Quarterly business review что это
10 Lessons for the Quarterly Business Review
May 2, 2018 · 7 min read
You work in Customer Success for a SaaS company. Everyone agrees that Quarterly Business Review (QBRs) with clients are super important to “show value”
But what does that mean? And how should you prepare, execute and measure outcomes? And exactly what should be on the agenda, what metrics should you measure? …. the list of questions go on.
To find some of the answers, I recently at t ended a Customer Success MeetUp in San Francisco, hosted by legendary software maker Autodesk at their swanky headquarters, which is part museum of futuristic design, part gallery of how their clients use their software to make amazing things from movie sets to electric cars to prosthetic limbs.
The evening was moderated by Junan Pang Optimizely and had a panel of three Customer Success leaders from around the Bay:
Josh Hanewinkel VP of Customer Success at People.ai, a 50 person start up that provides AI based tools for sales and marketing teams
Erin Landheim, Senior Manager of Customer Success at Checkr, who provides tech based solutions for background checks for high volume recruiting
Luke Diaz, Dir of Strategic Partnerships at Alto Pharmacy, a pharmacy delivery startup.
The evening followed a tight raid fire of questions and answers, with the focus strictly on the QBR. Here is what I learned:
10 QBR Questions Answered
Q1: Why are Business Reviews with clients important?
JH: Business Reviews are critical to our business to engage executives throughout their journey and make sure we are realizing the value
LD: I heard this super simple quote once, “exec visibility = budget”. We use QBRs to set up and show execs progress towards milestones.
EL: BRs are about connections with leadership at your customers. In the spirit of quotes, “if you’re not talking to your customers, your competitors surely will be”
Q2: How do you prepare for a QBR?
JH: Prep time means sitting down and reminding ourselves why this customer bought us. It’s easy to get caught up in the “value” that you keep pitching, but it’s important to remember why this particular client bought your solution and what they were expecting to get out of it.
EL: As our business is trying to scale, we are looking for efficiency. We created a Business Review template for our team. Our Customer Success Managers (CSMs) take that and tailor it for each of their client’s needs.
LD: When prepping for a QBR, remember that your customer is probably doing 6–7 of these with other vendors as well. So really think about the emotional arc of your review. How do you want to make them feel? That’s what’s going to make you stand out and be remembered.
Q3: How do you make your preparation process efficient?
LD: All the data is one place (we use MODE as a platform) and we’ve created dashboard views that get CSMs the information they need quick.
EL: Leverage templates heavily, which we constantly tweak and iterate based on feedback.
JH: There are a few things all clients want to know — things like product roadmap, big business updates etc. Standardize that information across all reviews so each CSM isn’t recreating it.
Q3: How do you set an agenda for a Business Review?
JH: Start with past, present and future goal. How are you tracking, what are the gaps and what can we do to fill them?
EL: First thing we put on the BR agenda — is ask the customer for an update. Where are you going in 6 months? Instead of coming in hot with numbers and usage etc, start the conversation with listening. This way, you can tailor the messaging of your BR to where your client is going.
LD: However you set your agenda, don’t end the meeting with 2 mins remains for next steps! We keep 15 mins open at the end of the meeting for people to just internalize the meeting and take notes on next steps.
Q4: How do you make sure Executives show up to the meeting?
JH: Make the QBR all about your power user. Make them glow in front of their boss. Then they will take it upon themselves to make sure the right execs are there in room.
EL: Pre-socialize the content beforehand w/ client stakeholder. Our clients help us get the right people in the room.
LD: Straight up ask for confirmation and commitment upfront. Make it about the “ROI”, execs love to hear that.
Q5: What does good execution of a business review look like?
All three panelists agreed that good execution of aQBR is when your clients are doing most of the talking. Let your clients talk to the slides, and you can just sit back, guide the conversation and take notes.
Q6: How do you deliver bad news?
JH: Be honest. I can’t stress this enough. Bad CSMs avoid angst from customers. Great CSMs embrace angst and listen.
EL: Happy customers does not mean successful customers (this has almost become a cliché in Silicon Valley). Be humble, be honest and show genuine curiosity about what’s not working. Ask — “how can we partner better?”
LD: Executives got to the top by becoming excellent Bullshit Detectors. So don’t bluff them. We introduce bad news by showing benchmarks against our clients’ competitors.
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Совещания по квартальному обзору результатов деятельности (QBR) отражают значимость и ценность усилий вашей команды, как для внутренних, так и для внешних заинтересованных сторон. Но недостаточно лишь пройтись по презентации. Вам нужно увлечь аудиторию и использовать время общения с нею с максимальной пользой по тщательно спланированной и доступной повестке. Начав работу с нашего шаблона, вы получите образец для планирования, который поможет сэкономить время. Вы сможете использовать его на совещании для отслеживания возможностей и необходимых действий, чтобы обеспечить успех вплоть до следующего совещания по квартальному обзору результатов деятельности.
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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:
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:
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.
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.
How to Do a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)
A question that comes up a lot at Portent and in agency circles is, “What defines a good quarterly business review?”
To be sure, it’s a very subjective question, but at its heart, the answer can be pretty simple: a good QBR is one that shows value. Value in the work you’ve 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. However, don’t get caught up in thinking you can throw out some numbers that, in a vacuum, impress an SEM specialist or a content writer. It would be best if you were aligning everything in your presentation back to the goals of your client.
Your Quarterly Business Review Should be Tied to Client Goals
You Have Client Goals, Right?
