, and the formidable tools offered by Prezent, you can guarantee that your QBRs are not just informative but also enthralling and unforgettable.

Always remember, the key to a triumphant QBR presentation goes beyond mere numbers; it revolves around crafting a captivating narrative that leaves an enduring imprint on your audience. Take the plunge, create your next QBR presentation, and let your success shine brilliantly!

1. What exactly is a QBR presentation, and why is it important for my business goals?

A QBR presentation, short for Quarterly Business Review presentation, is a comprehensive review of your company's performance over a quarter. It's a crucial opportunity to assess your quarter's achievements, discuss challenges, and set the course for the future. By presenting your progress in a clear and engaging manner, you can align your sales team, account managers, and customer success strategies toward common goals. It's more than just a PowerPoint; it's a strategic tool to help you achieve your business objectives.

2. How can I structure a successful QBR presentation for my sales team?

Structuring a successful QBR presentation is essential for delivering meaningful insights. Start by creating a compelling narrative that tells the big picture of your quarter's journey. Use Prezent's QBR template to craft visually stunning slides that showcase the data and graphs representing your quarter's performance. Remember, a QBR presentation isn't just about numbers; it's about demonstrating the value your sales team brings to the organization.

3. What are some presentation tips to ensure I nail my next QBR?

To nail your next QBR, keep the presentation concise and focused. Use charts and diagrams to visually represent data that would otherwise be cumbersome in a report. Use Prezent's tools and the free quarterly business review template to your advantage. Engage your audience by highlighting key takeaways and actionable insights. Don't forget to let people know how your sales team's efforts contribute to the organization as a whole. It's about presenting quarterly results in a way that resonates with your audience.

4. How can I prepare for a QBR meeting effectively?

Effective preparation for a QBR meeting involves setting aside time to reflect on the past quarter's performance. Use the 30 minutes to plan the future and address any roadblocks. Consider increasing the frequency of separate calls or meetings to align your sales team's day-to-day operations toward goals. Ensure your data shows the value you bring to the organization and offers a glimpse into future goals. It's all about seizing the opportunity to show how your sales team's efforts fit into the organization's org chart.

5. What are some simple tips for presenting quarterly reviews that engage the audience?

Engaging your audience during a QBR presentation is vital. Start by creating a compelling narrative that tells the story of your quarter's achievements and challenges. Use Prezent's tools to craft visually appealing slide shows that captivate your audience. Incorporate simple tips, such as using Prezent's free QBR template and presenting quarterly data in a way that resonates with your audience. Make it a presentation that not only informs but also leaves a lasting impact.

Create your QBR presentation with Prezent

Why settle for just another run-of-the-mill QBR when you can elevate it to something truly extraordinary?

With Prezent at your disposal, you possess the means to craft a presentation that not only captivates but also visually dazzles your audience. Don't delay; embark on this journey today and transform your QBRs into a strategic cornerstone for your organization's success.

With Prezent, you have the tools to create a compelling and visually stunning presentation that captures your audience's attention.

Get started today and transform your QBRs into a strategic asset for your organization.

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Learn how to prepare a successful QBR so that you can align on and execute organizational goals. Check out these 5 steps that will build the perfect QBR and take note of the things that you’ll probably want to avoid.

Any customer success manager knows that the customers come first. Any customer success manager also knows the feeling of unease if they haven’t touched base with their clients for a while and are unsure about how satisfied they may be. To avoid that anxious feeling, it’s important that as an account manager, you conduct a quarterly business review (QBR) with your customers or clients so that you can discuss their business and make sure that you are serving them to the best of your ability, and that they feel satisfied with your service. 

Don’t know where to start? We’ve got your back. Fellow has created a full guide to prepare you to conduct a productive and successful QBR for the upcoming quarter. 

What is a Quarterly Business Review?

Why are quarterly reviews important.

• Steps to prepare a successful QBR

Mistakes to avoid in your QBR

According to Gainsight “Quarterly business reviews are crucial to the effective operation of firms.” A quarterly meeting is held to discuss the company’s goals and upcoming projects. The individual goals that contribute to the overall aims of the firm should be discussed.

S mart Karrot provides a comprehensive description that defines a quarterly business review (QBR). In a recent article they highlight: 

“It is conducted to discuss their business and how you can add more value. In a typical quarterly business review presentation, you go through all the progress made in the last 90 days, outlining your plan for the next 90 days. This forms an essential part of the CSMs responsibilities for delivering a client’s business outcomes.” 

Many companies organize their internal reviews every fiscal quarter so that they can take a closer look at their revenue, return on investment (ROI) and other key performance indicators (KPIs) or obj ectives and key results (OKRs) that have been previously set.

If and when you’re able to, it’s great to conduct your quarterly business review in person, but for a lot of us in 2021, these are being held remotely. Just make sure that you’re planning well so that you can deliver the same quality while working from home.  

So, why is hosting a review meeting so important? You want to show your client that you have taken the time to reflect on the most important goals set (whether these are KPIs or OKRs) as well as your ability to plan for the future, to either deliver on these goals, or to set new ones. 

It’s important that you show your client that you know their business in and out- in other words, you and your team are well equipped to deliver value to your customers. QBRs are important because they allow an opportunity to measure and evaluate performance which has been previously determined by your client’s overall mission and values. By looking at the results, you enable efficient planning for future successes. 

QBRs also provide a concrete 90-day timeline to work with so that you can use concrete dates to drive specific deliverables. These review meetings ho ld you accountable and give the client a great opportunity to give you some feedback. 

Steps to prepare a successful QBR:

Now that we’ve gone through what a QBR is and why they’re so important to the success of your team, let’s take a look at how to put them together. In order to prepare for a solid execution of your QBR, follow these 5 steps:

1 Review goals and KPIs

Start the meeting by reviewing previously set goals and your key performance indicators. Showcase the KPIs that you know matter the most so that your client isn’t waiting in anticipation for you to get to the point. Your goals and objectives can be tracked throughout the quarter in Fellow.app’s objective tabs. This makes planning the QBR easier as all the quarterly objectives and their progress are outlined in one place. In an article by For bes, Lindsay Mullen from Prosper Strategies shares: 

“We start our quarterly client strategy meetings by reviewing our campaign’s key performance indicators. These typically include new leads, qualified leads and customers acquired as a result of marketing and PR activities. From there, we are able to break it down into which tactics drove the most success and outline what we will do similarly or differently for the upcoming quarter.”

2 Show achievements

Showcase the achievements you’ve worked hard to bring to fruition. You want to maintain a positive tone earlier in the conversation to highlight the accomplishments that you’re proud of and that your client will feel satisfied with. Make sure that you continue to set results-based goals that can be measured based on the feedback of your actions from your customers so that you can take note as to whether your benchmarks can be achieved, and by when.

3 Inform stakeholders of challenges

It’s great to highlight your accomplishments but it’s also really important for you to shed some light on the challenges that you’ve been facing while trying to deliver for them. This is a great opportunity to be transparent with your client and build trust between yourselves. It’s also a great opportunity to collaborate and come to an appropriate and effective solution to confront these challenges together. There’s a good chance that your customer might even have some experience facing the same obstacles that lie in your path. 

4 Share underlying opportunities

There’s always room for growth and it’s paramount to your business relationship to show your client that you’ve been looking for further opportunities for their company’s success and how you can help to get them there. This is going to show your client that you’re going over and above to think innovatively about how you can better and best serve their organizational goals. Your ability to think outside of the box is a huge added value for your customer and they’ll appreciate your creative and innovative approach to serving their business needs. 

5 Discuss a roadmap and goals for the future

Develop a roadmap that includes a strong visualization of the strategies and the initiatives that you’re going to be implementing in order to hit client targets. Better yet, come prepared to your QBR with a printed or digital visualization of your roadmap so that you can go through a detailed explanation, including action items and timelines. As a customer success manager, you should use these roadmaps in order to communicate your goals and plans to execute these targets for your customers. 

We’ve looked at 5 valuable steps to prepare and execute a great QBR but we want to make it crystal clear that there are certain things that should be avoided. Make sure to steer clear from these 3 classic QBR mistakes:

1 Resist being defensive 

The customer always comes first. You’ve heard this a million times throughout your career but it’s so true! Don’t go on the defense when things don’t go your way. Even if you don’t agree with your client, make sure that you listen attentively and process their concerns before firing back. It’s really important that you listen to any issues or challenges from your customer so that you can address them and find a collaborative solution. 

2 Don’t blame anyone on your team for underperformance or mistakes

The blame game doesn’t look good… It just shows that you’re unwilling to take accountability as a team. As you know, teamwork is esse ntial to successful initiatives and so you want to show your client that you work effectively and amicably with your colleagues. 

How you treat others says a lot about the kind of teammate that you are. Even if you have some frustrations about a specific person, address them directly with some compassion and see how you can help them get to where they need to be. Your client doesn’t need to hear that it was all Andrew’s fault. The customer doesn’t care about Andrew, they care about the overall underperformance!

3 Don’t use the meeting to troubleshoot minor issues

The whole purpose of a QBR is to look at how you’ve done in the last 90 days in hitting your performance goals, what your achievements are and what challenges you’ve faced. There’s no point in getting into the nitty, gritty, seemingly irrelevant issues! Always remember to focus on the bigger picture and give attention where it’s warranted. Your customer is only a phone call or email away if there’s something small to follow up on that you and your team feel stuck on. 

Closing thoughts

Planning is the most important preparation point for a successful QBR. You really want to make sure that you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into creating a review that addresses all aspects of the business and maps out a way to achieve customer goals. 

Make sure that as you prep for your QBR you’re ready to do a deep dive into a review of the KPIs or OKRs you’ve previously set, highlight your achievements, present the challenges you’ve faced, propose some great future opportunities as well as a roadmap that outlines subsequent goals. 

On the flip side, avoid being defensive, blaming other teammates and don’t focus on troubleshooting minor issues. We hope this article sets you up for success for the upcoming quarter. 

Thanks for popping by the Fellow Blog. We hope to see you again really soon! 

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April 3, 2024

How to conduct a successful quarterly business review: A step-by-step guide (+ QBR template)

Jeremy Yancey

Head of Content, Tability

Table of contents

As a business leader, keeping track of your company's progress is essential for long-term success. A quarterly business review provides an excellent opportunity to assess your performance, identify areas for improvement, and align your team towards common goals. But conducting a successful quarterly business review (QBR) can be challenging, especially if you're unsure where to start. In this post, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide to help you get the most out of your QBR.

What is a quarterly business review?

A quarterly business review happens four times a year and is the perfect opportunity to look at how your company is doing from every angle. During a QBR, all the key decision-makers get together to analyse the company's performance metrics, progress markers, and strategic plans . QBRs are not brief discussions - they are a big deal and require thorough preparation.

The focus of a QBR is to have a deep dive into all the key performance indicators (KPIs), which could range from financial performance to customer satisfaction. Goals are scrutinised with a discerning eye, and everyone works together to recalibrate strategies if needed. This process helps to identify challenges and opportunities, and everyone gets on the same page. By the end of the meeting, everyone knows exactly what needs to happen to drive the business forward.

But a QBR meeting isn't all about the data - it's also a chance for different departments and stakeholders to come together and share their insights. The QBR meeting is an opportunity to celebrate achievements, learn from setbacks, and align priorities for the upcoming quarter. With everyone aligned, the business can move towards achieving its goals with confidence and clarity.

Why is a quarterly business review important?

Quarterly business reviews are important for several reasons, including:

1. Strategic alignment

QBRs help to keep all departments and teams aligned with the organisation's strategic goals. By reviewing progress and priorities together, stakeholders can realign strategies and resources to stay on track towards common objectives.

2. Performance evaluation

QBRs offer an opportunity to evaluate the performance of business units, teams, and individuals. By analysing key metrics and KPIs , organisations can recognise areas of success and areas that require improvement, allowing for targeted interventions to optimise performance.

3. Data-driven decision making

QBRs are all about crunching data to get insights into how the market is moving, how customers behave, and how things are working internally. By using data to make decisions, businesses can be smarter about what they're doing, which means they can grow faster, work more efficiently, and stay ahead of the competition.

4. Course correction

Organisations can use QBRs to remain agile and adjust strategies based on market conditions, opportunities, and customer needs.

5. Accountability and ownership

QBRs promote accountability and teamwork by openly discussing successes and challenges. This helps teams take ownership of their responsibilities and work towards achieving collective goals.

6. Continuous improvement

QBRs facilitate feedback, brainstorming, and best practices to improve processes and offerings through a culture of learning and innovation.

A step-by-step guide to conducting a successful quarterly business review 

If you want to get the most out of your QBR, you need to put some effort into it. Planning, preparing, and following through are key to success. Here are the critical steps: 

Step 1: Gather the right stakeholders

It's important to figure out who should join the QBR process before jumping in. You'll want to have a good mix of people with different points of view, skills, and decision-making power. Here are some suggestions on who to invite:

C-Suite executives: The CEO, CFO, COO, and other top-level executives should be present to provide strategic guidance and make high-level decisions.

Senior leadership team (SLT): Include department heads overseeing key functions like sales, marketing, operations, and human resources. They can provide insights and align departmental goals with company objectives.

Other department leaders: When preparing for a QBR, it's important to figure out what you want to focus on ahead of time. Depending on what you're discussing, you might want to invite leaders from specific teams or departments like product development, customer success, or IT. These leaders can give you more detailed insights into their respective areas, which helps you make better decisions.

Step 2: Involve your team in your QBR

Involving your team members in the quarterly business review process enables you to tap into a diverse pool of insights, experiences, and ideas that can drive better decision-making and more effective problem-solving. 

Here's how you can involve your team in the QBR process:

1. Pre-QBR preparation

• Ask team members to prepare brief updates on their areas of responsibility, including successes, challenges, and key metrics
• Encourage them to identify potential areas for improvement and suggest ideas for growth and innovation
• Share the agenda in advance and invite team members to propose additional topics or questions they would like to discuss

2. Collaborative data analysis

• During the QBR, present the data collected in Step 1 and invite team members to share their insights and interpretations
• Encourage open discussion and diverse perspectives to uncover new insights and ideas

3. Brainstorming and problem-solving

• When identifying areas for improvement and growth opportunities, engage team members in brainstorming sessions
• Break into smaller groups to discuss specific challenges or opportunities and generate potential solutions
• Encourage cross-functional collaboration to promote a holistic view of the business and drive innovation

4. Goal setting and accountability

• Involve team members in setting SMART goals for the upcoming quarter, ensuring they align with individual, team, and company objectives
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines for each goal, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability
• Encourage team members to take the lead on initiatives that align with their strengths 

5. Continuous feedback and progress updates

• Schedule regular check-ins with team members to discuss progress, challenges, and lessons learned
• Encourage ongoing feedback and open communication to maintain momentum and identify potential roadblocks early on
• Celebrate successes and recognise individual and team contributions 

At ABC Company, the marketing team is actively involved in the QBR process. Before the meeting, each team member prepares a brief update on their key marketing initiatives, including campaign performance, lead generation, and content creation efforts. During the QBR, the team discusses the data, shares insights, and brainstorms ideas for optimising their marketing strategies .

The team then breaks into smaller groups to discuss specific challenges, such as improving social media engagement or reducing customer acquisition costs. Each group presents their ideas to the larger team, and together they prioritise initiatives and set goals for the upcoming quarter. The marketing manager assigns responsibilities and deadlines for each goal, and the team schedules weekly check-ins to discuss progress and make any necessary adjustments.

By involving your team members in the QBR process, you not only gain valuable insights and ideas but also foster a sense of ownership and accountability. This helps ensure that everyone is aligned towards common goals and working together to drive success.

Step 3: Prepare your data

Before you kick off your quarterly business review, it's important to gather and sort all the relevant data that will give you a complete picture of how your company is doing. This data will form the basis of your discussions and help you make informed decisions during the review.

Here are some key data points to collect:

Financial reports: First, gather your company's financial statements like the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. These reports will give you a good idea about your revenue , expenses, overall financial health, and profitability. Try to spot trends like changes in revenue growth, gross margins, and operating expenses. Also, be ready to discuss the reasons behind these changes.

Sales figures: Deep dive into your sales data and analyse your sales pipeline, conversion rates, and revenue based on product line, customer segment, or location. Check out which products or services are doing well and which need more attention. Keep an eye on the sales cycle, average deal size, and customer acquisition costs to better understand your sales performance.

