Everything you need to know about quarterly business reviews

Growth is the hallmark of every thriving business but it comes with new challenges. Between a company and its customers, changes in market trends, size, and location between a company and its customers might alter the nature of a customer's business goals and operations.

Regular check-ins with customers keep you in tune with these changes and what they mean for your customer. One such system to maintain sync with your clients is through quarterly business reviews, known for short as QBRs.

Our guide helps you follow the meaning and importance of QBRs, and how they can benefit you and your customer maximally.

What is a QBR?

Quarterly business reviews are meetings held regularly by companies for each quarter of the fiscal year. A QBR is a special meeting because, apart from keeping terms with the goals of the business, it is an opening for businesses to meet and connect with their clients. Regular QBR meetings provide customer support and valuable and actionable insights to improve service delivery.

QBRs involve presenting progress reports for the preceding quarter and plans for the next. It allows companies to incorporate their business goals with customer expectations.

QBRs are often organized by the company's customer success manager (CSM). According to Steven Rosen, sales leadership meetings, QBRs, are formal meetings between the sales front-line sales manager and one of their sales representatives. It can also be a meeting with the next level where the regional or national sales manager meets with their front-line sales. The purpose of such a meeting is to review the last quarter’s performance and to discuss plans for the next quarter. To host a good QBR, great scheduling and collaboration software like Workee sets you on track. 

QBRs are not restricted to companies. Freelancers can also use review meetings such as these to touch base with clients and ensure that they provide services aligned with their respective clients' needs.

What are the benefits of QBRs?

By conducting quarterly reviews, companies can analyze current situations, measure goal progress, delegate activities, and solidify customer relationships. Successful businesses are often value-oriented, meaning that they are concerned about how much value customers derive from products and services. As such, one of the ways they measure performance is in terms of consumer satisfaction. Through QBRs, a company is able to keep the client's sentiments in focus as they provide goods and services.

QBRs are an opportunity to:

• Review metrics, identify challenges, and discover opportunities.

• Reinforce commitment to business goals.

• Enhance understanding and strengthen the relationship between the company and the client.

• Curate detailed strategies to align business goals with consumer needs.

• Preview the landscape for new product and service offerings.

• Maintain customer loyalty and gain new clients.

QBRs help to keep the consumer in perspective and at the core of service delivery efforts. Let us consider organizing a quarterly review meeting in the next section.

How to prepare a QBR

QBRs have social value, but their major function is understanding and addressing customer needs. A QBR meeting should be a valuable experience for both the company and the customer; therefore, it is important that adequate preparations be made for such a meeting. An agenda should be carefully drafted before the meeting and circulated in advance to those expected to attend. You can rely on smart tools like the Workee software to schedule your QBR meetings and get timely reminders. A QBR agenda contains the following segments:

• Executive analysis

The first point on the agenda is to review the previous quarter's results, analyzing the extent to which the resolutions from the previous meeting have been implemented. This is the opening session, usually handled by the CSM. A detailed data chart showing the company's value offerings over the previous session should be presented. Here, goals are analyzed according to established metrics, recalibrated, and reinforced where necessary. 

• Account review

This is a joint session where the company and customer assess KPIs and metrics over the past fiscal period. This is the time to mention obstacles faced in the course of meeting customer expectations if there are any. It is important to do so to avoid giving off the impression that you are apathetic or irresponsible toward your clients' needs. Maintaining clear communication about difficulties helps both parties find a workable solution to unmet expectations.

Similarly, it is important to communicate the prospects and opportunities that you and your customer can explore for a better ROI.

• Engagement session

A crucial segment of a QBR is the opening for customers to express their sentiments. This session helps you understand the customers’ key objectives for the current quarter and year.

It is necessary to pay attention to clients' behavior at all times and not just during meetings. However, a QBR meeting is a good time for companies to ask about and listen to clients' concerns directly. It is important that listening be done empathetically to understand the customer's pain points, not merely to provide a response. Workee's client management solution helps you keep tabs on client information, responses, and behavior. Through this, you can easily manage relationships, bookings, meetings, communications, payments, and the needs of clients, not leaving any detail out.

• Strategy proposition

Next is to outline the strategy for the instant quarter. It is important to keep the customer up to speed with the company's goals while incorporating the resolutions from the feedback loop. A good strategy incorporates the needs and goals of both the customers and the company. This might require that shared goals between both parties be reviewed and updated. If new features or offerings can change or improve customers' experiences, they should be mentioned and carefully explained to the customers to prepare them for the coming quarter.

• Summary and next steps

Conclude by ensuring everyone is on the same footing and that needs and goals are properly defined, including the immediate line of action. Highlight the success metrics that will be used to analyze progress at the next QBR.

Ideally, QBR meetings should be short but laced with value, not exceeding thirty minutes. Brief meetings keep the parties interested and active. Also, using a QBR template can simplify the planning process and help you not leave any important details out.

Scheduling meetings, sharing agendas, and connecting with clients are simplified with software like Workee. It offers a variety of solutions, including a video conferencing feature to keep you connected with clients in case of virtual QBR meetings. Use Workee to schedule meetings, collaborate on agendas, and receive client payments. Sign up for a free website now!

Conclusion

Everything about a QBR aims to perfectly sync the company's goals with those of the client. QBRs are the perfect platform for businesses to synthesize with their clients on shared objectives so both parties can perform optimally.

At the end of a QBR meeting, both sides should be clear about their goals and the immediate, corresponding line of action to deliver fantastic results.

Workee's scheduling and conferencing solutions enhance the success of QBR meetings. With Workee, you can schedule meetings with clients and connect with them virtually via a shared video link.

Also, when you sign up on Workee, you get to set up your own free website in no time without the wait and stress involved in coding. You also get to:

• Connect with your clients in real time via video conferencing.

• Book and schedule meetings on our online calendar.

• Automate invoices and receive payments for services.

• Pay tax online.

With built-in integrations, you have an all-in-one digital workspace to do what you love.