One of your main responsibilities as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) is to keep your clients informed and satisfied with the product. That’s why one of the most important meetings you can schedule as a CSM is a Quarterly Business Review with your most important accounts.

According to Gainsight, “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.”

What’s is a Client Quarterly Business Review?

Quarterly business reviews are an essential component to businesses running smoothly. The purpose of a quarterly meeting is to identify company goals and upcoming projects. The discussion should include the individual goals that contribute to the company’s overall goals.

Benefits of a Client Quarterly Business Review

The main benefit of a quarterly business review meeting is to focus on the exact projects that need to be accomplished for upcoming launches. A qbr template can be beneficial when it comes to organizing the points you’d like to make.

Quarterly business review meetings must include the right people, so while you’re preparing for the meeting, you’ll want to ensure that you’ve invited the necessary attendees. In most cases, a quarterly review meeting should include critical stakeholders on the client-side. In short, you’ll design this meeting around the information they need and want to know.

Quarterly review business meetings are essential, as they show your client that you’ve taken the time to focus and reflect on the goals that you’ve set. You’ll also take this time to prove that you’re able to plan, deliver on current goals, or develop new ones. A business review meeting template will help you organize information and thoughts that might otherwise become jumbled.

“There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas. What’s missing is the will to execute them.” – Seth Godin.

How to Run an Effective Client Quarterly Business Review Meeting

Effectively running a quarterly business review meeting entirely depends on how prepared you are with the information you have to offer. You must give yourself the time to develop the necessary feedback you have to give, and a qbr template can be advantageous in this respect.

Running an effective meeting means getting as specific as possible. Let your clients know where you stand on every project, as well as the direction it’s headed. Remember to collect and include the feedback from other team members to present to your client.

One of the best practices you can develop when regularly presenting information in quarterly meanings is to focus on specificity and take notes. Part of working well with your clients means actively listening to what they’re asking of and telling you.

Take as many notes as you deem necessary, but keep in mind how easy it is to forget what you’ve heard when a meeting runs over, or you cover a wide variety of topics. Note as many of your clients’ thoughts as possible. Also, while you’re in the actual meeting, take the time to assign the subsequent steps to your team members. This way, everyone is on the same page.

What’s inside this Client Quarterly Business Review Template:

Our qbr template keeps you on track during your meeting. Here are a few questions that you’ll find on a QBR agenda example, and each of these is important to address.

1 Delivery & ROI

ROI is a key performance indicator within every business. Delivery & ROI are typically the first topics that your client will want to cover in a QBR meeting, as it determines the profitability of an expenditure.

2 Support review

Review how you’ve contributed to your client’s business, making strides toward change and accomplishing desired goals. Support is a substantial part of the quarterly business meeting, and here, you’re reviewing your impact.

3 Health scorecard

The health scorecard section of the QBR plan will assist you in pointing out how you have been successful in past projects and where you’re at with current goals and projections. This section allows you to dive into where your collaboration stands from a business perspective.

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill.

4 Lifecycle stage

During your quarterly review, you’ll want to touch on the lifecycle stage your clients’ business exists in. When it’s in the growth stage or fully mature, the following steps will depend heavily on which location you currently reside.

5 Benchmarking

In the benchmarking portion of your meeting, you’ll measure the performance of client products, services, and processes against competitors to be the best in the industry. Benchmarking helps formulate goals and get your clients where they want to be, with your help, of course.

6 Product usage

Consumer behaviour is beyond important, and you should include it in your quarterly review along with product usage, which is a component of that behaviour. The product usage section should provide your client with as much information as possible regarding their demographic.

7 Product roadmap

A product roadmap is essential to the quarterly business review. It presents a plan to leadership that outlines the direction, vision, priorities, and progress of a specific product over time. Once you’ve submitted the details of consumer product usage, you can let your clients know where you plan to go via a well-thought-out product roadmap.

8 Action items

You can wrap up your quarterly review by going over upcoming action items, which can vary from scheduling additional meetings to appointing a time to go over requested visuals, such as graphics and charts.