Customer feedback: Collect feedback from surveys, social media, online reviews, and customer support conversations. Try to find out what customers like , what they don't, and what they want. This will help you figure out how well your products and services are doing and what you can do to improve them.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Make sure you keep track of the numbers that matter most to your business - your KPIs . These could be things like your website traffic, how many leads you're generating, how well you're keeping your customers, or even how often your employees are sticking around. By comparing your current numbers to what you had before (and to what other companies are doing), you'll get a good idea of how well you're doing and if there are any issues you need to fix.

Industry and market data: To put your company’s performance in context, it’s important to understand your industry and market. Gathering data points around market size and annual growth rate, and the competition will give you a better perspective of where you stand.   

Organising and visualising data: Once you've got all your data, make sure you organise and present it in a format that’s easy to digest. This way, you can spend more time figuring out what to do with it, and less time trying to make sense of it all. You can create charts, graphs, and tables using PowerPoint, dashboards , or data visualisation software to help you spot the key trends and insights. 

By preparing your data ahead of your QBR, you are laying the foundation for a focused and productive meeting, which will help you get off to a solid start for the following quarter. 

Step 4: Set an agenda for your QBR meeting

A well-structured agenda ensures that all participants are prepared, the QBR meeting stays on track, and all critical topics are addressed. 

Here’s an example of a QBR agenda:

1. Review the previous quarter's goals and performance (30 minutes)

• Discuss goals set in the previous QBR and evaluate progress 
• Celebrate successes and acknowledge areas where goals were not met
• Analyse the factors that contributed to both successes and shortcomings

2. Assessment of current performance and key metrics (45 minutes)

• Present and discuss the data collected in Step 1, including financial reports, sales figures, customer feedback, and other KPIs
• Identify trends, patterns, and insights 
• Encourage open discussion and gather input from team members on the implications of the data

3. Identification of areas for improvement and growth opportunities (30 minutes)

• Based on the data analysis and discussion, pinpoint specific areas where the company can improve its performance
• Brainstorm potential growth opportunities and new initiatives that align with the company's strategic objectives
• Prioritise improvement areas and growth opportunities based on their potential impact and feasibility

4. Discussion of plans and goals for the upcoming quarter (45 minutes)

• Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals for the upcoming quarter, taking into account the insights gained from the data analysis and discussion
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines for each goal to ensure accountability
• Align goals with the company's overall strategic objectives so they are contributing to its long-term success

5. Q&A and next steps (30 minutes)

• Allow time for participants to ask questions, raise concerns, and provide additional input
• Summarise key takeaways, decisions, and action items from the meeting
• Establish a timeline for follow-up and progress updates to maintain momentum and accountability

Step 5: Focus on actionable insights

If you want your QBR to really make an impact, you need to focus on insights that can move the needle for your business. It's easy to get caught up in the numbers that look good on paper, but if you dig a little deeper into the things that are really driving your performance, you'll find more valuable insights that you can actually put into action. Look beyond the surface-level data.

Here's how you can ensure your QBR is focused on actionable insights:

1. Identify key drivers of performance

• Look beyond surface-level metrics and analyse the root causes of your successes and challenges
• Use data analysis techniques, such as correlation analysis or regression analysis, to identify the key variables that impact your KPIs
• Engage your team members in discussing their experiences and observations to gain a more nuanced understanding of performance drivers

2. Conduct root cause analysis

• When faced with a challenge or underperforming area, conduct a thorough root cause analysis to identify the underlying issues
• Use techniques like the "5 Whys" or fishbone diagrams to explore the contributing factors and potential solutions
• Encourage open and honest discussion among team members to uncover hidden problems and opportunities for improvement

3. Benchmark against industry standards and best practices

• Compare your company's performance to industry benchmarks and best practices to identify areas where you may be lagging behind
• Research successful strategies and tactics employed by industry leaders and consider how they can be adapted to your business
• Use this information to set realistic yet ambitious targets for improvement and growth

4. Prioritise insights based on impact and feasibility

• Not all insights are created equal – some will have a greater potential impact on your business than others
• Prioritise the insights and opportunities identified during your QBR based on their expected impact and the feasibility of implementing changes
• Focus on high-impact, low-effort initiatives first to generate quick wins and build momentum for larger, more complex projects

5. Develop action plans and assign ownership

• For each prioritised insight or opportunity, develop a clear action plan outlining the steps needed to drive improvement
• Break down larger projects and initiatives into smaller, manageable tasks with specific timelines and milestones
• Assign ownership for each action item to ensure accountability and progress tracking
• Regularly review progress against action plans and adjust as needed 

During their QBR, the sales team at XYZ Company noticed that their customer churn rate had increased by 10% compared to the previous quarter. Rather than simply acknowledging the problem, they conducted a root cause analysis and discovered that a significant portion of churned customers had experienced long wait times when contacting customer support.

The team then benchmarked their customer support metrics against industry standards and identified specific areas for improvement, such as average response time and first-call resolution rate. They prioritised initiatives based on their potential impact on customer satisfaction and retention. They developed an action plan to streamline their support processes and invest in additional training for their support team.

By assigning ownership and setting clear timelines for each action item, the sales team reduced customer churn by 25% over the next quarter while improving overall customer satisfaction scores.

By focusing on actionable insights during your QBR, you can drive meaningful, data-driven improvements in your business. This approach ensures that your QBR is not just a review of past performance, but a strategic planning session that sets the stage for future growth and success.

Step 6: Follow up and measure progress

A successful QBR is not just about the meeting itself, but also what happens afterwards. Following up on action items and measuring progress against your goals is crucial for maintaining momentum, ensuring accountability, and ultimately driving the desired improvements in your business. 

Here's how you can effectively follow up and measure progress after your QBR:

Communicate action items and responsibilities

• Immediately after the QBR, send a summary of the key decisions, action items, and assigned responsibilities to all participants
• Ensure that each team member clearly understands their roles and expectations, and has the necessary resources and support to carry out their tasks
• Encourage open communication and collaboration among team members to address any questions or concerns that may arise

Set up a progress-tracking system

• Establish a system for tracking progress on action items and initiatives, such as a shared project management tool or dashboard
• Break down large goals into smaller, measurable milestones to make progress tracking more manageable and motivating
• Regularly update the tracking system with progress reports, key metrics, and any relevant data or insights

Schedule regular check-ins

• Set up regular check-in meetings with team members and stakeholders to discuss progress, challenges, and next steps
• Use these check-ins to celebrate successes, identify potential roadblocks, and make any necessary adjustments to action plans or timelines
• Encourage a culture of transparency , accountability, and continuous improvement by openly discussing both achievements and areas for growth

Measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Identify the most relevant KPIs for each goal or initiative, and establish a baseline and target for each metric
• Regularly measure and report on these KPIs to gauge progress and identify trends or patterns
• Use data visualisation tools, such as charts or dashboards, to make KPIs more accessible and actionable for team members and stakeholders

Conduct mid-quarter reviews

• Schedule a mid-quarter review to assess progress, discuss any significant changes or challenges, and make necessary adjustments to plans or priorities
• Use this opportunity to reassess the relevance and feasibility of your goals and initiatives based on new data or insights
• Encourage team members to share their experiences, lessons learned, and ideas for continuous improvement

Celebrate successes and learn from setbacks

• Recognise and celebrate the achievements of your team members and the progress made towards your goals
• When faced with setbacks or challenges, approach them as learning opportunities and use them to inform future strategies and decision-making
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and growth by encouraging experimentation, innovation, and knowledge-sharing

After their QBR, the marketing team at ABC Company set up a shared project management dashboard to track progress on their initiatives, such as improving social media engagement and optimising their content marketing strategy . Each team member was assigned specific tasks and deadlines, and the team scheduled weekly check-ins to discuss progress and challenges.

The team also identified key KPIs for each initiative, such as social media followers, engagement rates, and website traffic, and set up a dashboard to track these metrics over time. During their mid-quarter review, they discovered that their social media engagement rates had improved significantly, but their website traffic had remained stagnant.

Based on this insight, the team adjusted their content marketing strategy to focus more on SEO and backlink building, and they were able to improve their website traffic by 20% by the end of the quarter.

By consistently following up and measuring progress after your QBR, you can ensure that your team stays on track, remains accountable, and continuously improves performance. This approach helps translate the insights and strategies discussed during your QBR into tangible, measurable results for your business.

Download our free QBR template

Our customisable QBR template offers a structured framework to evaluate your financial metrics, operational efficiency, sales and marketing efforts, customer success initiatives, and strategic projects. The QBR template has clear sections for data input, analysis, goal setting, risk assessment, and action planning, empowering you to make informed decisions and drive business growth. Whether presenting to executives, investors, or department heads, this QBR template ensures clarity, coherence, and actionable insights for quarterly business review meetings. 

DOWNLOAD QBR TEMPLATE

To conduct a successful quarterly business review, you need to prepare well, work together, and focus on actionable insights. Remember, a QBR is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process of continuous improvement. By regularly tracking your performance, celebrating successes, and learning from challenges, you can keep up the momentum and adapt to changing circumstances. With the right mindset and approach, QBRs can be a powerful tool for driving growth, innovation, and long-term success in your business.

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Copyright © 2024 Tability Inc.

Published September 10, 2020

How to do a successful quarterly business review (qbr) meeting: 10 expert tips.

Here, we have listed the top 10 expert tips for conducting QBR meeting successfully to evaluate the performance of your clients made in the last quarter.

Just to recap, a QBR is a quarterly meeting you hold with your clients to review all the progress made in the last quarter and to share a plan. The plan is about how you can help clients derive more value from your product.This sounds straightforward, but it’s easier said than done. When you set out for the actual preparation and execution, there are many nuances you discover like: What metrics to use? Which section to expand? And which ones to keep short? The list of questions is endless.No matter how immersive your presentation is, the end goal of this meeting is to strengthen the relationship with the client. This meeting is the most important occasion to win their confidence and, thereby, ensure their contract renewal.So, let’s get straight to the tips that will help you successfully conduct this meeting.

1. Invite the right personnel.

The QBR meeting should be with the key, customer-focused stakeholders. In a nutshell, it should be someone who can make informed decisions on strategic initiatives in the best interest of the customer and business.The importance of QBR can only be realized by giving an abstract view of the whole quarter’s performance. This meeting doesn’t go into the day-to-day details but gives a holistic picture of the path traversed.

2. Start with the client’s goals.

If you are setting up a QBR meeting and are unaware of your client’s goals, you are unlikely to be successful at driving value. After sharing the Quarterly Business Review meeting agenda, client goals must be the first thing you should talk about. Ideally, these are set during the strategic discussions in the onboarding phase between the client and CSM.If your client does not have a specific, measurable goal, it’s your job to bring it out. If they say they’re happy with the increasing customer engagement, ask them for more details. You should ask specifically about the increase in the number of their daily active users, the increase in product adoption rate, etc.Consider the metrics you must compare between their goals and accomplishments.

3. Next, consider the KPIs.

Once you have recapped the goals in the meeting, your next job is to show your performance toward achieving them. Use the right key performance indicators to offer only the most valuable insights.It’s easy to get lost in vanity metrics especially when dealing with loads of quantitative data, but be patient and avoid showing them all. The impact you can achieve with just two or three KPIs can be far more significant than the cumulative effect of multiple metrics. Keep it clean. Keep it simple. And most importantly, keep it value-focused!

4. Show achievements.

Besides showing them how they’re reaching their goals through your product, you can also boost their confidence by showing them the achievements they’ve made as well. Explain how they achieved those results through your product, including what worked and what didn’t work.

5. Inform them of challenges ahead.

You must also inform the clients of what challenges you face while helping them achieve their goals. And explain what measures you took to overcome them.Also, demonstrate why you couldn’t overcome certain challenges. What collaboration and support do you need from them? This should be explained clearly so that they get a clear sense of their responsibility in achieving business outcomes.

6. Share underlying opportunities.

The challenges discussed in the previous steps must be succeeded by opportunities ahead. This is the chance for you to cover up the gaps identified. Explain the ways you are going to transform those challenges into opportunities . Also, go into detail on the added benefits of overcoming the challenges. State all your needs from their end required for future opportunities.

7. Outline a roadmap for the future.

Take cues from achievements, challenges, and opportunities, and create a roadmap for the future. Show your clients what areas you will be working on in the next quarter.This roadmap is a crucial step, especially if you’re in a subscription-based business . A roadmap keeps the customer aligned with your plans and ensures contract renewal. Without it, they may have nothing solid to bank on for further renewals.

8. Discuss value rather than tickets.

A common mistake most professionals make in QBRs is that they discuss some specific ticket or features of their product. And this doesn’t interest your customers.They want to understand the value you are delivering to them. The best example would be to show saved costs through your product, the net increase in their customer acquisition, etc. These are the numbers they care about and they also care about the results and goals obtained in the whole quarter. So, don’t waste their time; keep the meeting focused on the value received.

9. Identify new opportunities.

Pay close attention to anything a customer shares about their experience. It could be challenges, feedback , or maybe even a complaint. Avoid becoming defensive and open up a positive space for further understanding. These discussions allow you to upsell or cross-sell them on a different solution or plan you offer that can solve their problem. But keep in mind, it should feel natural, not forced or out-of-touch with your customer’s experience.

10. Leave some time for questions.

If the session is 60 to 90 minutes, then it’s better to leave around 20 to 30 minutes for a short Q&A session. This time will help you gauge the happiness index of your customer.Get a sense of how likely they will renew their subscription for the next quarter. If there is a red alert, it acts as an early warning of churn for your company. Based on that, you can take proactive measures to prevent churn.On a positive note, it can also help you know how much they have absorbed from your Quarterly Business Review presentation and how motivated they sound for the future roadmap you have shown them.

QBR Meeting FAQs

Q 1: What makes QBR important?

A 1: Here are some of the reasons that make QBR important for a B2B SaaS organization:

• It strengthens the customer relationships by touching base and reinforcing the business relationship with the customers. This is not just an occasion to socialize; it is also an opportunity to have a crucial exchange of information that can result in real action and desirable outcomes for the customers.
• When you conduct regular QBR, it becomes easier to scrutinize the business requirements and objectives by doing necessary adjustments. Customers are also updated about your business and product development, making it easier for you to plan for the future.
• By strengthening the relationship with the customers, you ensure better customer retention. It can even result in a far better outcome if you are doing it for the first time. The additional attention to the customer needs will make them stick around for a very long time.
• By conducting QBR, you depict your need to be adjustable when it comes to achieving your company objectives.
• Conducting regular QBR results in insightful details of the business. In the QBR meeting discussions, you can make necessary adjustments to ensure better customer experiences for everyone.

Q 2: What is the major difference between QBR and Sales QBR?

A 2: When we talk about the term QBR, we are referring to sales QBR. A customer success QBR also has the same purpose; however, it consists of a different hierarchy of people. In the customer success QBR meeting, the customer success team hosts the review with the customer. The objective of the meeting is to comprehend the different ways the products and services of the organization have benefitted the customer in the last quarter, the different issues they faced (if any), and how they can enhance the benefits even more in the next quarter.

While sales QBR is the leadership teams’ opportunity to connect with the sales reps, it indulges in significant sales metrics, scrutinizing the numbers, deciphering the things that went the right way, and what can be improved moving forward in the next quarter. The person running such a QBR will ask each sales rep to provide information about their quarterly results and briefly explain what and why it happened. The leader will also ask to enquire about their forecast for the next quarter. They will discuss the team strategies, objectives, and other critical information about the forthcoming months.

Q 3: What needs to be covered in QBR?

A 3: Here is a list of things that need to be covered in QBR:

• Past objectives
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Opportunities
• Future steps that need to be taken

Q 4: Can you enumerate the common QBR meeting agenda items?

A 4: Here are some of the common QBR meeting agenda items:

• Review past goals and KPIs
• Showcase the achievements
• Educate stakeholders about the forthcoming challenges
• Share the opportunities that lie ahead
• Prepare a roadmap for the future objectives to be achieved in the next quarter

Quarterly Business Review Mistakes to Avoid

#mistake 1: monologue meetings.

It’s no good to see meetings that are nothing less than a scripted monologue, and it’s not only exhausting in nature but isn’t beneficial either. And that is why most top-level customer success managers try to adopt two-way communication. They ask the ‘especially silent’ ones to actively participate in the discussion.

#Mistake 2: No Verdicts or Course of Actions

The primary target of the QBR meetings is to assist a customer in getting a solution. It’s crucial that you get a consensus on the next course of action. Your customers shouldn’t be left without any clear direction. And as a Customer Success Manager driving the meeting, it’s your responsibility to brainstorm ideas, suggest recommendations, eliminate irrelevant options, and finally call for action.

