Most companies run regular QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews). Getting into QBR practice its benefits, like getting your broader team buy-in on your sales and marketing team issues, creating a sense of urgency on important cross-team action items, building a learning culture within your team, sharing new product initiatives in advance, collect and measure customer feedback (or NPS) regularly. Not to mention you get valuable team face time, undistracted by daily sales activities.
However, like many business meetings, QBRs are easily sidetracked. They can become unproductive by focusing only on areas for improvement or spending too much time worried about the presentation itself rather than the contents. Do you make your QBRs productive? It starts with addressing all important (must-have) topics and keeping your team motivated and efficient.
Let's outline all QBR components and structure elements to avoid traditional mistakes. I always invest much time and attention in building QBR practice to drive performance discussions and transparency across the entire team. It’s an exercise that will pay valuable dividends as you enter the next quarter.
QBR Essentials
- Define Objectives: Clearly outline the objectives of the QBR, such as reviewing performance against goals, identifying opportunities for improvement, and aligning strategies for the upcoming quarter.
- Set the Agenda: Develop a structured agenda that covers essential topics, including financial performance, customer success metrics, product updates, sales pipeline review, new quarter forecast, and action items. Share the agenda in advance with participants to ensure everyone is prepared. Identify in advance your participants list your immediate team and your peers. Ensure you share calendar invitations way in advance (usually - at least 6 months ahead).
- Prepare Data and Insights: Gather relevant data and insights to support discussions during the QBR. This may include financial reports, customer feedback, product usage analytics, sales forecasts, and market trends. I always invest extra time in building centralized BI dashboards for QBRs so the team will focus on data analysis and performance improvement discussions rather than data mining (you can also set a unified data sets format this way).
- Engage Stakeholders: Invite key stakeholders from across the organization, including executives, department heads, sales teams, customer success managers, product managers, and marketing teams, to participate in the QBR. Encourage active participation and collaboration. Sell them QBR benefits for their agenda to justify the time investment.
- Review Performance: Evaluate performance against key metrics and KPIs for the previous quarter, highlighting successes, areas for improvement, and any deviations from targets. Discuss factors contributing to performance outcomes and identify lessons learned. Use your existing performance KPIs to track team and individual performance, discuss any gaps, and make KPIs adjustments if needed.
- Discuss Customer Success: Review customer satisfaction scores, churn rates, and retention metrics to assess the health of your customer base. Discuss strategies for improving customer satisfaction, reducing churn, and increasing lifetime value. Build an action plan to drive Customer Success and avoid customer/prospect churn in the future.
- Share Product Updates: Provide updates on product enhancements, new features, and roadmap developments. Gather feedback from stakeholders on product priorities and requirements for future releases.
- Analyze the Sales Pipeline and align on your next quarter Forecast: Review the sales pipeline, including opportunities won, lost, and in progress. Assess the effectiveness of sales and marketing strategies, identify bottlenecks in the sales process, and discuss tactics for accelerating revenue growth. Discuss (have your model ready) the next quarter's sales forecast as well as the marketing plan (campaigns, assets, etc…).
- Identify Action Items: Start your QBR with the previous KPIs Action Items status. Summarize key takeaways and action items arising from the QBR discussions. Assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and follow up on progress to ensure accountability and execution.
- Plan for the Future: Based on insights gained during the QBR, develop a strategic plan for the upcoming quarter. Set clear goals, priorities, and initiatives aligned with company objectives. Establish quarterly targets and milestones to track progress.
- Solicit Feedback: Gather feedback from participants on the QBR process, agenda, and format. Use feedback to continuously improve future QBRs and ensure they remain valuable and impactful.
Following these steps, you can run a successful QBR without succumbing to the traditional time-wasting pitfalls and off-strategy discussions that can plague these meetings. These tips can help you drive alignment, foster collaboration, and accelerate growth in your company as you take an analytical approach to your business. Most importantly, QBRs allow you to take a step back from your day-to-day business and assess needs for the future. It’s always best to be prepared, and a sound QBR process does just that.
Stay tuned for more sales insights and contact Chief Outsiders for sales strategy advice and Fractional CMO/CSO services.