Don’t laugh here, because I’ve seen instances where a client can’t or won’t provide them. Perhaps they were interested in the overall general health of their website campaigns. Maybe they’ve been led to believe that when their CTA, CPA, CTR, DA, and other acronyms are all looking better, then they’re winning! Don’t get me wrong; showing a client why these metrics are important, and how your work impacted them is essential, though perhaps better suited for a monthly recap conversation.
You should drive the conversation early on in a client engagement that bubbles up these small successes into a larger purpose—your client’s primary goals. Whether they are qualitative or quantitative, during your QBR you should be telling the story of how your work and any underlying challenges and successes affected them. Examples here could be growing revenue by 20% year-over-year, increasing cart completions, doubling traffic from paid sources to targeted landing pages, or driving up site engagement. Once you have these, you can frame your QBR around them.
Quarterly Business Review Best Practices
What Makes a Good QBR?
Over the years, I’ve seen various ways that you can run a QBR. The best ones, however, center on the client’s goals and speak to the ways that we have been working to achieve them. What are we going to start working on this quarter? Did something not go well last quarter? What will we carry over? In other words, Start, Stop, and Continue (however around here, we prefer to call them Wins, Challenges, and Opportunities).
When you highlight the wins, challenges, and opportunities from the past quarter, you’re able to run a quick retrospective (or as some may call it, a post-mortem). This thoughtful look back gives you and the client a way to pat yourselves on the back, critically examine misses, and explain how your team is going to roll the insight from the two into next quarter’s opportunities. The following topics lay the groundwork for a thoughtful retrospective.
Start with KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a great way to evaluate your success against established goals. It’s nice to begin by showing the big numbers to which you and your audience are beholden. You will want to show progress to-date, projections for the rest of the year, and comparisons to previous periods.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for leading with the good news, but I love setting the tone of a QBR by highlighting some wins! What kicked ass? Why did it kick ass? How did the ass-kicking impact that client’s goal?
Challenges
Not every strategy or tactic is going to produce a win. What didn’t work? Why didn’t it work? What did we learn? Most failures come with learnings and lead to the next topic: opportunities.
Opportunities
Moving from challenges to opportunities provides a natural segue for a QBR conversation. If your retrospective unveiled a glaring gap, there must be a way forward; highlight it here. Don’t forget to promote the ways that you’re going to further leverage or expand on your wins.
Roadmap For the Next Quarter and Beyond
In this section, it’s time to lay out a plan. Using your existing roadmaps and items from your wins, challenges, and opportunities, let your client know what you’ll be working on for the upcoming quarter(s). Be sure to get buy-in for your plans. The beauty of this section is that you can reference it during your next QBR using the above format.
How do I Prepare for a Quarterly Business Review?
While there are many ways to prepare for a QBR, at Portent, we encourage our teams to be proactive in planning for these meaningful discussions. Depending on the relationship with your client and direct contacts, they might even appreciate an opportunity to preview the final document that you’ll be presenting. So with that in mind, we keep to the following schedule.
Three Weeks Out
Assign your tasks. Start by creating all of the assignments for the upcoming weeks For me, that means ensuring that initial drafts of our presentation deck get started, revised, and completed on time.
Internal QBR prep. Next, we schedule two meetings. The first is a 30-minute internal meeting for QBR prep where our team will review our client’s goals The meeting organizer should prompt their team to contribute their wins, challenges, and opportunities from the last quarter.
QBR brainstorm/work session. The second internal meeting is a QBR brainstorm/work session. Your account specialists need to come to this hour-long session prepared with specific metrics that detail how their work impacted the client’s KPIs and quarterly goals. With that data in hand, the team will collaborate on a 30-60-90 day roadmap for the client based on the opportunities that were uncovered during this brainstorm session.
Two Weeks Out
Schedule internal slide delivery. We typically ask that our teams deliver their slides to the account manager two weeks before the final presentation. Each team member should include wins, challenges, and opportunities sections. These must match the template’s formatting and include high-resolution images and charts. Ensure that your team’s slides are rooted in the client’s vernacular, and tie tightly back to your client’s goals and KPIs. Don’t just add sexy numbers. Show your client the “so what?”
Compile your presentation. Once your account manager has the slides they need, it’s time to compile the information into one comprehensive presentation. If you’re using PowerPoint, gather your slides an create the master deck. BONUS TIP: Use an online version of a presentation from the outset, and you’ll save time compiling the final version later. Not only that, your contributors will benefit from additional insight as their peers gather their thoughts. We’re all about breaking down silos, and we find that this process furthers the collaborative spirit. Some examples of online presentation resources include Google Slides and Microsoft’s Office Live.
Internal team presentation. An internal presentation is your chance to give your QBR a dress-rehearsal. Your team should be prepared to speak to their sections (if applicable). We also highly suggest involving senior leadership or some other stakeholder from your agency or company. These additional eyeballs provide an objective perspective and ensure that your presentation is delivering on your company’s promise. Any final updates should be implemented following this meeting.
One to two Days Before the QBR
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. Second, should you be presenting remotely, they’ll have it in case 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…?
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 out from your roadmap.
Final Thoughts
In my experience, I’ve found that sticking to this schedule and format has made for some transcendent QBR conversations. The challenge and opportunity 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.
Ready to up your quarterly business review game? Check out Portent’s QBR Cheat Sheet to get started!
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:
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. 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:
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 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.
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.