#Mistake 3: No or Inadequate Pre-Plans

If you have an upcoming QBR meeting, it would not hurt to check with some pre-plans in advance. To achieve this, send a short email on the top priorities to cover. This will help you create an engaging atmosphere and a stellar QBR meeting, steering away from unnecessary confusion.

#Mistake 4: No Follow-Ups

The whole point of the QBR meetings simmers down into nothing without follow-ups. It’s a follow-up that shows the customers that the CSM is thoroughly engaged and can provide a reliable review of the meeting. Also, look at it this way: A meeting is complete only after a successful follow-up.

Using PowerPoint Presentation for a Quarterly Business Review (Templates)

The Quarterly Business Review is a vital tracker that checks whether the goals discussed have been met in the previous quarter and what else can be incorporated in the next one. That’s where an outstanding PowerPoint Presentation comes into play. Here are some notable templates and links to give you the bigger picture.

Peruse this customizable QBR slide sheet to present your business performance. It has been carefully designed to showcase the valuable data and information upfront and sums up the key objectives and results. It suits perfectly for remote online meetings that use video conferencing software. More on that here .

Answer the most crucial elements of your QBR with this template. This PowerPoint Presentation contains Sales Review, Team Review, and KPI Review templates to help you showcase a detailed Business Review to your senior management or client. More on that here .

Use this customizable QBR slide sheet outline with your team members and get a chance to shine and augment performance. You can seamlessly modify each slide to portray vital bits about the market or customers or the succeeding plan for the next QBR meeting. More on that here .

Final Thoughts

These are a few of the most essential tips to keep in mind while preparing for a QBR meeting. Ultimately, you want to remember that this meeting isn’t for your benefit and to list all your good work; it’s for your customer and the value they want and have already received. And if you go into your meeting with this as your driving point, it can be a success for all parties involved.

You might also like:

• What is a Quarterly Business Review (QBR): 5 Choices That Make or Break It –  Includes top choices that you must consider for a QBR.
• To understand how SmartKarrot helps SaaS companies keep and grow loyal customers, Request a Demo .

Stanley Deepak is an accomplished sales and marketing professional with 15+ years of experience. He loves tech products and book reading. He writes on philosophy and culture on LinkedIn.

Published September 10, 2020, Updated September 27, 2022

• QBR meeting ,
• Quarterly Business Review ,
• what is QBR

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QBR Presentation Template

Review key metrics and results from the last quarter to show clients how your business provides value with the QBR template.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the QBR Presentation Template 

Use Miro’s QBR Presentation Template to review the results from the previous quarter with your clients and make an action plan for the upcoming quarter. Take a closer look at their revenue, return on investment (ROI), and objectives and key results (OKRs) to show how you’ve added value to their business. 

What is a QBR presentation? 

A QBR (quarterly business review) presentation is a periodic client meeting. During the meeting, you’ll reflect on all the progress you’ve made in the past 90 days, showing customers the impact of your product or service on their business. This could be an increase in sales growth, a positive change in brand perception, or reaching a wider audience. 

You’ll review all this information with your customer and use it to identify future business goals and find areas for improvement. 

How to use the QBR Presentation Template

Miro’s digital workspace is the perfect online tool for keeping track of sales performance and sharing notes about your customer relationships. With our Quarterly Business Review Presentation Template, your sales team can pull all this key information from the last quarter. 

Follow these steps to put our template to good use. 

Step 1: Select this template. Start by selecting this QBR template. It’s free to use, and you can start using it immediately. 

Step 2: Edit the presentation template. Now, it’s time to customize the template. You’ll notice that our slides have placeholder text but don’t worry. It’s easy to customize and edit the text to suit your presentation. You can also add new slides, take slides out of the presentation, and rearrange the slide order. If you want to add your own branding and color scheme to the presentation, simply add your colors to Miro’s board and upload your company logo. 

Step 3: Add your introduction. With your presentation structure in place, it’s time to add content. Start by introducing the meeting, providing an agenda, and outlining the purpose of the meeting. 

Step 4: Outline the current position. Get everyone on the same page by outlining your current position. To do this, use competitor analysis . This will show clients how they fare in relation to their competitors and where they currently sit in the marketplace. 

Step 5: Detail the financial performance. Add all the information about your financial performance to show clients the impact your product or service has had. For example, you might want to discuss their revenue and how working with you has (hopefully) increased it. Use Miro’s charts to display this information and highlight key trends and data points. 

Step 6: Create the future roadmap. After reviewing the past three months, you must look to the future. This is where you’ll outline your plan for the next 90 days and the results you expect to see. 

Step 7: Get feedback. Before the actual QBR meeting, share your presentation with colleagues to get feedback. With the QBR template, colleagues can add notes and suggestions directly into the presentation, making it easier for you to make changes. 

Step 8: Deliver the presentation. After you’ve taken any feedback on board, you’ll be ready to deliver the final presentation. On the big day, simply select presentation mode to jump into the presentation. This will project the presentation in full-screen (and don’t worry, any notes or comments from collaborators will be hidden). 

What should be included in a quarterly business review presentation? 

Although every quarterly presentation is different, they all include the following information: 

An overview of your product’s implementation and usage goals

A review of business objectives and performance (including ROI, OKRs, and quantifying customer value)

A rundown of the challenges you faced

A preview of upcoming improvements

A collaborative discussion with your client about your future actions

Tips for giving QBR presentations 

When presenting quarterly reviews, you can follow some best practices to ensure the meeting goes as smoothly as possible. 

Be honest about your performance. If you didn’t perform as expected, be honest about it. Tell your client why this happened, explain what you’ve learned from the experience, and outline what you’ll do differently in the future.  

Focus on the big picture. Your client doesn’t need to know the ins and outs of everything you’ve done over the past quarter. The meeting should be top-level, showing your client what you’ve done on a broader scale. 

Create a professional presentation. Show your clients you’re reliable and trustworthy by delivering a professional presentation. Using a QBR presentation template, you can deliver a well-structured and visually appealing presentation.

How do I start a QBR presentation?

Create a compelling QBR presentation by telling a story. Start by setting the scene with an overview of product implementation and move through the rest of the presentation to build on this initial story. By the end, your client should have a clear picture of what you’ve achieved, how it helped their business, and what you plan to do in the future.

How many slides should a QBR deck have?

A QBR presentation deck is typically no more than 15 slides, but it can be more or less depending on how much information you need to go through. The entire presentation should be no longer than an hour (that’s 30 minutes to review the past and 30 minutes to plan the future).

Who should attend a QBR?

The QBR meeting should be with the key, customer-focused stakeholders from your side of the business and the decision-makers from your client’s company.

Can QBR presentation templates be used for different businesses or industries?

Yes, QBR templates can be adapted to suit various businesses and industries. The key is to tailor the content and metrics to align with the specific goals and performance indicators relevant to your industry.

Is it necessary to review previous QBR presentations?

Reviewing past QBR presentations helps track progress over time and identify trends or patterns. It can provide insights into what's working and what needs improvement.

How can I make my QBR template more actionable and results-driven?

To make QBR presentations more actionable, include clear action items, responsible parties, and deadlines for addressing challenges and achieving quarterly goals.

Get started with this template right now.

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10 Free Quarterly Business Review (QBR) Templates for 2024

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

August 26, 2024

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Organizations are moving faster than ever, with more people, departments, and technology coming together to achieve big, aspirational goals. QBRs provide a structured forum for teams to align on goals , hold themselves accountable, collaborate, and drive continuous improvement.

By conducting regular QBRs, organizations can improve their performance , stay focused on their goals, and ensure they deliver value to their customers and stakeholders.

What is a QBR Template?

• 1. ClickUp QBR Template

2. ClickUp QBR Lane Board Template (Board View)

3. clickup qbr by category template (list view), 4. clickup quarterly business review with action items template (list view), 5. clickup quarterly report template, 6. clickup quarterly performance review template, 7. clickup quarterly roadmap template, 8. clickup quarterly financial report template, 9. slideteam powerpoint qbr template, 10. template.net microsoft word qbr template.

A Quarterly Business Review template is a structured document, dashboard, or presentation that is formatted for companies to easily review business performance over the past quarter and plan for the quarter to come. At a minimum, a typical QBR template will include an overview of key metrics , progress toward goals , updates on major initiatives, and any issues or challenges that need to be addressed.

Essentially, this type of template is designed to make quarterly business review meetings as productive as possible. The document should facilitate discussion among key stakeholders like executives, department heads, and team leaders.

At the end of each quarterly meeting, everyone should be on the same page and have a clear understanding of how the business is performing and what needs to be done to improve during the next quarter.

What makes a good quarterly business review template?

A good QBR template is like a report card for a company, offering a clear grade on company performance. However, unlike a report card, a QBR template is designed to distill the performance of the last three months into an action plan for what needs to be done to improve performance over the next three months.

Aside from just monitoring performance and account planning for improvement, the best QBR templates bring a business together, rallying executives, department heads, and team leaders around shared goals.

Whether you’re hosting your first QBR presentation or your hundredth, a solid template will make your QBR conversation, planning, and execution a regular value add to the business. Consider the following items below, which are core components any good QBR template should include.

• Relevant Metrics: The template should include relevant metrics that help track the performance of the company. It’s important to choose metrics that are aligned with the company’s goals and objectives. For example, if you are managing a sales QBR, the template should include metrics related to revenue, leads generated, and conversion rates.
• Clarity: QBRs include tons of data and info so your template needs to make all that complexity easy to read and understand. The ability to include charts and graphs will make your life much easier when trying to make information more visually appealing and easier to consume.
• Actionable Insights: A QBR template should not only provide an overview of the company’s performance but also highlight key insights and actionable recommendations for improvement.
• Flexibility: Priorities and strategies change quarter to quarter, and often even more frequently. Your template should be flexible enough to accommodate regular changes without requiring you to totally redesign how your quarterly report is developed.
• Audience-specific: Finally, the QBR template should be tailored to fit the specific audience that will be reviewing it. This also gets at flexibility. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to create a different QBR report for each stakeholder, but rather simply filter and frame the same information in different ways for whoever is reviewing it.

Bonus: 30-60-90 day templates !

Why QBRs are important for your business

Quarterly business reviews are like the annual wellness exam you have with a doctor. Similar to how a doctor will run standard tests to check on your overall health or identify potential concerns earlier, a QBR assesses core operating and performance measures to get a regular pulse on the business.

A good QBR process helps a business achieve five things:

• Performance review : Provides a regular opportunity for teams to review their performance against business objectives, goals, and metrics.
• Goal alignment : Helps ensure all teams and departments are aligned with the company’s strategic objectives and priorities.
• Team collaboration : This creates an opportunity for teams to collaborate, share best practices, and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Customer focus : Reviews customer feedback and assesses the customer’s goals and satisfaction.
• Continuous improvement : Drives continuous improvement by regularly reviewing performance, identifying areas for growth and development, and establishing action plans to improve performance.

10 Quarterly Business Review Templates (With Examples)

There are many different types of QBR presentation and QBR templates available. Depending on your specific needs and goals, some templates here focus on financial performance, while others may be based on more qualitative measures—i.e. customer satisfaction or employee engagement .

Your QBR template should be tailored to your needs and goals, and it should be reviewed and updated regularly to continue to be effective. Here’s our list of 10 QBR templates you need to try out now:

1. ClickUp Sample QBR Presentation Template

To create visibility and coordinated action across a lot of moving pieces, the ClickUp QBR Template brings all essential business performance metrics, task statuses, and processes into a single hub. Because it is built in ClickUp, the template offers different views, filters, and visualization so that QBR information can be tailored to fit the reviewing needs of each stakeholder and team.

Built for flexibility as well as consistency, the template organizes QBR activities into five core custom fields: Status, Department, Type, Category, and Completion Rate.

For Status, activities are marked by “To do,” “In progress,” or “Complete,” giving everyone reviewing the QBR presentation an at-a-glance view of where each activity stands. The Department field makes it clear which function like the sales team, customer success, marketing, etc., owns and is responsible for executing and reporting on the activity.

Under Categories, each QBR activity is organized by “People,” “Process,” or “Technology” so organizations can easily identify the big bucket groups each activity and department are tracking up to. Within each Category, tasks are labeled with a “QBR type” that makes it clear if a task needs review, is causing an issue, represents new goals, or needs to become an action item for the future quarter.

Finally, each task has an associated Completion Rate so that contributors and viewers get a bird’s-eye-view of how much work needs to be done to close the activity.

Business priorities change regularly, making it important for teams to know what requirements are still in flight, which have pivoted, and which have been stopped altogether. Without clear alignment on current and future goals, teams can easily spend time on the wrong work.

Any QBR agenda should include ample time to review key performance indicators from the previous quarters and how those KPIs may influence changes to goals and priorities for the upcoming quarter.

To bake change conversations into QBR meetings, ClickUp’s QBR Lane Board Template organizes tasks into four descriptive categories: “ Start,” “Stop,” Continue,” and “Change .” The template uses a Kanban Board to create a clear, vertical view of each category so there is no guesswork required by decision-makers during the QBR presentation.

Items in the Kanban Board can easily be dragged and dropped into different lanes as business priorities shift, making it simple for teams to follow up on the next steps.

A good QBR review needs to present critical information in a way that allows decision-makers to review at-a-glance and respond quickly. Leaders need to know if an activity might affect sales performance, employee productivity, or even an important customer’s business.

When a QBR presentation just includes a bunch of data, tasks, and information, it’s hard to uncover the big picture. The ClickUp QBR by Category Template places each activity into the larger context of business priorities, by organizing tasks by “People,” “Process,” or “Technology.”

Seeing how each activity impacts one of the three core components of the business can better answer key questions like, Do we need to focus more on employees and culture? Is there risk in our organizational operations? Are there gaps in our tech stack or infrastructure?

An effective QBR meeting should not only provide an overview of a company’s key performance indicators but also uncover key insights and actions to tackle before the next QBR meeting.

In fact, ClickUp’s Quarterly Business Review with action items template does just that. Based on the “OKR Type” Custom Field, the template only highlights items from the QBR meeting that are identified as “Action Items.” These action items are then organized in a List view by their respective statuses: “To do,” “In progress,” or “Complete.”

Within the easy-to-scan Action Items List View, decision-makers can see the activity driver, which team is responsible for the activity, and the completion rate of each activity. This bird’s-eye-view of action items makes it easy for leaders to assess what activities need attention and who to work with to make sure action is taken.

A key part of QBR meetings is assessing company financials, including expenses, revenue, and cash flow. This is especially important for sales QBRs, customer success QBRs, and marketing and HR QBRs. By compiling and reviewing the financial information , business leaders can assess the company’s financial health by looking at its financial key performance indicators.

The ClickUp Quarterly Report Template creates a quarter-over-quarter view of company financials, breaking profit and loss (P&L) into four categories: Indirect cost, revenue, billings, and cash flow.

Working with finance data, you’re going to need to do a lot of math. The template includes directions for key formulas so you can easily automate important calculations like annual averages, pacing, and whether P&L is on or off track.

Creating financial transparency across business functions is key to building strong relationships between department leads and the finance team. Reviewing quarterly finances helps functional leaders get better at forecasting their team’s expenses and makes it easier for them to get approval for new investments and budgets.

Quarterly reviews offer an opportunity to build relationships across the organization and within each team. This is done through deep-dive employee performance reviews. Tying employee performance to business goals ensures everyone works toward the same objectives.

For instance, organizations are tirelessly trying to create customer value, so it makes sense that the performance of customer success managers and sales managers is tied to that goal. Those goals could be anything from prioritizing top deals from new customers, developing a training program to build stronger customer relationships, or simply improving a sales pitch.

Whatever an employee is being rated on, tying it into overarching company goals, it makes it easier to provide tangible feedback and create a sense of ownership from employees as they can see how their work is supporting the business.

The ClickUp Quarterly Performance Review Template makes it easy to connect employee performance to business performance. The template focuses on four review categories: Performance overview, goal achievement, process improvement, and work ethic. Each section comes with pre-formatted components to grade output from “excellent” to “poor,” as well as a section for managers to include detailed, bulleted feedback explaining the rating.

At the bottom of the performance review template is an acknowledgment section where both employee and manager include their overall comments and as well as their signature confirming they have read and committed to the review.

Effective QBR meetings will turn into robust action plans for the upcoming quarter. To make sure these actions are hit by the next QBR, teams need a clear roadmap.

The ClickUp Quarterly Roadmap Template uses a timeline view that groups necessary future actions into standard initiative categories and the month they are to be completed. For example, if upcoming features need to be released at a certain time for the next customer success QBR, that can be included in the template under “Research” and “Software” and set to deploy the month before the next QBR meeting.

