Most businesses run a review of their performance at least four times a year, trying to understand if they're doing things well. They also evaluate their relationships with external businesses and third parties that help them to achieve their goals.

These external contractors that help businesses to reach their objectives run a Quarterly Business Review to celebrate successes and show firms how their contributions have provided value to them. In this article, we discuss the QBR and how it helps to build more trust between organizations.

QBR, or Quarterly Business Reviews, are touchpoints you perform with a specific customer to review the impact and interference of your product on the customer's business.

A QBR is also an onboarding process where all the project stakeholders, i.e., you, your team, the client, and the client's team, gather to discuss the project's success. Quarterly Business Reviews are part of annual reports. QBRs give crucial information about the performance of a specific strategy and whether this strategy has reached the expected goals.

You plan a QBR by collecting all the info about the project's results, including client feedback. Depending on the customer feedback and results of the review, you and your customer can plan future goals and new strategies to accomplish your objectives. 

A quarterly business review session should take around 30 minutes. Is it a short time to discuss things of this importance?

Remember that you've gathered and updated information throughout the quarter. Besides, you've tracked all the KPIs during the period so that you can present them quickly to your client.

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QBRs provide businesses with several benefits and advantages over other documents or presentations. Below we mention the crucial ones you need to know.

Since markets change all the time, business goals are also changing all the time to adapt to new conditions. In this sense, it's widespread that the customer's goals for your product change over time. So, you need to align your products and roadmap for customer success.

When you meet your client, you should both discuss the new goals and the best strategy to reach them. You can even bring up the idea of changing the goals yourself if you notice that the client didn't use the product as you discussed earlier.

The KPIs with realistic timelines included in your quarterly business review will reflect the expectations about the business relationship. Including responsible parties and budget allocations among Key Performance Indicators can let you know if your organization's products are moving the client toward their goals.    

One of the most relevant KPIs for sales businesses is the conversion rate. Suppose our marketing business leads visitors and potential customers to the client's website, but the conversion rate is lower than expected. In that case, you can plan a new strategy for the sales department.

Although quarterly business reviews may vary regarding the info they contain or the type of presentation you perform, they should incorporate the following.

Both you and your customer should analyze how you two implemented the product during the past quarter.

Was it implemented in the expected time?

Is the implementation of your product aligned with the outlines proposed by the customer?

Your organization's strategic goals should match customer expectations.

Whether your organization implemented its product or not in the previous quarter, you should analyze the performance over the last period. This way, you can determine if your product has positively affected the customer's business and added more value.

You can even quantify this value and explain it in percentage for a better understanding. This way, in the current and next quarterly business reviews, you can compare results and know exactly how your product will boost the client's business.

After performing previous analyses, both the customer and you should discuss the possible obstacles that did not allow the product to affect the client's business as expected.

In this regard, before presenting the QBR to the client, you must collect customer feedback during all the quarters to understand possible obstacles. Then, you can discuss them together to analyze the situation.

It might also be a good idea to discuss the strategic challenges that can appear in the next quarter and how you plan to deal with them.

Your organization and your client sometimes have different goals for the same product or campaign. The idea is to join both strategic goals to achieve success. This is one of the reasons why a presentation review taking place on a quarterly basis is crucial.

• Customer strategic goals. The client has specific goals. Here is when you enter and help your client to achieve these goals. For instance, a client may want to get 200 new customers and expand their market during this period. Of course, you must consider the customer's strategic goals to create your delivery strategy.    

• Organization strategic goals. Your goals must be aligned with the customer’s goals. Invest your time and effort in creating a complete strategy that responds to the customer’s necessities and objectives. 

• Joint strategic goals. This is when you and your client set goals that outline together to conduct an excellent campaign during the period. If the client wants 200 new customers, you should create a marketing strategy that reaches 5,000 qualified leads.

This is a subsection to the above, but you must understand that all the goals must be S.M.A.R.T. goals.

What does S.M.A.R.T. goals mean?

S.M.A.R.T. is acronymous for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

To help the customer achieve the goals, you have to ask them directly what they want to reach. With a precise quantity of something, you can measure it and be clear whether it’s possible to achieve that.

Finally, you and your client must set a timeline and a deadline for those goals, ideally at most three months.

Based on the previous quarterly review, key stakeholders want to know what you plan to do to improve the results.

In this sense, your company's customer success and sales teams can use customer feedback to propose improvements to your product or service. Of course, you must run this consultation before the once-per-quarter meeting or QBR meeting. This way, you can present it to the customer on time.

Now we’re focusing on the main steps you should perform when creating and planning a correct quarterly business review.

