A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) could be one of the most important meetings on your agenda. It’s not the same as your average business report with a client, so you can’t expect to prepare for it the same way. When your next QBR rolls around for a key client, are you ready to set it up and host it properly?
Purpose of the QBR
To get in the right state of mind about hosting a QBR, you need to make sure you understand what the point of the meeting is in the first place. These meetings are a chance for you and your client to discuss the progress both parties have made towards mutual goals. QBRs are only done for key account clients that are given special priorities and attention, including an engagement plan that maps out the strategic partnership between your company and theirs.
Essential Parts to a QBR
What makes a QBR different from a general report meeting? The essential elements of QBRs vary significantly from normal business meetings. They’re not meant to be one-sided meetings. Instead, both your company and your client need to be heavily involved in the discussion. You should build a meeting that includes all or most of these elements if you for a higher chance of success:
- Complete Focus on the Client
- Detailed Feedback from the Client about the Partnership
- Listening and Understanding Client Issues and Concerns (Ask Open-ended Questions)
- Updating VOC Forms and Understanding
- Equal Participation from You and Your Client
- Narrow Meeting Focus
- Requests Made to the Client
- Feedback from Your Company
- Professional, Interactive Data Presentations
It may look like a long list of pieces, but it would be difficult to sacrifice any of these included things and still have an efficient, useful QBR meeting. These meetings are not supposed to be long and drawn-out, and they shouldn’t be a monologue from your side.
Check out the in-depth guide on how the key account management process feeds into the KAM software.
Common QBR Mistakes
Although the list above mentions most of the pieces that should be included in a successful QBR, there are still other things you should keep in mind before the meeting. Here are a few of the mistakes many companies make during QBRs, so you can learn from their experiences instead of having these issues happen in your own meeting:
- Talking about Your Company and Your Perspective Too Much
- Using the QBR as a Place to Pitch Products and Services to Your Existing Clients
- Show Up and Throw Up Salesman Presentations
- Complete Focus on the Past Quarter without Looking at the Future
- Canned Presentations with Too Much Unnecessary Data
This is not an exhaustive list of everything that can go wrong with a QBR, but it’s a good resource to help you understand the most commonly made mistakes for this type of meeting.
Preparing for a Productive QBR
To help your team get on the right track before the meeting, you should do a lot of prep work ahead of time. There are four things you should absolutely be doing when you’re preparing to a host an upcoming Quarterly Business Review with a key account client.
- Ask Your Client to Prepare for Their Part
Since you want equal participation in the meeting, you will need to notify your client that you want to hear from them, and give them some specific guidance about what they should prepare. This gives them the time to analyze the partnership and bring something useful to the table to discuss with you.
- Examine What’s Working in the Partnership
Do your own analysis to find out what’s going on between your companies that’s really working well. You can find evidence of these positive points by examining progress towards goals and any potential benefits that have come out of the partnership so far.
- Examine What’s Not Working in the Partnership
The focus of the meeting cannot be only on what’s going well. You need to also take a serious look at what’s not working out well, so you can discuss those issues with the client.
- Limit the Guest List to Essential Personnel Only
You should do this before you even plan the date and time of the QBR. Make sure you’re trimming down the guest list to include as few people as possible, only including those who have some sort of relevance to the meeting itself. No one should be there if they aren’t directly related to the partnership or topics discussed in the meeting. Include people who are critical of the partnership when possible.
Want to dive deeper into account management strategy?
QBRs are often not leveraged or conducted properly. Our online course for account managers walks you through the QBR process and downloadable exercises so that you can leverage this helpful account management tool.