By organizing quarterly goals into a roadmap, organizations can continue to build strong relationships across functions by developing a shared language and timeline around when and what they need to deliver .

We touched on financial reporting in template No. 5 above, but ClickUp’s Quarter Financial Report is a very deep dive into a company’s financial performance.

Now this is serious business. A Quarterly Financial Report, or QFR, is a compilation of unaudited financial data, like balance sheets and income statements, that are published by businesses every three months. These reports may also include year-to-date and comparative results like comparing the same quarter from the previous year to the current quarter.

ClickUp’s Quarterly Financial Report Template creates an at-a-glance view of quarter-over-quarter revenue and as well as expenses. For example, revenue is broken down into categories like “Service Fees,” “Product Sales,” “Interest Gain,” etc., with sections for year-to-date totals as well as increase and decrease indicators.

Context is always important when dealing with financials. The template also includes a section for highlights and lowlights from a sales, productivity, and budget perspective . This helps make sure your QBR presentation provides enough context for decision-makers to make sense of the data.

If PowerPoint is still your preferred method of managing your quarterly business reviews, this presentation template from Slide Team has you covered. This template comes with 80 ready-made PPT slides that allow you to plug and play with your quarterly highlights, key developments, financial summary, cash flow statements, and much more.

The presentation template also comes with sample slides to incorporate related topics into your QBR meeting like a product roadmap , SWOT analysis , org charts , and other topics that bring relevant but not recurring information into your meetings .

If you are a Microsoft Office loyalist, you can get started with this Template.net Microsoft Word QBR Template. It takes a 30,000-foot view perspective of QBRs, with a focus on grading key performance indicators like profits execution, strategic alignment , development, and resource management.

The template also includes a comments section for reviewers to make recommendations on what needs to be done based on the above KPI assessment.

Get Started With the Right Template to Kick Off Your Next QBR

QBR meetings come in many different shapes and sizes. But the goal will always be the same – identify concerns and learnings from the previous quarter’s performance and develop an informed action plan for the next quarter.

Finding the right template for your next QBR presentation can make all the difference to align your team and hitting your goals.

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How to Conduct Your Sales Quarterly Business Review (QBR)

Published: May 11, 2022

Your sales org just finished an eventful quarter with some outstanding deal wins, a few missed opportunities, and experienced changes in strategy from different sale enablement leaders — and now it’s time to reflect on it with the sales QBR, or Quarterly Business Review.

Though it's generally considered a relatively routine process, it still warrants a lot of thought, effort, and planning. But what does that look like? What goes into a successful sales QBR? What steps and strategies should you employ to ensure that you nail your quarterly presentation?

Let's take a closer look at what a sales QBR is and some best practices you can employ to ensure you get the most out of yours.

What is a QBR in sales?

A sales QBR — or 'Quarterly Business Review' — is a presentation where sales reps and managers are given a forum to discuss their previous quarter's performance with higher-ups. In most cases, it lets salespeople channel a quarter's results into forecasts and present actionable strategies for the future.

It's important to distinguish sales QBRs from customer success QBRs. The latter is conducted with customers as opposed to internal management. That kind of QBR is a meeting with a client to explain how you've supported their business and the solutions you've tailored to suit its needs going forward.

A sales QBR is contained within your company's sales department. It's a chance for you to highlight the better parts of your performance, address where you might have underachieved, and show that you can channel those highs and lows into actionable solutions.

The kinds of reps expected to conduct sales QBRs vary from company to company. Though anyone in a sales department might be asked to present a QBR, they're most commonly assigned to field sales reps or others who can speak to an entire team's overall performance.

What goes in a sales QBR?

What gives QBRs meaning is the information it contains, and it should cover some overarching key components:

• Key Performance Indicators: Important sales metrics like win rate, average sales cycle, and lost deal percentages.
• Reflection Questions: Analysis of the last quarter’s successes, pitfalls, and how to learn from those evaluations.
• Inspection of Current Quarter: Analysis of the current health of the sales pipeline.
• Future Planning: How the sales team will win in the coming months via strategy, consistency, or adaptation for more success.

When forming a QBR, it has to present different types of information in a way that both cross-functional leadership and sales team members can understand and learn from. To make sure your next review meets this need, follow this sales QBR template.

Sales QBR Template

1. introduction and setting expectations.

Executive leadership or sales enablement leaders should open the meeting by setting expectations for it. They should let the agenda be known and set the stage for the duration of the meeting.

This is also their opportunity to liven up the atmosphere with motivational and engaging openings regarding the organization as a whole to prepare the team for a productive QBR.

2. Team Deal Wins and Review

Always start with what’s gone right in the team by highlighting deal wins. When doing so, provide background information on the clients involved and how they were taken from prospect to customer.

Now you don’t have to layout the whole story, so for better time management, answer these questions to give a clear enough picture:

• How did we attain this deal win?
• What value was created for the customer?
• If there were obstacles in this deal, how were they overcome?

3. Territory Plans

So we’ve gone over positive news, keeping the momentum going with a look into the future.

This part of the quarterly business review will cover the team’s new opportunities and activities that are going to be prioritized in the current and coming months. These items should have a brief explanation and provide context as to why they were chosen. An easy tool to use for this section is a SWOT analysis visual to discuss how leadership determined the territory plans.

4. Prospecting Outreach Plans

Much of a sales organization’s success is built on expanding its sales pipeline .

In this section of the QBR, sales leaders should discuss:

• Where the org will be sourcing more prospects.
• Different strategies used for prospecting outreach .
• How these plans will affect current practices.

In addition to discussing prospecting outreach, the org should briefly discuss how it will “clean” its pipeline in case some prospecting outreach plans from the previous quarter were not as fruitful, as well.

5. Deal Losses and Support

Any major deal losses should also be addressed in the QBR because it’s an opportunity to support team members in need of guidance.

Think of this section as a time for leaders to review these losses and open the door for win-loss analysis , but in a teachable way for every team member present. Questions to discuss in this brief analysis would be:

• How did we lose this deal?
• What feedback (if any) did the prospect say about why they walked away?
• What can be done to turn around future deals under similar circumstances?

Pro Tip: You want to avoid singling out specific team members, this is a discussion to give everyone a chance to learn from the loss.

6. Takeaways and Action Items

At the end of your sales quarterly business review, it’s not uncommon for team members to forget some of the information discussed as a result of information overload.

Wrap up the meeting by revisiting the key takeaways of each part briefly, and drive it home with centralized team action items to guide the sales org in the right direction in the new quarter.

So now that you know the components of a productive sales QBR and have a template to map out your own, let’s go through how to present it.

How to Conduct Your Sales QBR

• Collect the relevant sales reports.
• Include forecasts.
• Make it visually engaging.
• Prioritize the big picture, but be prepared to field questions about day-to-day operations.
• Keep it lean.
• Cater to your audience.

1. Collect the relevant sales reports.

One of the keys to a killer QBR is preparation. You want your presentation to be thorough and trustworthy. To get there, you'll need to have your facts and figures down, and having the right materials on hand is a part of that process.

Leverage your CRM to access your sales reports , and get a feel for what you've done well and where you might have room for improvement. Try to identify sales reports that are particularly intriguing, telling, or remarkable — regardless of whether they make you look good or bad.

Some potential reports to incorporate could include different quarter-over-quarter growth reports by sales revenue, close rate, or the deals your team closed compared to your goals.

Image Source

The point here is that a good QBR is data-driven. That means you need hard facts and figures to support the achievements you tout, explain any shortcomings your review might reflect, and frame the solutions you offer. You won't find that information without pouring through your sales reports.

2. Include forecasts.

A good QBR is more than a recap of what happened over the last few months. You need to address the highs and lows of the previous quarter, but you can't stop there. You have to give your audience a picture of what's to come.

The key here is to identify some crucial goals that you and your team will prioritize going forward. Show the areas that you're hoping to improve, and offer some projections of what you expect to see.

Once you have those ideal forecasts in place, explain why they matter and how you intend to live up to them. Here, you want to demonstrate that you can identify any potential room for improvement and show that you can draw proactive solutions from any mishaps or shortcomings you ran into previously.

3. Make it visually engaging.

It helps to support your QBR with a visually engaging presentation. You want to command attention and guide your audience through the review as thoroughly as you can. Having supporting visual materials — like graphs and charts — makes that process considerably easier.

As almost anyone who has worked in sales can testify, it's not always easy to stay 100% engaged with a work presentation — particularly when the presenter is rattling off numbers and KPIs. That's why it helps to have your supporting materials neatly arranged, visually appealing, and seamlessly incorporated into your presentation.

It will help you clear up some potential confusion and keep your important points from going in one ear and out the other. Clarity is key when conducting a QBR, and visual references can make yours considerably clearer.

4. Prioritize the big picture, but be prepared to field questions about day-to-day operations.

As some of the previous points have alluded to, thinking about the big picture is a key component of a successful QBR. You want to offer solutions and strategies that will show management you have a growth mindset, critical thinking skills, and an ability to translate past missteps into meaningful solutions.

Nailing those aspects of the review needs to be your main priority, but there's a good chance your audience will want to know more about the nitty-gritty elements of your efforts — they might want to understand how your team is operating and your effectiveness as a rep or manager on a more immediate level.

Don't make a point of presenting that kind of information in your QBR. Try to schedule separate calls or meetings to address that side of your performance if you can. Still, you might be pressed to explain how your day-to-day operations are going, so be prepared to field some questions on them.

5. Keep it lean.

A good QBR is generally on the shorter side, without too much fluff or superfluous details. In most cases, it's best practice to be mindful of your audience's time and keep the presentation under 45 minutes — particularly if it's conducted virtually.

Have a firmly established structure and plan for your QBR, and stick to it as truly as possible. Try to discern what needs to be included from what you'd like to address. As I mentioned in the previous point, try to keep the more intimate details of your day-to-day operations to a minimum.

Your QBR probably isn't the only one your audience will sit through. You want to capture and keep their attention throughout your presentation. The best way to do that is to trim the fat from your report and present your most pertinent information, plans, and goals.

6. Cater to your audience.

Reading the room is a must for virtually any kind of presentation, and a QBR is no exception. Keep a pulse on how engaged your audience is. If you notice attention is waning, and it seems like you're losing people, try to expedite your presentation or drum up some enthusiasm.

Maybe you call some audience members or ask their questions. You might want to liven up your body language or switch up your tone to capture some more attention. You could share a quick story or some other out-of-left-field play to shake things up.

One way or another, be adaptive to keep your audience from drifting off. That might be easier said than done. That kind of improvisation doesn't always come naturally to people — particularly during something as dry as a business presentation — but you have to be willing to give it a shot.

You need to thoroughly prepare for your QBR, and being ready to go a little off-book to rein in your audience is a part of that.

Make Your Next QBR Count

It's tempting to casually gloss over your QBRs. They might seem like any other routine obligation that you have to put up with every quarter. Though it can be easy to approach these reviews with that mindset, you shouldn't fall into that trap. Use them as an opportunity to show management that you're a capable, big-thinking rep with the skills and foresight needed to move upward within your sales department.

Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas How to Write an Effective Quarterly Business Review

How to Write an Effective Quarterly Business Review

If you are walking down the street to establish yourself as a business advisor, there are some aspects that you will have to pay attention to. The Quarterly Business Review is an important concept you would need to ponder upon. Let’s take a quick look at what these reviews are and their importance.

What is a Quarterly Business Review?

A Quarterly Business Review, or QBR , is a discussion meeting that you have with your customers on a quarterly basis. The focal point of this meeting is not just to check what goals you have met and what’s outstanding. Instead, it revolves around the client’s business and what can be done to escalate its growth. The sole aim of a QBR is to understand the potential of the business, the opportunities and markets it can tap into, and the long-term goals that can be achieved.

With a quarterly business review, you get a chance to understand the client’s vision and a window to craft your plan to help them out. Documenting the QBR and showing interest in your client’s business plans help you become a trusted business advisor. And that’s why they are so crucial.

A quarterly business review is also an option to unveil hidden business opportunities. For example, if a customer shows interest in hiring two new talents in the upcoming quarter, you can include an IT budget and talk about software, computers, and training resources that will be required for on boarding those two employees.

In the long run, this report will help to understand the usage trends, budget and IT demands.

During the initial stages of a company’s growth, your client will need to interact with his customers more often. In the early stages, there will be lesser customers so building one-to-one relationships will be easier and more effective.

Bottom line here is that QBR ‘s are hugely beneficial for everyone – you, your clients, and your clients’ customers. They help strengthen the partnership between a business and its customers.

Setting an Agenda for a QBR

It is very important to set an agenda for a QBR meeting, as it will help you in many ways, especially when you come to the point of documenting it in a report format.

If you go into a QBR without a concrete set of goals and a pathway to achieve them, you’ll only end up wasting more time. It will not add value to your client’s business, nor will it help you showcase your services in a better light.

Make sure you set the agenda right in order to gain a better understanding of your client’s business objectives. This is more than just another conference call to shoot the breeze, and that is what you should be clear about.

Craft an agenda and make sure all parties anticipated to attend, receive it well ahead in time. This will minimize any chances of the meeting being derailed.

Also, create a QBR outline that includes the main subjects, which needs to be discussed. You should have all pointers laid out before the meeting commences.

How to run a QBR successfully

Running a QBR effectively may often seem to be a tricky task. However, it is mostly a cakewalk and beneficial if done in the right way. It is important to document the steps of what is needed from every participant. Following are a few things that you must keep in mind so as to run a QBR successfully:

• Keep a record of who’s attending and their respective roles in the meeting.
• Make a list of the pre-requisites, the reports that should be created, the metrics that need to be pulled out and the main goals to be discussed.
• Decide upon the format of the Customer Success QBR and the tools that you plan on using in the process.
• Choose the PowerPoint templates , structure and elements that will be used to create the QBR presentation.
• Set the agenda as discussed above.

Tips to Writing a Professional Business Review

While showcasing the QBR, it is important to present the KPIs that make the most sense, while making sure you add your own unique punch to it. Following are some important tips that you must keep in mind while writing a professional quarterly business review:

1. Be a Storyteller:

Create a storyline and engage the audience leveraging the art of storytelling in your presentation . Present a problem to be resolved. Make a structure where every part of the story does its work and has an interactive flow to it. The beginning should be introductory while the middle part should push the vision and demonstrate your plan to help the client achieve its goals. The conclusion should have the final solution mentioned clearly.

2. Review the KPIs:

The client strategy meetings and review reports should always be started with KPIs . Knowing the current state of achievement of all the important indicators of your customer, plus those indicators your are involved, is essential to describe real status and plan for the future. Generally, indicators are built to control plans and force actions (for example, budget KPI help to force organizations to spend accordingly to their plans). Make sure you have a detailed action plan that backs up the indicators status.

3. The Nine-Minute Rule:

Divide your presentation into two parts: an initial summary that covers all of the important details and is done in nine minutes or fewer, followed by a detailed session. Humans tend to lose interest in a presentation after the first ten minutes , which is why it is important you have the crux mapped out in the initial summary of the QBR.

4. Highlight Real Results:

Use stats and facts to showcase the results that have been achieved. Don’t use indefinite terms and metrics. These will only reduce the value of the quarterly business review and make it sound vague.

5. Make it Crisp and Consistent:

There is no point in going on and on with the presentation if it does not lay the right impact and hits the chords. The PowerPoint slides should be consistent and the theme should please the audience.

These 5 important pointers can help to prepare an effective QBR.

Quarterly Business Review Mistakes to Avoid

Many business advisers repeat some mistakes that are main reasons behind the sinking of a QBR. Following are the ones that you should avoid:

• Steer clear of thorough discussions about anything that is negative. You should lay emphasis on the successes more than the failures.
• Choosing a defensive approach if the customer brings up any issues or challenges is another mistake that you should avoid. Address the queries in an amicable and accepting way.
• Not paying enough attention to the 9-minute rule and lingering on with the meeting for longer than an hour is a big NO!

Now that we have discussed the important aspects of a QBR, let’s walk you across the importance of PowerPoint presentation.

Using PowerPoint Presentation for a Quarterly Business Review

Having the right QBR presentation template can help to boost the effectiveness of a Quarterly Business Review. A part from that, following a pre designed theme with a professional layout will make it easier to structure and order the content in a way that is easy to present to an executive audience.

