The Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is one of the most effective tools for managing business relationships, particularly between a vendor and a channel partner. To be truly effective, a QBR should be mutually beneficial, and taking these quarterly reviews seriously is essential for staying on track.
What is a Quarterly Business Review?
The aim of a QBR is to establish regular, structured moments for business partners to align on past activities, evaluate their outcomes, address challenges, realign goals, and define upcoming actions—right down to setting the next QBR date. Most importantly, QBRs serve to strengthen the relationship between business partners.
When conducted effectively and according to plan, QBRs enable business partners to identify growth opportunities and address potential issues more openly. This proactive approach allows all parties to take timely and appropriate actions, fostering mutual success.
It’s important to standardize the QBR format across all business partners. Ensure that it is easy to integrate the format into the CRM, or ideally, make it a CRM-based form that can be used offline as well. A QBR template is available at request. Adapt it as needed, but make sure it remains effective. It’s important that users don’t see it as a rigid or burdensome tool.
In some cases, particularly with large-volume relationships, a monthly review may be more appropriate. However, moving to a weekly review is excessive and likely to miss the intended purpose.
Take your time for a Quarterly Business Review
Reserving the necessary time is crucial for a well-conducted QBR, as it requires more than just an hour, but it should also not exceed half a day. Depending on the size of the channel partner, the meeting will probably include their product manager and sales lead, while smaller partners may have the owner or other senior members in attendance. From the vendor’s side, it is important that the responsible partner manager take part, along with the related manager. At least once a year, it’s advisable to have a high-ranking executive join these meetings, particularly if the partner’s performance needs a boost.
Consider incorporating a social element into the Face-to-Face QBR, which provides an opportunity to discuss matters informally and ‘off the record.’
Location of a QBR
Before the pandemic, partners typically held QBRs face-to-face at their location. While virtual meeting platforms have made remote reviews more common, it’s still valuable to meet in person at least twice a year to enhance communication. Even when conducting remote reviews, avoid relying entirely on virtual platforms, as they may cause missing subtle cues that could be crucial to understanding the partner’s success rate.
Meetings may need to be cancelled if participants are unavailable or a customer meeting takes priority. However, given the importance of the QBR, it is crucial to reschedule it as soon as possible, ideally close to the original time slot.