2 Quarterly Business Review Myths that Customer Success Needs to Abandon

This post originally appeared on The Success League blog.

As you’re checking your calendar to start the day, you see there is a two hour block for “QBR Prep” at 10:00 am. The room suddenly feels a lot warmer and beads of sweat appear on your forehead. You think to yourself “did someone mess with the thermostat?” You then remember that this the normal feeling you get when preparing a QBR. It’s such a massive pain to put together. You have to pull data from 10 different places and then put all of the pieces together so it will make sense. You’re also praying that the attendees will actually show up. Beyond your scheduled QBR prep, you have an overflowing inbox of customer emails and a bunch of other flashing messages in Slack. You don’t want to let any of your customers down but you have no idea how you are going to pull this all off.

That feeling of trepidation and despair when tackling a QBR is a common occurrence. While the practice of customer success has evolved, some of the strategies haven’t changed that much for many organizations. QBRs definitely fit into that bucket. I see the purpose of a Quarterly Business Review as a way for CSMs to demonstrate and sell the value of your product to the customer. While many companies present these results on a quarterly cadence, I don’t believe that the timing is relevant. It should be based on the needs of your customers.