1. Quarterly Business Review PowerPoint Templates

With a business review PowerPoint template you can create professional-looking quarterly reports and annual Business Reviews. These provide a structured theme to present every corporate area with data-driven charts and infographics. Such templates provide top of the line, 100% editable PowerPoint Charts and vector to create impressive infographics & visual content. These representations are ideal for summarizing strong numeric information. You can impress your audience and create professional QBRs quite effectively and seamlessly.

Use This Template

2. Light Business Quarterly Business Review Templates

If you need a more generic PowerPoint Template, you can use the Light Business PowerPoint template and adapt ts content to your QBR topics. You have a business theme that matched professional environments ready to be edited with your own content.

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Quarterly business review: how to write and how to present it via presentation tools

A quarterly business review (QBR) is a quarterly report created for key executives/stakeholders or your highest-earning customers about the company’s strategy, successful contribution, and gained value. It’s quite a specific presentation that can prevent a company’s churn if done properly.

Custom presentation design ensures winning the general report view with slides that attract. Effective QBR presentation helps you to:

• sell them more;
• increase your DRR (disaster risk reduction);
• accelerate your growth.

In this material, we want to walk you through QBR’s explanation and best practices to turn your QBR from boring to brilliant. Then, you can level up the way you present it to your key stakeholders and most loyal customers.

What is a QBR in Business?

First of all, it is a thing that none actually looks forward to doing. It is not something that evokes excitement if you approach it the wrong way. HOWEVER, if you do QBR the right way, it can completely transform your business.

• The quarterly business report is about establishing a proper playbook for renewing your business revenue and making sure your customers remain successful.
• Having all figures in front of your eyes improves strategy sessions or meetings where you gather together to review the impact of your product or service, e.g., the contribution made, value delivered, etc.
• It becomes easier to scale your business when you know its ups and downs, pros and cons, so you manage them better and help grow, creating the most favorable conditions.

Thus, you get total control over all processes and develop more winning strategies.

Quarterly Business Review Best Practices: 3 Principles to Follow

If you follow these three principles, they will ACCELERATE your business growth and transform your QBR into a more brilliant report:

0. Reframe Your QBR

You can continue calling them if you want, but, e.g., Quarterly strategy sessions sound cooler, right? It is no more boring numbers review but an engaging meeting with new energy, brainstorming, and future goals.

Besides, you can take care of PowerPoint redesign to match transformed QBR with the appropriate quarterly report design. The rebranding perspective will get people excited that the big thing will come.

1. Actions Taken → Business ROI

If you want to get the most out of this meeting, you should create something more than a to-do list. Your QBR slides must shine bright with the value. For example, you looked at last quarter, you took specific actions, and here’s the clear business ROI that you delivered.

We advise creating a couple of informative slides with a list of actions taken vs. business ROI. If you can write it so for the customers, you will always earn more.

2. Introducing the “X” Score

For example, the tout score measures how effectively you use the platform between zero and a hundred. If you’re doing 90, you’re obviously crushing it. So, you should make up the score to measure your/customer’s business gainings.

Then, you need to communicate this score through the set of slides:

• Things you’re doing well.
• Benchmark to compare to competitors.
• Opportunities to grow and increase the score.

As a result, you show executives or clients whether they are below and above to see the real conditions and circumstances better. You offer the corrective measures to take and unlock opportunities to enlarge the business successfully.

3. Have a Roadmap Slide

Frequently, CSMs forgot to add a roadmap slide to the QBR PowerPoint presentation, or they couldn’t quite drive alignment with the product. Meanwhile, you put the cherry on top by saying and showing where you’re going. The point is to demonstrate bigger opportunities coming down in the roadmap.

Having a roadmap slide, you ensure you’ll be the best in the business, and you will innovate the most to show that you’re a long-term partner.

Quarterly Business Review Presentation Tools

To create all necessary slides, you either believe in yourself or order professional design services. If you choose the first option, you should know that the presentation world is wider than PowerPoint.

You can use these presentation tools to create visual slides with different elements like a roadmap or charts:

• Canva (to experiment with design);
• Visme (vast storage of colors, logos, and images);
• Powtoon (bright animation to create videos);
• Haiku Deck (basic and craft simple slides);
• Keynote (interactive charts);
• Emaze (slideshow, 3D presentations);
• SlideCamp (best slide templates);
• SlideDog (switch easily between, e.g., PowerPoint, Canva, and PDF).

These tools are multiple on the web, so you’ll quickly find other ones. Remember that the whole point is not only in the tools’ usage but the presentation content structure.

Do I Even Need a Quarterly Business Report?

Last but not least, let’s shortly reflect on whether you need this report at all. And whether you need to invest so much effort in creating the presentation for your business.

• Do you always analyze previous results, both successful and unsuccessful?
• Do you have growth targets to rely on?
• Do you know how to hit these goals and targets?
• Do you identify business opportunities easily?
• Do you have and follow the agenda efficiently?
• Do you organize successful brainstorming strategies?
• Do you know how many clients you got in the previous quarter?
• Do you gain new partners easily?
• Do you know where you are going?
• Do you have a strategy/action plan for at least one next year (better three)?

If you struggle to answer Yes/No clearly to at least 3 of those questions, we recommend creating QBR to see blind spots clearer.

Most QBRs are boring meetings with many numbers reviewed. However, you add new energy if you follow our pieces of advice. So, you follow three powerful steps: you show what you/they have done really well, explain how cool you/they are (what is the score), and finally express where you/they are going. This approach will make your clients and executives love you for making things more actionable for everyone in the room, excitement about the future, and overall clarity of company vision.

#ezw_tco-2 .ez-toc-widget-container ul.ez-toc-list li.active::before { background-color: #ededed; } Table of contents

• Presenting techniques
• 50 tips on how to improve PowerPoint presentations in 2022-2023 [Updated]
• Present financial information visually in PowerPoint to drive results
• Keynote VS PowerPoint
• Types of presentations

• Design Tips

Annual report design templates and tips: how to tell a great story with financial data in 2023

How to create weekly status report template

KPI presentation: a practical guide for managers

How to Build a Successful Quarterly Business Review

A quarterly business review (QBR) is an opportunity to check the state of a client’s business—like current sales, what is working, and what steps to take to ensure continued customer success. However, there are many potential problems you can run into while going through a QBR. You should plan early enough, coordinate everything on both sides of the table, create a powerful presentation, and execute the meeting well.

In this blog, we’ll discuss why QBRs matter, how to implement them, and 11 best practices to nail your next QBR.

What Is a Quarterly Business Review and Why Are They Important?

A quarterly or executive business review (EBR) is a face-to-face meeting with top-tier stakeholders. Think of it as a chance to build your relationship. It’s an opportunity to showcase your value for your clients. Ideally, these meetings happen after each quarter of the year, but it depends on your clients’ timelines.

A QBR is an opportunity to:

• Review performance from the previous quarter
• Provider perspective and context around performance
• Dig deep and align on goals for the next quarter.

Together, you’ll evaluate how you can best provide them with what they need to succeed. A QBR allows you to adjust as you go through the year and ensure everyone is on the same page for the upcoming quarter.

During the QBR, a company that already goes through weekly business reviews for its clients doesn’t need to focus as much on the previous quarter—you have already covered results, risks, and challenges. No more than 30% of your QBR needs to highlight the past, so 70% should look to the future. This breakdown holds even if you missed hitting your numbers. You’ll want to address the numbers but pay the most attention to what you’ll change to hit them moving forward.

Tips to Plan Your Quarterly Business Review

All successful QBRs start weeks or months ahead of the scheduled date. Here are the best practices for planning a quarterly business review.

Tip #1: Appoint a Coordinator

There are a lot of moving parts involved in a QBR, so you need a point person. Someone like a Global Account Manager, a Global Sales Director, or an Account Manager who is already involved with the client can organize all the components. This person will be in charge of harmonizing the data, attendees, slides, and speakers during the meeting.

A coordinator will ensure everything before, during, and after the meeting runs smoothly, including creating an agenda and sending it out ahead of time. A schedule helps keep the program on track and allows customers to plan out their comments and questions.

Tip #2: Get Planning

A useful QBR isn’t something you throw together at the last minute—it takes time and works to make it successful. You’ll want to know what your employees, managers, and executives want out of a QBR, and make sure you take measures to include those things.

Don’t wait until the last minute to get the substance of the meeting sorted. Several weeks in advance, run through the content you plan to present with all the internal stakeholders. Also, you’ll want to create a list of questions to ask the customer during the QBR. Figure out what you are planning to ask ahead of time.

Building an Awesome QBR Presentation

Next, you’ll need to create the slides you’ll present during the meeting. Below, we offer the best practices for structuring your QBR presentation.

Tip #3: Don’t Overdo the Slides

Your audience won’t pay attention to slide after slide, and paragraph after paragraph, of detailed information. Instead, make the presentation short—10 to 15 slides at most—and use appendices to keep them simple. Include images, diagrams, and other eye-catching features to keep your clients’ interest.

Be sure not to get into the weeds during the QBR but instead focus on the more significant issues. Your client can then review the slides on their own time. And be sure not to reuse slides from a different presentation since this will look like you didn’t put in much effort.

Tip #4: Tell a Story with Your Data

In your QBR, you need data that support the story you are telling, which a business intelligence team can pull for you. Find data that supports the entire storyline, with a beginning, middle, and end. Also include benchmark data that shows how the client is doing versus its competition, encouraging the client to continue working with you.

Don’t wing it, either. Go through two or three prep sessions to ensure you’re pulling data from the suitable regions or teams. The coordinator should finalize how you will deliver the story to ensure cohesion with all the presenters.

Tip #5: Think Big Picture

The layout of your slides should tell your story well. A successful QBR includes:

• Performance data from the previous quarter
• The data to show a breakdown of the performance
• Concrete goals with a plan for taking the company where it wants to go in the next quarter
• Untapped opportunities you’d like to pitch the client
• What you need from the client to achieve the plan

Make sure you highlight opportunities to improve customer success for your client. Feel free to pitch more business and more outcomes for the customer. The last slide should be your asks from the client to achieve the goals you set out through the meeting.

How to Perform a Stellar QBR Presentation

Now we are on to the actual meeting, and there are plenty of ways to prepare for this part. Here are the best practices before and during your QBR session.

Tip #6: Practice Makes Perfect

Before the meeting, rehearse your material again and again. Without practice, you might spot a high-level executive watching you and panic — it has happened plenty of times. Practicing your material over and over will give you the muscle memory you need to perform without flaw, even if you are intimidated by some of the meeting attendees.

Tip #7: Send Over the Slides Early

You may think you can surprise your client with a fabulous presentation they have never seen before, but it’s not the best idea. Instead, send over the PowerPoint ahead of time, at least several days, to give them time to review. Giving your client some time to look over the slides in advance allows them to read through it, process the information, and formulate their comments or questions. That way, they aren’t trying to do all of the above during the meeting while you’re talking.

Tip #8: Invite Only Who Is Necessary

Don’t invite the entire office to attend. Sure, it’s nice to meet the client’s executives in person. But you want it to be about even on both sides. You don’t want the client to have three people on one side of the table while you are trying to find enough room for a dozen chairs. Like too many cooks in the kitchen, it’s challenging for a QBR to be productive with too many voices in the room.

Everyone there should play an active speaking role. Assign 3-4 speakers to switch up the flow of the presentation. Also, an executive sponsor should be in the room. They will give a brief intro to the meeting and go over your company’s strategy. The introduction will cover what’s happening at the executive level, so everyone is on the same page.

Tip #9: Less Is More

Keep the presentation concise, and don’t leave room for rambling. Present what you planned and practiced while allowing time to answer questions that pop up. Try to make the entire meeting last only one hour. There won’t be time to solve specific problems or nitpick data points, so instead, focus on high-level strategy while keeping the conversation flowing.

Plus, stay humble. No one wants to hear a vendor bragging about themselves. Keep things positive by focusing on the return on investment you have given your client, but let it speak for itself. Furthermore, no one wants to deal with a person being defensive if faced with criticism, so take any critiques in stride. Realize that the client is looking at a problem from a different perspective. You may have missed something that they caught, so be ready to listen and hear from their side of things. One goal of a QBR should be to understand where the customer wants to take their business and how you can help them get there.

Tip #10: Be Honest

The relationship with your client will only work if you can point out where things are breaking down. If the client had a part to play in less-than-stellar performance, you’d need to tell them. You need to explain your numbers, and a QBR offers the perfect time to address any barriers you’re running into—even if they are coming from the client. However, be prepared with a solution to fix any performance issues moving forward.

Tip #11: Know Your Audience

Ahead of the meeting, research things like your audience’s speaking style, company breakdown, and overall numbers. Look at their annual reports and include some of the same languages they use.

Also, pay attention to body language in the meeting and remain on your toes. You can tell if someone isn’t paying attention to you, and if so, adjust your pacing or ask your audience a question. Skip over some of the bullet points if you think you need to move through the slides faster. Try to keep silence to a minimum but remember not to drone on and on. A successful QBR is a dialogue, so listen to what the client says.

Finally, don’t leave without setting clear, trackable goals for the upcoming three months. Send a follow-up email that states the asks and action items discussed throughout the meeting to ensure everyone is aligned and on the same page.

Get Ahead with Your QBR

Having the right team on your side can make or break your quarterly business review. To learn more about best practices around QBRs, inside sales, customer success, or channel management, schedule a call to speak with a Concentrix expert today.

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7 Surefire Tips to Nail Your Next Quarterly Business Review Presentation

If the best part about preparing your next quarterly business review presentation is that you only have to do it four times a year, you’re not alone. Sadly, most of your colleagues probably share your dread when it comes to attending yet another QBR. 

While a vital element of modern business that presents key performance metrics, the quarterly business review presentation is tedious to create and often even more mind-numbingly dull to attend.

A QBR isn’t just any other business meeting where you discuss performance data and goals. A QBR presentation examines not only the present state of a company, but also its opportunities and potential. A successful quarterly business review should leave attendees excited about a company, not glad the presentation is finally over.

Nervous about how to run a cross-functional quarterly business review presentation? Want to design a quarterly business review presentation that intrigues and inspires clients and colleagues? Check out the following seven tips to nail your next quarterly business review presentation:

1. Tell a story

People respond to stories, that’s just a fact of humanity since the dawn of time. Don’t just bombard your QBR audience with data. Instead, tell the company’s story over the past three months. 

With the company as the protagonist, weave a tale complete with a problem, conflict or challenge and its solution or resolution. Just as in the most riveting novels, the QBR story should include an introduction that sets the scene, a middle where the action happens and a conclusion that provides its resolution. Don’t worry if you’re stumped, just look for effective story ideas from quarterly business review templates and other presentation templates curated by Beautiful.ai’s best designers.

2. Make it clear and concise

Remember, most people don’t walk into a quarterly business meeting expecting to be excited or inspired, so one recipe for success is keeping the presentation short, sweet and to the point. After about 10 minutes, minds will begin to wander. 

Still, that doesn’t mean you have to keep your presentation quite so brief. Include a summary of your key points in the first few minutes, followed by all the nitty-gritty details. Likewise, be sure your data is clearly presented by illustrating metrics with engaging infographics.

3. Choose the right slides

You won’t impress anyone with yet another dime-a-dozen PowerPoint-esque frankendeck . Keep audiences interested with a variety of slides, infographics and visual effects, but also ensure you’re choosing the right slides to present your information. After all, trying to illustrate a schedule with a pie chart or profit margins on a flowchart , for example, is only going to leave your audience scratching its collective head. 

Fortunately, you can save time and prevent a headache by choosing from Beautiful.ai’s library of presentation templates , including quarterly business review presentation templates, and customizable smart slide templates . Choose from curated presentation templates created just for team meetings and business reviews . Then, just add your content and watch our artificial intelligence-powered presentation software adjust the format based on professionally recommended principles of good design .

4. Define your KPIs

How does your company define success? Every quarterly business review must include the business’ key performance indicators, which measure the company’s progress toward goals. Those KPIs could include metrics like customer acquisition and retention, sales, returns on investment, profits and losses, just to name a few. Displaying the KPIs through appropriate infographics can make the data come alive and refocus audience attention.

5. Include real results

When reviewing a company’s quarterly results, be direct and don’t sugarcoat the facts. Instead of relying on vague or indefinite terms like “most” or “best,” provide your audience with specific results. 

Infographics are particularly useful in presenting real results, and Beautiful.ai users can take advantage of a host of smart slide templates featuring all sorts of useful infographics. Just enter your data and watch the infographic transform before your very eyes. 

At the same time, don’t sugarcoat challenges or even failures experienced in the preceding quarter. If the company failed to meet a goal, admit as much and briefly examine why.

