What is a QBR deck?

The QBR deck is a component of your Quarterly Business Review, typically, a slide presentation used to provide structure to your meeting. This structure helps to create and guide the narrative an account manager wants to give the client, and helps to avoid some of the common challenges of Business Reviews.

What should it look like?

• Consistent branding and colours
• Uncluttered slides with plenty of space
• Bullet points to improve readability
• Charts and graphs to visualise data
• Images or icons to highlight key points
• Text that's large enough to be read easily

1. Start with a clear agenda

The agenda should set your meeting's tone and direction, and reflect your clients’ expectations. Depending on your relationship with your customer and the key updates you’ve identified, your agenda could include: 

• An executive summary
• Your current key initiatives & performance metrics
• Goals for next quarter
• Action items & next steps
• The opportunity for questions

Currently, 88% of service buyers don’t feel as though their suppliers are providing enough evidence of their value or innovation, which leads to 82% reporting they cancelled the contract. Covering these points provides you with plenty of opportunities to showcase the value and innovation you’re offering your clients, avoiding this outcome.

2. Craft a compelling executive summary

The executive summary should cover the quarter's most significant points, highlighting major achievements, key challenges, and strategic goals. It should be concise yet comprehensive, giving stakeholders a snapshot of the partnership's overall performance in the past few months.

3. Leverage performance metrics effectively

Performance metrics are central to a QBR, providing quantitative metrics for evaluating success. You and your customer should have a collection of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your partnership. 

When you update on your progress, ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date, and contextualise the numbers with brief explanations to help stakeholders understand the implications.

4. Detail clear initiatives

Key initiatives are the strategic activities that have been undertaken during the quarter. For each initiative, you should provide:

• Status Updates: Indicate whether the initiative is on-track, delayed, or completed.
• Challenges and Solutions: Discuss obstacles faced and how they were addressed.
• Next Steps: Outline planned actions for the next quarter.

This section should tell the story of your strategic efforts, showcasing progress and adaptability.

5. Incorporate customer insights

Understanding and acting on customer feedback is critical for any business. Dedicate a section to insights you’ve gathered from customer insights, including:

• Feedback and Surveys: Present key findings from customer feedback.
• Behavioural Trends: Analyse evolving customer behaviour.
• Case Studies or Testimonials: Highlight specific examples of customer experiences.

Taking the time to discuss the feedback you’ve received enables you to close the loop and incentivise your customers to continue giving their feedback. This goes a long way towards meeting retention targets and reducing churn. 

6. Set clear goals for the next quarter

Using approaches such as SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) identifies the areas you need to address and gives direction to your goals. When setting out your next steps, make sure your goals are SMART:  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based

Forward-looking goals help you and your client to align and make it easier to communicate your progress over time.

7. Define action items & responsibilities

Ensure accountability by listing action items with assigned responsibilities. Each task should include:

• Specific Actions: Clearly defined steps.
• Assigned Personnel: Names of responsible individuals.
• Deadlines: Timelines for completion.

This helps you track your progress and ensures that all stakeholders are aware of their roles and responsibilities.

8. Allocate time for a Q&A

Finally, save some time for a Q&A session. This allows stakeholders to get involved, provide feedback, and engage in meaningful discussions, fostering transparency and collaborative problem-solving.

Final thoughts

Creating a great QBR deck is not just about compiling data; it’s the story of your business’s journey over the past quarter. This guide will help you craft a QBR deck that will inform, inspire, and align your team toward achieving your strategic goals. But remember, every review should be unique and the content should be crafted with the individual customer in mind. Use these steps to inform your review, and the narrative of your QBR will become even stronger.

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