The QBR is a negotiation.

In the conference rooms and over Zoom calls across many industries, a familiar ritual plays out every quarter. On schedule and without fail, a Customer Success Manager (CSM) shares the screen, the slides load with the logo prominently featured on the first page, a usage chart on the third, and a unilateral decision on roadmap on the fifth. Someone mutters “I like it. This is helpful.” Another nods in agreement and that brings the call to an end after about thirty-two minutes. But nothing changes after this meeting. The Quarterly Business Review (QBR), this is what most companies call it.

A QBR is intended to be useful for vendor-customer relationship. It happens regularly and involves significant data. Some senior executives attend, or at least are supposed to, and they try to do so. After the meeting, the note is filed under “relationship management” and regarded as a health signal if the customer showed up. A ‘no show’ will signal impending danger.
This is where it gets tricky: ask the CSM who was in charge:

• What resolutions came from this meeting?
• What is the difference between now and ninety days ago?
• What new thing did the customer commit to going forward?

The answer is often some variant of nothing. As most teams know and run it, the QBR is a report disguised as a conversation; and this is a big problem. The approach to QBRs is the reason many CSMs go into renewal conversations with uncertainty despite having a supposedly ‘good’ meetings over twelve months.

The purpose of QBR

Stripped to its fundamentals, a QBR exists to serve both the customer and the vendor. It is the platform to routinely determine if the relationship is worth continuing. Both parties have information the other needs and have key interests at stake. This is when the customer discusses the value being received. The vendor takes advantage of the discussion to gauge if the customer will stay or grow with them for the next business year. Or leave entirely. Being mindful of the stakes involved means allowing each party to fully articulate their position with the service.

The QBR best serves the parties if treated as a negotiation, not in the adversary sense over price, but in the structural sense on the entire service or product portfolio. By the end of each QBR, the vendor must have a better understanding of what constitutes value to the customer. This quarterly meeting is to reach agreement on the next steps.
After a good QBR:

• the customer would have agreed at least in principle that the relationship must continue
• the customer would have flagged something that requires attention
• the vendor would have admitted they can deliver on the change requests, or
• the customer would have surfaced issues early enough to find a solution before the renewal conversation.

All these insights are missing when a QBR is treated as presentation. The opportunity to discuss real topics is eliminated.

Would the customer miss anything if the QBR was cancelled? If answer is “no or not much,” the QBR has not earned its place on the calendar.

Four questions to consider for a good QBR

The slides which characterize these quarterly meetings are only as useful as the critical questions they address when structured as a negotiation. The data,
insights, roadmap and case studies must all give fidelity to these four questions.

What value has the customer actually received?
The danger with relying on data, especially usage data is that it measures activity. It does not accurately measure outcomes achieved from using the vendor’s products and services. This is an uncomfortable question for most CSMs as an honest answer may indicate the product is not delivering value.

If the customer struggles to answer the question on what has improved from using this product, then there is an adoption and product utilization problem.

Do they still need anything?
This question is the golden opportunity for expansion. The question opens conversation on potential new feature adoption and usage. But many CSMs would prefer to show what has been done and move straight to roadmap without bridging the gap from the customer’s perspective on what can still be done.

A customer with lingering unmet requirements that has built over time will start weighing their options several months before the renewal.

Is anything changing in their world?
Just as organizational structure, the customer’s product requirements change from time to time. The change can cut across leadership, budget priorities, product-to-market fit, etc. Nothing is static.
A product might have been a perfect fit a couple of months ago, but new innovations can quickly turn the customer’s product to a lukewarm fit for the same market. This is the place to ask the questions that surfaces such changing situations to better understand how to innovate around the problem.  

The QBR is the primary touchpoint to ask questions about the bigger picture, not just present data on the usage of the tool.

What must we change to stay relevant?
If the QBR is structured as presentation, all it will accomplish is present the vendor as an excellent partner, leaving little to no room for improvement. It comes across as this is what we have done, and this is what we are building as part of the product roadmap for the next release, please be appreciative of us.

This question almost never gets asked. Subtly, it presents as ‘we lack ideas to independently innovate around your needs.’ This impression is far from the reality. Rather, it tells the customer the vendor is willing to co-create what can be described as a value-driven partnership. It is one of the most important questions to ask. It changes the dynamics and signals that you are genuinely accountable to an outcome and not only interested in keeping a contract.

QBR in practice

To run a QBR as a negotiation, the preparatory works look different from both inside and outside. There are no surprises; the discussion points are shared with the customer in advance to ensure they come prepared. They collaborate in shaping the agenda and that means showing up differently at the meeting.

In practice, the customer should talk more than the vendor. If the CSM is talking more, something is not right. The information needed to sustain the relationship is largely on the customer side of the table.  

The meeting ends with definite commitments from both sides of the aisle. No matter the magnitude; this may be a timeline to receive and review a new feature, or introduction to a new top-level stakeholder. These strengthen the relationship and creates a feeling of a joint project.

A simple presentation with a polished data cuts out all the perceived discomfort and receives approval. This is definitely low risk and almost certainly no value.

Relevance of the slide deck

The question worth asking, "Is the slide deck still important for a QBR?" Yes, it definitely is relevant. Some prepared material provides the spine that shapes the conversation. The goal is to use the deck to steer the conversation, but not to hide behind it and reduce the focus of the meeting to the slides.