6. Discuss wins, challenges and opportunities

What worked for the company over the past quarter, and where could the business improve? Any successful QBR presentation will highlight the company’s wins, challenges and opportunities, thereby drawing attention to what the business should start, stop and continue. How did the company succeed, and what didn’t achieve the desired results? What can be learned from those missed opportunities?

7. Focus on the future

A quarterly business review doesn’t merely summarize the company’s performance over the prior three months, it also focuses on business goals for the future. In fact, the most successful QBR presentations will dedicate about half of their time to how the quarter’s results will impact the company’s future initiatives.

Samantha Pratt Lile

Samantha is an independent journalist, editor, blogger and content manager. Examples of her published work can be found at sites including the Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and Buzzfeed.

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Quarterly Business Review: How to extract benefits beyond transparency

Leads our agile work in Central Europe and our Enterprise Agility Center in Budapest and helps institutions across industries to shape growth strategy and transform themselves in the digital age

October 5, 2020 In previous research, our colleagues have outlined the importance for agile organizations to create both stable and dynamic practices . A periodic business review, prioritization of different activities, and alignment across organizational units (frequently called tribes) are often together referred to as Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs). QBRs can be the cornerstone of an effective agile organization, linking overall strategic direction to agile organizational units and team-level backlogs.

When done well, QBRs can bring immense value to an organization by creating vertical and horizontal alignment. However, inefficiencies often occur due to limitations in the ecosystem around the QBR—even if the narrowly defined process is done well. There are five reasons behind these suboptimal operations:

• QBR ownership: The QBR and the broader ecosystem surrounding it are at the heart of an agile organization and must have a proper owner. This role spans three main activities: managing the QBR process, ensuring proper content quality, and continuously improving the QBR. A dedicated squad is required during QBR cycles, combining agile, IT, finance/budgeting and strategy expertise, and a strong and respected leader.

Broad dependency alignment: During the QBR process, these units set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and plan what they will deliver to achieve them. Ideally, a substantial portion of the unit backlog can be delivered autonomously by the owner of the group, while a smaller fraction requires broader alignment. The QBR should serve as a forum to understand those dependencies and resolve them while not making the process highly technical and administrative.

For instance, one LATAM company organizes a quarterly fair where each unit leader presents its initiatives and all other leaders are responsible to challenge them and understand potential dependencies.

Traditional budgeting: Agility brings a paradigm shift in the logic of budgeting. Instead of projects, agile organizations use cross-functional teams as budgeting units. Agile organizational unit leads must assume resources are relatively fixed, and their job is maximizing impact, generated via prioritization. This is important, because if agile organizational units are subject to traditional project and business case-based budgeting logic, then QBRs cannot function properly. If fully agile budgeting is not realistic in the short term, companies can opt for a hybrid approach.

For example, a leading bank uses QBRs to review budget status against delivered business results—and potentially make adjustments in a transparent and fast way during the QBR meeting, if circumstances require.

KPI and OKR misalignment: OKRs are among the most fundamental elements of QBR logic, used by many organizations to set aspirational targets with motivating narratives to rally people behind a common vision. In the QBR, these units must define OKRs from strategic company aspirations. Yet, organizations often struggle to draw a connector line between the newly introduced OKR concept and end-of-year key performance indicators (KPIs).

A Western European bank defined the value driver KPIs for each agile organizational unit and derived OKRs that helped to achieve these relatively fixed end-of-year KPIs.

Disconnect from IT processes: In an ideal agile environment, agile organizational units can release standards and an IT architecture vision. This is rarely the case in large corporations due to legacy architectures and monolithic systems. Given that planning for major monolith IT systems often requires 12+ months, QBRs often need to co-exist with IT release planning.

One European telco solved this by synchronizing the timing of IT release planning with QBRs, and then used them as a complementor forum—refining and breaking down the upcoming portion of the high-level IT roadmap.

Building proper QBR practices and enabling the ecosystem takes time and effort. However, once these pain points are addressed, the QBR can truly act as the nerve center of the organization, transmitting key impulses and strategic signals.

The authors would like to thank Gabor Takacs for his valuable contribution to this blog post.

Learn more about our People & Organizational Performance Practice

5 Ways To Nail A QBR Presentation

Preparing Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) isn’t easy, but the opportunity to meet with clients can be used for so much more than reviewing service tickets and out of date warranties.

‍MSPs can often struggle to put together a successful QBR presentation that engages their client and drives business forward. Want to take your client meetings to the next level? Here are five steps you can take to elevate your next QBR presentation.

1. It’s a strategy meeting, not a sales meeting

‍One of the biggest reasons clients avoid QBRs is that they feel like a pitch to sell unnecessary services. MSPs may feel the pressure to sell and drive the bottom line. Instead of focusing immediately on sales, take this opportunity to discuss how you and your client work together on a plan and approach the entire meeting with that team-centric strategic perspective. 

‍Ask what their current goals are and if your MSP can play a role in achieving them. What’s meaningful for their business, and how can your MSP support those efforts? Are there changes the client wants to make in their business? You could even encourage them to ask any questions about the IT industry and best practices. 

‍You can also try using terminology like “our goals” and “our results” to demonstrate the collaborative nature of your teams. Remind them that your success is their success.

‍ScalePad Partners taking this approach have reported that QBRs have been much more productive when the client doesn’t feel like they are being sold to. When both parties are working as one team, more is accomplished and the QBR process feels more valuable. 

‍By developing direct and open conversations, the client will be more willing to listen to solutions and proposals, which will lead to sales.

2. Create a compelling story and a call to action

‍You probably already develop an agenda as you prepare for your QBR presentation, but to make meetings more valuable MSPs should consider building the agenda around the “story” of the client.

‍Avoid unloading tons of reports on them. Instead, craft a narrative around a specific priority or an ongoing task. Center your client’s progress from the previous QBR presentation as the main storyline to follow. Has there been progress on a high-priority item discussed in the last QBR? Pull out the big statistical highlights, whether positive or negative, and elevate those numbers to help tell the story.

‍By framing their IT status as a narrative, it can be much easier to introduce a call to action for the client. This could include solutions to ongoing problems or ideas that could help them continue their positive trends. 

‍Try building visual aids, like a roadmap graphic for multi-phase projects or charts to show change over time, as they can be helpful in quickly communicating the high-level status of data that would otherwise be stuck in reports.

3. Ditch the reports, focus on the outcomes

‍Are you sending clients too much material to review before the meeting? Are they filled with overwhelmingly detailed information about specific warranties and hardware assets? Many clients are easily disengaged before you even meet because this feels like a review of the past rather than a planning session for the future . 

‍Moving away from huge collections of reports and tickets allows for more time discussing the outcomes the MSP has achieved and discussing how further steps can address the client’s needs.

‍In ScalePad’s MasterClass webinar, CEO of Blacktip IT Services Matthew Bookspan explained how his client meetings have improved since moving away from the reports and focusing on strategic communication. 

‍“They already got the report, so if they have any questions, they can ask,” said Bookspan. “Because we have them more often, we usually pick one thing we want to discuss strategy-wise, such as new projects they are working on, and how we can help impact that. So it’s a very different approach that doesn’t even get into dollars and cents.”

‍Clients feel the QBR meetings have more value as the representatives, managers and executives alike, can be engaged as a part of the planning process. Summarize the past, but use that information to inform decisions for the future. 

4. Sharing accountability, defining roles

‍Working collaboratively with your clients is vital in making the most of the strategic approach to QBRs. Both parties should establish their roles in the meeting in an effort to share accountability and increase efficiency. 

‍For example, the client will always be the one determining the budgetary decisions and making the final approvals, while your MSP will be focused on the implementation of those decisions and deployment of new initiatives. When these roles (or similar roles as necessary) are set, both the MSP and the client can begin collaborating on the strategy to drive action on both sides.

‍With a clear understanding of how this relationship works, MSPs and their clients can easily measure the progress made in each category to determine the next steps. 

‍Use the progress since the previous QBR presentation as a way to  identify new areas where the client can invest in their business to address vulnerabilities in their tech or improve productivity for their employees. 

5. Do you need the “Q” in QBR?

‍In reviewing the success of recent QBRs, MSPs have reported increasing the frequency of the meetings , such as moving from quarterly to monthly, has made a big difference in the results of each meeting. 

‍Increasing the cadence of the meetings has been shown to improve most aspects of the QBR process. MSPs and their clients can develop a better working relationship with more consistent communication. The amount of information to review in each meeting is decreased, which allows for more time spent discussing top priorities, budgeting, and planning. 

‍Clients won’t put off or avoid meetings when they’re a place for proactive action and planning, instead of a quarterly sales pitch. A better working relationship helps the clients see your MSP as a part of their team’s success–leading to more consistent investments in their tech stack through your MSP.

Use ScalePad to build a better QBR Presentation

‍ScalePad Lifecycle Manager is the best resource MSPs can use to collect and manage 100% accurate data on their clients to build the best QBRs.

‍Lifecycle Manager automatically generates reports, manages warranties, and monitors assets, making it easy for MSPs to make their goals a reality. Lifecycle Manager’s DMI score and Insights let MSPs manage the status of assets, allowing QBRs to focus on the strategy and long-term goals. 

‍Get the Free Edition of Lifecycle Manager today to go hands-on with the best automated software making MSP quarterly business reviews better than ever before.

Quarterly Business Report: How to Write One and How to Present It Successfully

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To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

After working hard to develop a sustainable client base, you found out you have to work twice as hard to keep them. Now you have to handle countless meetings, project updates, reports and assure them that everything is on track, every step of the way.

You’re hardly alone in that. Many business owners and executives have found out that, as their business scales, the need for reporting grows.

Even if you’re doing everything right, you still need to present it to your client in a way they’ll understand. They’re your client, they expect results, and it’s your job to ensure they get them. That’s why you need to keep wowing them if you expect them to stick around.

However, presenting raw data isn’t gonna cut it, no matter how good it is. Crunching numbers and statistics really isn’t most people’s forte, and most people’s eyes glaze over when you start spouting technical explanations full of jargon. All told, your clients would probably rather look at the digest version with pretty charts. You just need to make them.

While this may sound daunting, it doesn’t have to be. With the right business dashboard software , preparation, and a little know-how, you’ll be able to deliver interesting reports to your clients that will ensure they continue trusting you and relying on you. You will also be able to establish a deeper and more productive relationship.

• What is a Quarterly Business Report?

Why Should My Company Conduct Quarterly Business Reviews?

What should you include in a qbr, what are the benefits of a qbr, how do you conduct a qbr.

• Tips to Writing a Quarterly Business Report

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Quarterly Business Report

Tips for presenting a quarterly business report.

• How to Use Quarterly Business Reviews to Build Stronger Connections

What Is a Quarterly Business Report?

Let’s start with the basics and go from there.

Quarterly business reports are usually designed for clients (but can be aimed at your own sales team or stakeholders). Their purpose is to reassure the client that things are going well and to show what your plans are for the future. After all, you need to convince them that things that are going well will continue to do so and that challenges will be resolved. You’re presenting yourself as a problem-solver and an invaluable resource.

A quarterly business report is an important part of customer relationship management. It’s there to highlight the value your business brings to the client. It’s very likely your clients aren’t very good at making sense of raw numbers, so you need to give them a visually interesting presentation to explain what’s going on. Show them what you did in the last three months, how it affected their metrics, and what you’re planning to do in the next three months until the next QBR rolls around.

Keep in mind that QBRs need to focus on the strategic, big-picture layer. They’re an opportunity to gain deeper insight into the client’s business and to make a strategy based on their plans and current position on the market. This isn’t the place to talk about minutiae and deal with minor issues and challenges. You’re not simply providing services anymore — you’re stepping into the business advisory role.

The truth is that not every business needs it. Depending on your focus or business size, you might not need quarterly business reviews. You might just need annual or more frequent reports. However, even if you don’t need quarterly reports, some kind of reporting will be necessary, and similar broad rules apply.

When Are Quarterly Business Reviews Needed and When Not

B2C companies are usually much faster moving and have a large number of shorter-term clients. Creating a client-facing quarterly business review for each of them would be too time-consuming and often unnecessary. They’ll usually need per-milestone or per project updates. By contrast, B2B companies with fewer clients are usually more focused on QBRs and are more likely to require such a structured form of reporting.

Another factor that determines if you need quarterly business reviews is company age. Startups or businesses in the early stages of development have fewer clients or customers, and it’s still easy to maintain a relationship with them. However, as the business and the client base grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain frequent communication. The need arises for more structured, longer-term reporting and meetings.

These aren’t hard and fast rules. Every business and client is unique and has specific needs and challenges. Putting together a quarterly business review does take a lot of time and resources, so make sure you either need to have it (is it worth it), or that you have access to tools that will make the whole process a lot easier.

Think about the size of the company, how many clients you have, and how much money those clients spend. Focusing on big, important clients is just common sense, and it will help you understand their priorities better. Ensure the customers who need and deserve top-level treatment get it.

The Reasons for Conducting Quarterly Business Reviews

No matter your business type or stage of development, building and maintaining relationships is crucial for growth. And that’s the key reason for having QBRs. They help you maintain good relationships with clients as it shows them that you put special thought into what they need.

QBRs strengthen partnerships and give you the opportunity to really strut your stuff and dazzle the client. It shows them how well you’ve handled their business and your ability to plan for the future. You’ll be able to highlight your achievements and everything you’ve done for the client.

Finally, they allow you to show the customer what’s the most beneficial path for them (and you, since you’re in a business relationship) to take. That way, you both prosper and continue growing.

Again, the information you should include in a quarterly business review varies on the type of client, but there are some basics that need to find their way in almost every one of them.

Clients need to know:

• Where they stand against the competitors (a popular metric)
• What was the ROI for the last quarter 
• What kind of ROI you can deliver in the future
• Other goals you plan to accomplish
• What gaps you identified in client’s goals and plans
• Challenges and difficulties you’ll need to overcome
• Customer’s CHI (customer health index)
• Data related to KPIs

Of course, not all data points need to be given equal priority. Every client is different, but you can always highlight the ROI and present market benchmarks. Business owners usually love to see how they stack up against the competition. Customer health index is another important metric that gives the customer an overall impression of how they’re doing. Use a set of weighted data points in order to assign them a number between 1 and 100. Keep in mind that while customers may dislike raw data, they like objective numbers as opposed to opinions. If you’re making a projection, ensure it’s based on cold, hard facts.

So try to be unbiased and take a good look at the depth and breadth of product usage (how useful you are to the client), engagement (how frequently do they engage with you and to what extent), growth, age, etc.

Another important note is transparency. Don’t try to hide or obfuscate the negatives because if a client finds out that you’ve been lying to them, they’ll lose their trust in you. Be honest and frame setbacks as challenges to be overcome.

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how your efforts are translating into results each month. How is your website performing? How well are you converting traffic into leads and customers? Which marketing channels are performing best? How does organic search compare to paid campaigns and to previous months? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Monthly Marketing Performance Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Website sessions, new users, and new leads. Basic engagement data from your website. How much traffic? How many new visitors? How many lead conversions?
• Lead generation vs goal. Did you reach your goal for lead conversion for the month, quarter, or year? If not, by how much did you miss?  
• Overall marketing performance . A summary list of the main KPIs for your website: sessions, contacts, leads, customers, bounce rate, avg. session duration, pages/session, and pageviews.
• Email response . Overall, how effective were your email campaigns, measured by email opens?
• Blog post traffic . How much traffic did your blog attract during a certain period?
• New contacts by source. Which sources drove the highest number of new contacts 
• Visits and contacts by source. How did your sources compare by both sessions and new contacts in a certain period of time?

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You really should look at a QBR as a set of opportunities.

We’ve already mentioned that quarterly business reports are about maintaining a good working relationship with the client. So, you get an opportunity to improve your business partnership. Like with any relationship, this one is built on frequent communication, honesty, and taking into consideration everyone’s needs. If you do that, you’ll ensure you’re all thriving together.

Another opportunity presented by QBRs is aligning people’s interests and getting on the same page with the client. This adds to the relationship-building aspect above. By figuring out the state of the business and communicating it properly, you can give your customers value and continue to benefit from a good business relationship.

Continuing with the opportunity theme, consider what you have to do in order to conduct a quarterly business report. You need to analyze all relevant data (pretty much everything you can), and you can use it to find more information and market gaps in your client’s offer or come up with interesting ideas to implement.

QBRs are excellent check-in points to monitor progress. You can figure out if short-term plans are getting accomplished and see how you’re doing with long-term goals.

Finally, QBRs can help you prioritize tasks. This is another benefit of the comprehensive analysis you’ll have to perform. By comparing various metrics you’ll be able to determine which tasks are more important or valuable than others and prioritize them accordingly.