It would help if you addressed success stories from which you can extract reasonable conclusions about the implementation of your product. It’s also important to discuss future opportunities and aspects that didn’t go according to plan.

Reviewing the previous quarters will allow you to know if you're tracking toward goals. You must know how many deliverables you provided and if you fulfilled the client's expectations.

During the quarter, you, your team members, or the manager contact the customer for quick check-ins. This way, they continuously review progress and check if your organization is achieving goals.

You can also identify weak areas that your product can improve. Remember that it's your organization's job to identify areas in which the client needs help during the QBR process.

You can also identify opportunities to discuss while performing the entire meeting or QBR presentation. If this is the right timing, you can propose new interactions and jobs to reach specific goals.

Slow progresses are typical, but customers tend to forgive delays when they are addressed regularly. Do not assume customer's responsibilities, but try to help if you identify ways to do it. Just address issues and try to find the reason why they persist.

Companies tend to change objectives as the year progresses. They can even modify entire departments and goals, so you must find new solutions for the latest goals. Be prepared for changes and stay flexible. Talk about new overall strategic goals on a regular basis and be ready to change an essential part of your planning.

Evaluate critical information you get through KPIs and check for significant progress during the current and last quarters. To do this, it is vital to have a scorecard listing objective and how you're planning to achieve them. This element is crucial to improve communication between you and your customer and create strong relationships.

It's better if your scorecard is mainly filled out with metrics and goals you're collected during the quarter.

You can ask your client crucial questions to know if your organization provides good service. For example:

• Have the company's emails been answered quickly?

• Have potential problems been solved fast enough?

• What is the level of satisfaction?

• Are there any complaints?

Keep the presentation concise and to the point. Besides, you've already talked about changing goals, so this is a moment to mention strategies for future endeavors again. Identify departments where you can provide additional services in the future. Just plant the idea in the customer's mind, not make a sales pitch.

When you finish QBR meetings, you should sign off on the scorecard. This way, all stakeholders will be aware of the metrics, strategies, and goals you’ll implement in the next steps.

A quarterly business review and the corresponding scorecard must be planned. During all the periods you work with the client, you're collecting data points and crucial information about the customer and asking them for details to create new products. In this sense:

• Prepare your scorecard, slides, documents, or whatever you use beforehand.

• Choose relevant KPIs to explain your strategy and action plan better.

• Try to run your presentation smoothly by presenting attendees with all the information they need to help their customers succeed.

• Keep the stakeholders and the meeting engaging by using interactive elements or promoting the conversation and discussion between participants. Using Q&A questions, for example, will allow you to lead the presentation to more relevant details and even highlight successes.

• Respect stakeholders' time and try to keep the presentation short. It even creates a strong relationship between parts.

Next, we share two templates you can use to put it into practice right now for your expected quarterly business review presentations.

This QBR template is perfect for measuring quantities to present to the clients during the QBR meeting. Thanks to this, you can explain the value that your organization has brought to the customer. As a supplier, this template will help you to show your proactive side as a valuable partner.

You can download this supplier QBR template from Smartsheet.

This is a small template to clarify movements, acquisitions, descriptions of services and suppliers, efforts to locate sources within the period, plans, and strategies to achieve goals. On the second page of the document, you can also add some comments and focus on other areas. This template will be beneficial when performing QBR presentations.

You can download this small business review from Sampletemplates.

This QBR template is for small businesses that do not need to clarify many aspects of their work with clients. It has specific sections for products and prices that the business has provided and general issues that have arisen during the collaboration.

From a certain point of view, this document gives you more freedom to describe achievements and challenges. This template also allows you to collect feedback that your customer success team can use to improve processes, products, and services.

You can download this small business quarterly business template from Smartsheet.

A QBR session requires you to display a presentation or offer a document, a scorecard, including the essential details of your agenda. The QBR templates we gave you above will help you to prepare this document. But you must also have the right software or application to edit these templates. In this regard, getting the Microsoft Office suite is crucial for editing these documents and conducting your first QBR.

Microsoft Office 2021 brings multiple benefits to your organization. Among these are the famous Office applications Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, to edit the documents above.

Luckily for you, here, on RoyalCDKeys, you can get a reliable copy of Microsoft Office at the lowest price on the market. Get your Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus Key Retail Global now!

Make sure that your next QBR should consider all the steps and data we clarified above. In the beginning, you may think this process is a bit confusing, but over time, you'll understand its point and how it works.

For other relevant documents, features, and templates, browse the RoyalCDKeys blog. Here you discover multiple useful elements you can use to boost your company and get the key to a successful roadmap.