Now we come to the big one, how do you actually perform a quarterly business review?

You start by reviewing the client’s KPIs or, if you’re just starting to work with them, set the KPIs now. Focus only on the KPIs your company is influencing, but if you think you can improve on others, feel free to include them and mention them in the report.

Specific KPIs depend on the business but can include ROI, net profit margin, gross profit margin, number of conversions, number of new leads, number of subscribers… literally anything that you can use to assess business performance.

You want to highlight achievements and focus on the goals you accomplished. Put as positive a spin as you can on the last quarter. However, keep in mind the transparency mentioned above — stay honest. Point out issues and challenges, as the client should feel like you’re serious about addressing their concerns and tackling problems. Identifying a hitherto unknown and unaddressed problem and presenting a plan to solve it will make you seem invaluable.

Additionally, you need to make a solid plan about what to do in the future. If you’ve identified new opportunities, you want to come up with a plan to capitalize on them. Write down actual steps and what the plan for the future is expected to bring. If you’re introducing new KPIs to be tracked or even if you just want to test a strategy out, you should mention it.

Finally, you need to wrap the whole thing into a neat little package. Using customizable templates can help you make the whole process easier, from building a report, gathering metrics, crunching numbers, and presenting it all in a visually appealing manner.

PRO TIP: Figure out who should participate in a QBR . Including a customer relationship manager is a must, but executives from both sides should be present to get the most out of a QBR. This allows both companies to assess how they fit into strategies. In addition, it keeps the channels of communication open and provides the opportunity for C-suite to get to know each other better.

Tips for Writing a Quarterly Business Report

Here are some tips and tricks to keep in mind when writing a QBR.

• Use a business analytics tool
• Tell a story through the report
• Make a basic QBR template
• Revise after every QBR
• Include highlights
• Make is concise

Use a Business Analytics Tool

While you may think that there’s nothing Excel can’t do, you’d be wrong. Business analytics tools (like Databox) crunch numbers more quickly and help you make sense of them with easy-to-understand and attractive-looking charts. Additionally, data visualization capabilities can ensure you’re ready to present all the data to the client in a visually interesting manner.

Tell a Story Through the Report

Numbers can be boring, and no one wants to sit and listen to you read a bunch of percentages. If they don’t fall asleep, your clients will probably think you’re trying to obfuscate something by hiding behind dense statistics, or even that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Use pictures, data visualizations, and talk about goals. Build a narrative of the last three months and present a story about what you plan to do in the future.

Related : Creating Dashboards from Multiple Data Sources – a Marketing Superpower

Make a Basic QBR Template

This will save you time and make sure everyone understands what needs to be included and what steps need to be taken. If you already have a preset workflow, you’ll be able to put together a QBR much more quickly. It’s very likely you’ll continue tracking similar metrics from review to review, so you’ll be able to focus only on what’s new and finding an interesting way to present it. 

Using pre-built reporting templates can also be a huge time saver as you’re relying on the expertise of people whose business it is to know how to structure data.

Revise After Every QBR

Use a QBR as a learning opportunity. Did you notice any gaps in performance? Are there any KPIs that should have been included? Did your client offer any feedback? What would they like to see and what did they especially care about?

Write down your observations and use them to make the next QBR better.

Include Highlights

You can follow the rule of three here. Pick three things as your main message for each segment and try to center your presentation around them. People remember things that come in threes more easily, and you want to take advantage of that. 

Make It Concise

Your clients are likely busy people and don’t have too much time to listen to a lengthy report. Be crisp and concise, no QBR meeting should take more than an hour, and even that is pushing it. Don’t pad the agenda and stick to the things that really matter. 

If possible, structure the presentation with the most important information in the beginning. This allows attendees who no longer need to be a part of it to leave. Time is money, after all. You really don’t want to hear a customer say, “this really could have been an email,” after you’re done presenting a quarterly business review.

Some of these may sound like no-brainers but you really want to avoid making these mistakes. Don’t:

• Call it a QBR if you don’t actually hold them every quarter
• Hold QBRs when it’s not necessary
• Get defensive
• Spend too little time preparing
• Focus on the numbers
• Just read what’s written on the slides
• Make it too long

1. Call it a QBR If you don’t actually hold them every quarter

If you’ve decided that you need to hold your business reviews less frequently you can use:

• Executive summary
• Executive business report
• Strategy and performance workshop
• Strategic planning review
• Annual business report/review
• Annual performance overview
• Anything else that gets the point across

2. Hold QBRs when it’s not necessary

– While the quarterly makes it sound like you have to do it every three months, you really don’t. Sometimes you just don’t need to hold them that frequently.

If you get a big new client you might want to do an “onboarding summary.” You’ll take a good look at them, identify new KPIs, figure out their goals and their current position, and make a strategy on how you can get there. Then you can schedule a meeting that coincides with meeting specific milestones.

3. Get defensive

– If your client interrupts you to ask a question or ask for clarification, be ready for it. The same goes if they ask you about promised milestones that you didn’t manage to deliver. Just stay calm and patient and address their concerns. If you get flustered and defensive, it’s likely you’ll just sour the relationship and make it harder to gain the customer’s trust.

4. Spend too little time preparing

– You really don’t want to treat a QBR as something to get off the agenda as soon as possible with minimum effort. Even if it doesn’t take too long to prepare, don’t do it the day before! 

Your client deserves more than a hastily made presentation. Talk to them, and invest time and effort into the process.

5. Focus on the numbers

– while you do want to showcase all the shiny metrics that improved while you were working with them, that can’t be the focus of the presentation. 

It bears repeating, a QBR is an opportunity to improve your relationship with the client , so use it. It’s likely that they either won’t understand all the numbers or won’t care to analyze them thoroughly. You need to be more than a talking spreadsheet. Be patient, and use the time to connect with the client.

6. Just read what’s written on the slides

– If you’re just going to read the slides, you could have sent the QBR as an email and saved everyone some time. Your clients want to hear what you have to say, not just a recitation of dry statistics and phrases that can fit into a slide.

7. Make it too long

– Respect your client’s time. We mentioned being concise, but it’s still something a lot of people flub. They get caught in the idea that more is better and end up delving into minute details that aren’t necessary and dragging the whole thing out well past the point it’s needed.

You’ve got your QBR written up, the slides look eye-catching, and you’ve briefed everyone who’s supposed to be involved. All that’s left is to actually present it to the client, and you don’t have to worry about it for another three months.

Well, let’s cover the presentation part and you’re good to go. 

• Make it an event – don’t hesitate to add a bit of marketing spice to the whole thing. This isn’t just another meeting, but an opportunity to improve the partnership. Make it glitzy and ensure you brand the dashboards and slides you’ll use in the presentation. Tailor the experience to wow the client.
• Send the QBR document in advance – you want to give the client an opportunity to see it ahead of time and come prepared. There’s nothing more valuable than constructive feedback from an engaged client. Additionally, they’ll be able to plan their time better and only attend parts of the presentation they’re interested in.
• Read the room – This is true for any presentation. Pay attention to how people react to your report and skip information no one seems interested in. If people seem bored, try to figure out how to make things more interesting.
• Interact and engage with the audience – If possible, prompt the audience to ask questions and check if everyone is clear with what’s being presented. If you’ve sent the QBR in advance, it’s likely the client will have some questions prepared.
• Don’t stick to the script – Make the whole thing feel more personal by sharing anecdotes or dropping in a funny story. Ice breakers can cut the tension and add a little color to the topic.
• Put the most important highlights in the first ten minutes – The most important parts of the presentation should be close to the beginning. People’s attention will wander as time goes on, and you want them to pay attention to the important information you want to share.
• Don’t overuse buzzwords – Whenever possible, use plain, easy-to-understand language. First, you sound less pretentious that way; and second, you’ll come across as someone down to earth who just wants to get the point across. Finally, your clients are more likely to understand what you’re talking about and understand how your plans impact them.

Overuse of buzzwords also runs the risk of making you look like you’re trying to hide something or that you don’t really know what you’re talking about, and that’s the last thing you want.

• Use templates – This is a huge time saver and can really streamline the whole reporting process. Using pre-built dashboard examples and templates for reporting that will ensures consistent tracking and lets you build each report on the information gleaned from the previous one.

Use Quarterly Business Reviews to Build Stronger Connections

Quarterly business reviews are a key aspect of any customer success program. By dedicating time and effort to growing your relationship, you can ensure you’ll bring value to your clients and grow with them.

Databox Dashboard Designer can help you build more effective and eye-catching presentations. Just link the data sources, and you’ll be able to populate a dashboard with relevant metrics that are easy to read and understand. Emphasize important data points and showcase how much you’ve helped your client and how valuable your partnership is.

Of course, you don’t have to create reports from scratch. Databox Dashboard Designer will take care of that for you by offering pre-built visualizations for the most popular metrics from 100+ data sources. Our business dashboards are fully customizable and you can create your own unique look that will suit the needs of your QBR presentation. All elements are dynamic, so you can move them around, and they’ll resize automatically depending on the room available. Databox is far more than a simple data visualization tool. It will allow you to track performance from multiple sources, compare them, and identify trends that you can capitalize on. 

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QBR Meeting Agendas: Best Practices for QBR Prep

• By Totango Team
• September 8th, 2022

How to Make Your QBR Meeting Agenda Count

A quarterly business review (QBR) allows you to bring together your executives and your clients’ executives to assess the health  of their business and your relationship, discuss their future goals and plans, and strategize how you can deliver more value to them. These meetings can play a crucial role in your customers’ overall health and success. However, a QBR meeting agenda can be challenging to plan and execute.

In a recent poll, we asked customer success professionals what their top challenges were for performing QBRs. According to the responses, the number one challenge was engaging customers (37%), followed by creating a success plan (33%) and pulling relevant data (29%). Let’s take a look at why these challenges are essential to the success of a QBR and what you can do to overcome them. Read on to learn what you need to know to make your quarterly business review agenda count. We’ll cover:

• What QBR meetings are
• How to prepare for one
• Who should attend your QBR meeting
• How to run your meeting
• How to structure QBR meetings effectively
• Keys to engaging customers during your QBR
• How to create a customer success plan
• What data to pull during your QBR review
• Best practices for effective QBR meetings
• Tips to prep for QBRs more efficiently

Use these tips to make your QBRs count and improve customer satisfaction and retention.

What Is a QBR Meeting?

A quarterly business review  is a periodic meeting between your team and your client’s team to assess how your product is helping them achieve their business goals and adjust your customer success  strategy accordingly. This enables you to keep your product’s performance aligned with the results your clients want, promoting repeat business, long-term customer loyalty, and referrals.

A QBR meeting typically covers:

• An assessment of client progress toward goals set in previous QBR meetings
• An analysis of factors influencing performance
• An update of goals, strategies, and KPIs to plan for future improvements

For SaaS B2B clients, QBR meetings tend to focus on assessing value as measured by KPI  performance benchmarks. On the client-side, the input may come from multiple parties, including managers who work directly with software users and other decision-makers and stakeholders such as procurement managers, chief financial officers, CEOs, and investors.

As the name implies, traditional quarterly business reviews [LINK] have been held every three months. However, with today’s digital technology, scheduled QBRs may be supplemented by unscheduled reviews based on ongoing monitoring of customer account performance. This allows you to make adjustments between scheduled QBRs to ensure closer alignment of performance with client goals.

How Do I Prepare for a QBR?

To prepare for a productive QBR session, you can take several proactive steps. These include:

• Designate who should lead the QBR meeting and who should take notes
• Use a QBR template to review a checklist of possible items to cover
• Review your last QBR with the client and identify which goals and action steps had been agreed upon
• Generate a report summarizing KPIs benchmarks from the last QBR and progress toward them
• Analyze your KPI data to identify any noteworthy trends
• Create a list of possible recommended action steps to propose to the client
• Prepare any presentation aids you want to incorporate, such as illustrative stories or graphs summarizing data
• Prepare a contact list of who needs to attend the QBR meeting or otherwise contribute
• Send meeting invitations, and distribute a summary of your KPI report, analysis, and recommended steps to those on the meeting contact list

Doing this type of preparation for your QBR meeting will help ensure a productive session with forward-looking action steps rather than unfocused discussion.

Who Should Attend a QBR?

A QBR can include as few as two people or multiple parties from your company and your client’s company. A QBR should consist of one representative from your customer success team and one from your client’s company. Beyond this, attendees should be determined by who needs to be involved for you and your client to evaluate progress, analyze performance, develop future plans, and, on your client’s end, make buying decisions.

For SaaS B2B clients, possible attendees may include:

• Managers of end-users
• Managers of specific departments using your apps, such as marketing or sales managers
• Tech support personnel
• Chief financial officers
• Procurement managers
• Other stakeholders such as investors

In general, the larger the client’s company, the more potential attendees may be involved. However, don’t invite people just for the sake of asking them. Meetings will go smoother when limited to those who genuinely need to attend. Some individuals may need to be kept in the loop to provide input without necessarily needing to attend. To make attendance manageable for busy executives, consider sending out notes in advance and placing priority items in an executive summary at the front of the presentation.

When considering attendees, bear in mind who will be making decisions for your client on whether to renew their product subscription. These decision-makers should be involved in the meeting, either as attendees or as being kept in the loop for input.

How Do You Run a QBR Meeting?

Following a few guidelines will help you run your QBR meetings more effectively:

• Make sure to invite the right attendees
• Send out an agenda and notes sufficiently in advance for participants to prepare
• Start by reviewing performance, with a focus on KPIs
• Use your performance review to broach a discussion of wins, challenges, and opportunities
• Develop an action plan with new goals, strategies, and performance target numbers
• Agree upon who will be responsible for implementing components of the action plan
• Conclude by scheduling the next QBR meeting

What you do after your QBR can be equally important for the success of your meeting. Be sure to follow up with your action plan. Use ongoing KPI monitoring to flag any developments which require attention before your next scheduled QBR.

How Should a QBR Be Structured?

A QBR meeting structure should be organized around three main themes:

• Performance review
• Performance analysis
• Strategic planning

These can be broken down further as follows:

• Start with KPIs and metrics to show the performance of previous QBR periods
• Lead into the wins from the previous periods, emphasizing what was accomplished, both in terms of work put in and the results of that work
• Discuss the challenges and difficulties experienced in the previous period and facing the business currently, referencing the competitive landscape if there have been any noteworthy developments in this area
• Discuss the client’s opportunities moving forward
• Create an action plan for the next quarter and beyond to tackle the challenges and opportunities discussed, including goals, strategies, KPIs, and target benchmarks

Within this general QBR agenda sample, you can introduce specific points as needed.

Engaging Customers in a QBR 

Quarterly business reviews allow you to strengthen your relationships with your clients and demonstrate the value you provide and will provide to them in the future. However, if they are not engaged in the process or even interested in having this review with you, that could mean that they are not engaged with your product or service, which could eventually lead to churn.

It’s important to segment customers to deliver more personalized experiences and offers to keep them engaged daily. A QBR, however, is a chance for you to sit down with your customers and have an elevated discussion about their current and future needs and the value that you can provide them.

To get your clients engaged in the QBR process, try these tips:

1. Create a Detailed Agenda

Create a well-developed agenda and distribute it to all parties involved well in advance. This will give your customers a chance to understand what will be discussed and prepare a list of questions, concerns, or other topics for discussion before the meeting to get the most value from it possible.

2. Use Data to Tell a Story

Remind the customer why they purchased your product or service and use data to show them how you have fulfilled those needs over the past quarter.

3. Be Transparent

A QBR is designed to build trust and strengthen relationships, so be honest about your successes and failures. Tell them where you’ve missed the mark and what you’re going to do to make it up and do better in the future. This will show your customer that you’re on their team and you’re willing to put in the work to help them reach their goals.

Creating a Customer Success Plan

During the QBR, you will identify the achievements you’ve made over the past quarter, the challenges your customer is facing, their goals for the future, and the opportunities that lie ahead. Then, you’ll create a roadmap for the next 90 days. At the end of your QBR, your customer should walk away with a success plan that includes:

• A very clear list of the goals and KPIs for the next quarter.
• Defined strategies for how you will overcome any roadblocks or solve any issues that would prevent these goals from being achieved.
• Any new opportunities or other products or services you discussed and how those will provide additional value to their business.

Pulling the Right Data

Bottom line: If you don’t have data to show your customers, don’t even bother having a QBR. Your words mean nothing if you don’t have the numbers to back them up, so you need to be able to gather, analyze and display data effectively. But not just any data; you need to show the right data. Here are three tips for pulling relevant data for your QBR:

1. Demonstrate ROI

Showcase the numbers and data that demonstrate what value you have provided to your customers over the past quarter.

2. Use Benchmarking Data

Clients love to know how well they are doing compared to similar companies or competitors and themselves quarter-over-quarter, so pull any correlating metrics and numbers to demonstrate that for them. It’s helpful to build a dashboard to ensure you are looking at the same data each quarter. This will help you compare apples to apples and help you identify trends, check in on real-time performance to troubleshoot any issues, and save time pulling the data each quarter. Plus, you can share the dashboard with the customer to create transparency and build trust. This also provides an opportunity to shed light on areas that customers are underutilizing and could be getting more value from. If you provide a certain feature or service that has high value but low adoption, bring it up for discussion as they may not be aware of how best to utilize it.

3. Communicate Their Customer Health Score

A customer health score takes multiple dimensions of customer data metrics and classifies them into a single green, yellow, or red representation. This shows how much value you are providing to your customer and how much value they are providing back to your company. An open and honest discussion about your customer’s overall health is a great way to show how you are providing value and discuss expansion opportunities for other products or services you can provide to increase that value.

QBR Best Practices

A quarterly business review can be an excellent tool for building rapport, strengthening relationships, and ensuring renewals. Here are a few very simple best practices to follow to help make sure your next QBR is successful and engaging.

1. Invite the Right People

Ensure you have executive representation from both your company and your client’s.

2. Have the Meeting Face-to-face

Whether it’s a video call or an in-person event, you need to be able to see your client and share visual data representations. A phone call will not do.

3. Keep It Short and Sweet

A QBR does not need to run longer than one hour.

4. Be Honest and Open to Feedback

Both negative and positive. Remember, this is a two-way conversation, so don’t get defensive and take any criticisms as an opportunity to improve.

5. Encourage Collaboration

People don’t want just to be presented to; they want an engaging conversation. It’s important to make time for questions and remind your clients that this is a two-way discussion.

6. Schedule the Next Call

It’s important to schedule your next call to review the progress outlined in your customer success plan.

Tips for Preparing for QBRs

The preparation you put into your quarterly business reviews helps determine their outcomes. You can improve your outcomes by following a few guidelines when preparing. Here are some tips to help you prepare more compelling QBR presentations.

1. Use Pre-optimized Templates for QBRs

Generating a new QBR agenda from scratch every time you meet takes time. You can save time by working from a pre-designed template. Your template can cover items such as a list of possible KPIs to review with your client, predesigned report forms displaying selected KPIs, a checklist of potential issues to review, and a list of suggested solutions. You can modify your template and fill it in for individual clients and QBR sessions. Storing your template digitally will make this easier and allow you to automate some aspects of the updating process.

2. Begin Gathering Data for KPIs and Metrics Early from All Team Members

One of the most time-consuming parts of preparing a QBR review can be assembling the KPIs and metrics you need to review and analyze. In some cases, the data you need may reside among multiple apps and in the accounts of various team members. Waiting until the last minute to get the data you need will cause stress and reduce your ability to prepare an effective presentation. Start assembling your data early to save time and avoid the hassle. A customer success platform that syncs your data automatically is the most efficient solution. The Totango CS platform makes it easy for you to sync data from multiple apps and view dashboards and reports from a central location.

3. Review and Compile Data to Highlight Business Wins and Challenges

How you present the data you gather will help shape the outcome of your QBR. A good rule of thumb is to organize your data to emphasize wins before addressing challenges. This ensures that your QBR communicates the value your product is delivering. It places challenges in a more positive context, promoting a more constructive discussion. Otherwise, if you lead with challenges, you risk overshadowing the value your product is providing.

4. Have Your Customer Success Team Preview the Presentation

Your customer success team can deliver a more effective presentation if everyone is prepared. If team members go into the meeting without having reviewed key information such as KPI data, your delivery may come across as lacking insight, expertise, or authority. Schedule some time for your team to review KPI data and discuss their analysis and suggestions. This will help ensure that everyone has a good grasp of the data and provide opportunities to spot trends and brainstorm ideas that otherwise would have been overlooked.

5. Memorize Presentation Highlights

A well-delivered QBR presentation pivots around communicating certain highlights, such as important KPI numbers, key points of analysis, or actionable recommendations. If your team members are struggling to recall these highlights during their presentation, it can distract and dilute from their delivery. Taking the time to rehearse your presentation, especially its highlights, will result in a smoother, more persuasive QBR delivery.

Plan Your QBR Meeting Agenda to Promote Customer Satisfaction

QBR meetings allow you to showcase the value you’re delivering to customers and bring performance into better alignment with customer needs and expectations. Careful preparation of your meeting agenda and delivery can result in more productive QBRs, which promote greater client satisfaction. Following the tips in this article and using tools such as QBR templates and customer success platforms can help you implement best practices that make the most of your quarterly business reviews.

Totango’s customer success platform includes built-in KPIs for each stage of your customer lifecycle, which you can use to trigger automated workflows that integrate your QBR strategy into the ongoing monitoring of KPI metrics. This allows you to better plan for QBR meetings and follows up on QBRs with real-time responses to customer data. Start for free and make the most out of your QBR meetings for maximum customer satisfaction.

• Posted on: September 8th, 2022

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The Power of the Quarterly Business Review – QBR

UPDATE: What your client’s executive team thinks of your product or service carries a lot of weight, and QBRs are the perfect time to show exactly how big of an impact you’ve had on their business. Learn how to get your client’s executive team at your next QBR in this blog post, 5 Ways to Increase Executive Attendance at QBRs .

One of the most important activities your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) will perform is the Quarterly Business Review (QBR).

QBRs are sometimes known by different names – Business Reviews or Executive Business Reviews – but no matter what they’re called, they’re incredibly important and the agenda and flow are largely going to fall on the CSM, so it’s critical to help them prepare for, and perform QBRs, the right way.

Executive Involvement

For your QBRs to be the most effective, you will want to have executives on both sides in attendance. This is one of the best reasons to create an executive sponsorship program, at least for your key accounts.

The QBR will be one of the key points of participation for your executive sponsor, so participation of an executive on your side will generally make it easier to get the sponsoring executive on the customer’s side to attend as well.

QBRs are Strategic, not Tactical

A QBR should be a strategic event, not a tactical one. This is not the time to discuss the details of a particular issue or how you are going to train the new admin. Those kinds of meetings can happen without executives in the room.

The kinds of topics that are appropriate for a QBR might include:

• Return on Investment (ROI) in your product
• Expansion of the value proposition from their perspective
• Additional use cases they’re exploring or you’ve noticed
• Phase 2 (or 3 or 4) of the implementation
• New products or features they might be interested in
• Results from the previous 90 days
• Major roadblocks or obstacles to success (and how to get back on track)

Customer Segmentation is Critical

QBRs are usually reserved for your most critical clients. The preparation can be time consuming and, with a large number of customers, it probably does not make sense to try to do them for every customer.

If you recall the discussion around segmenting your customers , QBRs will likely be reserved for only the top segment of your customer base. These are the customers who need, and deserve, the special attention from you and from your company. They are often your best references and also represent the greatest growth opportunities. Good reasons to review the business quarterly and make sure you are in sync.

Business Review Frequency

The inside joke in Customer Success Management circles is “how often do you perform your Quarterly Business Reviews?” suggesting that, while the name implies “quarterly” or 4x per year, the reality is that they simply don’t happen as often or on a reliable cadence.

But all joking aside, and while the timing may vary depending upon your customers, the complexity of your relationship, etc., as the name implies, one of the intentions of a QBR is to review the previous quarter’s results. If done regularly, the output of a QBR should include the stated goals for the next 90 days with the intention of reviewing and comparing results against those goals at the next QBR. So the starting point for preparing for a QBR is to review and assess the goals and results for the past quarter.

Success Milestones and Agreement

The selfish goal of a QBR from your perspective is to move the customer in the direction you desire. If you are a company that has renewal events (i.e. not monthly auto-renews, but generally annual or bi-annual contracts that need to be manually reviewed, often requiring a new contract with new signatures to be executed), successful QBRs should lead to the renewal being a non-event.

Here’s why. If you discuss ROI for example, you should expect that the results will exceed the goals and, after a year of success, you should have definitive proof of the value of your product. And if those results are reviewed every quarter with the customer executive, that should leave no doubt in her mind about executing the renewal, too.

In other words, depending on the timing of your renewal, you will have had 3 or 4 meetings  with the customer – QBR – where they agree that they’re achieving success with your product, making the renewal event, again, simply a non-event. It will just happen.

Strategic Account Planning

One thing you should have for every strategic customer is an account plan. An account plan will usually outline the strategic goals for a given customer. It might talk about the opportunity to roll your product out to additional groups or divisions for example. Those kinds of goals will translate to your QBRs and that executive meeting is a great opportunity to move the customer in the direction you desire.

In addition to the aforementioned topics, there are some specific elements of a QBR that may become a standard part of your delivery:

• How many cases were opened and closed
• Breakout by type and severity
• Average time to resolution
• Any currently outstanding
• Overall health score
• Scorecard methodology and results
• Health score trends
• Where is the customer today
• Where were they 90 and 180 days ago
• What will it take to get to the next stage
• How does this customer compare to others
• Where are they falling short and what needs to happen to get them up to, or past, the benchmark
• What does usage look like along with trends
• Which features are being used, which aren’t
• Most active users
• License deployment and value received

QBR Template and Systems

Ultimately, you will want to create a QBR template which you follow for every Quarterly Business Review (or you can use Success Snapshots within Gainsight ), with some room for personalizing it for each customer. Or you can start with our QBR template ( download the Powerpoint here ):

Some of the same reports can be used in every QBR, with the data obviously specific to the particular customer. But don’t make it 100% cookie cutter. So even with a QBR template, leave room to insert some very specific elements that will make this customer feel like they are getting the individual attention they deserve.

Don’t forget that part of the reason for doing QBRs is to make the customer feel special. To make them feel like they are part of your family. One of the best ways to do that is to put your cards on the table and share with them some things that are not shared with every customer. Product roadmap is a great example. Customers always want to know what’s coming next. It reinforces that you are the right partner thinking ahead for them, and that you are innovating on their behalf.

You can help cement the relationship by opening up in this way. And because your strategic customers are often the ones pushing the envelope and are perhaps the most demanding, this is also a great opportunity to solicit feedback, both on how the process is working today but also what’s coming in the future.

All-in-all, the QBR is a tremendous opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer. If done well, it can be equal parts aspiration and inspiration. Most customers truly want to be great customers. They would love to have the highest health score (aspiration) and are excited to be part of the innovation you are bringing to the marketplace (inspiration). For more information on the QBR checkout Allison Picken’s article, The Essential Guide to Quarterly Business Reviews .

It’s your job to prepare properly, deliver above their expectations, and use your QBRs to transform the relationship and turn your customers into true partners.

The best way to ensure you have high-performing Customer Success Managers that fully understand the power of Quarterly Business Reviews – QBRs – and know how to prepare and manage them, is to enroll them in Customer Success University now.

EDITED: This post previously contained a phrase that’s not reflective of Gainsight’s values. It’s been removed and we’re sincerely sorry we ever used it.

More Related Content

6 ways to start loving your internal qbrs, the do’s and don’ts of executive business reviews, the essential guide to quarterly business reviews (qbrs).

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Watch CBS News

From a QB decision to roster cuts, a look at what's next for Patriots ahead of regular season

By Matt Geagan

August 26, 2024 / 1:14 AM EDT / CBS Boston

FOXBORO -- The Patriots wrapped up their preseason on Sunday night with an ugly 20-10 loss to the Commanders , and now it's on to Cincinnati and the regular season for Jerod Mayo and company. 

Whether they're ready or not, Week 1 will be here in less than two weeks. Right now, the Patriots do not look ready.

We believe that the defense will be pretty good, but they weren't tested at all in the preseason as the Pats went against second- and third-teamers. Meanwhile, the offensive line is a mess, which isn't making it easy to install a new offense under new OC Alex Van Pelt. 

A lot of people want to see Drake Maye start right away, but do we really want to see the future of the franchise running for his life every weekend? While Maye looked good in his preseason action, playing real NFL defenses in the regular season is a much different beast. And it's a lot more difficult when your offensive line can't line up properly or go 30 seconds without a penalty.

While Patriots players will get some time off over the next week, the New England brass will be hard at work finalizing the team's roster ahead of the 2024 regular season. Here's what is on tap for the Patriots leading up to Sept. 8 against the Cincinnati Bengals.

When do Patriots need to make roster cuts?

The Patriots and every other NFL team now have to trim their roster down to 53 players by 4 p.m. on Tuesday. It will be a tense few days for players on the roster bubble.

A few notable names that could be cut by New England include quarterback Bailey Zappe,  wide receiver  Kayshon Boutte,  and second-year kicker Chad Ryland.  

Quarterback Decision

It looks like Jacoby Brissett will be the team's starting quarterback when Week 1 against the Bengals arrives. He wasn't super impressive during the preseason though, and Maye's improvement over the weeks has many clamoring for the rookie to start right out of the gate. 

Maye made strides throughout the summer and the Patriots have to be pleased with his progress. But the team around him is... not good. It doesn't sound like the Patriots are in any rush to get their 21-year-old quarterback prospect onto the field at the moment, as Mayo referred to Maye as the "second-best quarterback" on the team . It sounds like a decision has already been made, though if  the shoulder injury that Brissett suffered Sunday turns into something concerning, it may force the team to call an audible. 

The QB decision will ultimately be made by Mayo, Van Pelt, and executive VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf. The Patriots should have an answer by as early as Monday night after watching Sunday night's film, though they may not make an announcement until a few days before their tilt against the Bengals. 

Hitting the waiver wire

Once the roster trimming is done, teams will set their sights on the waiver wire in hopes of finding some talent ahead of the season. It's bargain bin shopping, but Mayo said Sunday that the Patriots are going to be active on the waiver wire ahead of Week 1.

"Look, I'm concerned about every position," Mayo said. "I would say Elliot and myself and the rest of the staff, our job is to always look for better players. We'll be very active on the waiver wire; there'll be some good football players out there on the street."

The Patriots probably won't be able to find a new starting left tackle off waivers, but expect them to take a look at just about every offensive lineman available. They have the third waiver priority, so they should be able to land just about anyone they want off waivers.

Patriots practice schedule

With a break between now and Week 1 against the Bengals, Patriots players will get Monday and Tuesday off before returning to practice on Wednesday. They'll practice both Wednesday and Thursday, and then get Friday through Monday off before reporting back for Week 1 of the regular season.

We'll hear from Mayo during his appearance on WEEI and through his video conference with reporters on Monday morning, but then we won't hear from anyone with the Pats until Wednesday afternoon.

• New England Patriots

Matthew Geagan is a sports producer for CBS Boston. He has been part of the WBZ sports team for nearly 20 years. He moved over to the web in 2012 and has covered all the highs (and a few lows) in Boston sports.

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Broncos qb bo nix praises 'first class' teammate jarrett stidham, share this article.

Bo Nix and Jarrett Stidham were competing against each other for the Denver Broncos ‘ starting job this summer, but that hasn’t stopped them from forming a good relationship as teammates.

After being named the starting quarterback on Wednesday, Nix took time to praise Stidham — and Zach Wilson — for how they went about handling the QB battle during training camp and preseason.

“We have a very mature room,” Nix said. “They’ve been through a lot themselves. First of all, with ‘Stiddy,’ he started behind one of the greatest ever. That is where his process began as a rookie like me behind the greatest of all time. He’s teaching me things that he learned and picked up at a young age that not many people get to experience.

“He’s handled the situation with first class. I respect everything that he has been able to do. He’s battled through a lot and has been given different situations, but he still shows up and gives us his best. That is going to pay dividends in the long run with me and being able to sit behind a guy like that and watch, learn, follow his routine and follow his process because he has been around some greats already.”

Nix had praise for Wilson as well.

“With Zach, he’s been there and done that,” Nix said. “He started as a rookie. There is a lot that I can learn from him and a lot that he has already taught me. Having those two in the room with me on a day-to-day basis is going to be huge.

“I would be really dumb not to listen to those guys and not take what they have learned, already been through and the experiences that they share. So hopefully the good happens again, and the bad doesn’t happen again.”

Nix, 24, is set to start for the Broncos when they go on the road to face the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season. It remains to be seen how many quarterbacks Denver will carry on the 53-man roster , but whether it’s Stidham or Wilson (or both), Nix will be happy to have them by his side going into his first season in the NFL.

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