Many of you will be walking into QBR (quarterly business review) season soon. What do you include in your board section?
Here’s how I think about mine:
Quarterly Overview - Include any takeaways from the last board deck. I typically think about these in a Red Lights 🔴 and Green Lights 🟢 scenario. Tracking what has been accomplished, or hasn’t, over the last three months and sharing learnings and ‘opportunities for improvement’.
Demand Scorecard - It's essential to have a funnel/major initiatives scorecard you update every quarter. Mine include funnel metrics and one or two significant callouts (customer stories, G2 Reviews, press mentions, activations, etc.).
Funnel metrics you might consider:
Pipeline – Both $ amount and % of overall contribution
ACV – Average Contract Value
CW ARR – Closed Won Revenue. Both New Biz and Expansion
Pipeline Velocity – Speed at which pipeline moves to Closed Won (formula here)
ARR Per Employee – Here’s a chart with what ‘good’ should look like.
Pipeline & Revenue Analysis - This is very dependent on your company but I believe marketing and sales should own the pipeline and revenue review. Finance will own the numbers but the context around what happened should come from a join S&M presentation.
Next Quarter Focus & Goals - This is an updated scorecard and OKR preview. The only thing to remember = do not write too much text. The board doesn't need to read a book on a slide. And your H1 should always be the ‘so what’ of the slide. If they only walk away having read the H1, they should have a high level of what’s most important.
Quarterly Messaging Campaign or Other Major Project Call-out - This is a choose-your-own-adventure section. This is different for every board but always tried to call out a major project/initiative for the next quarter to give the board a look into where you are moving, whether a brand or demand campaign.
Lastly, leave plenty of time for Q&A. If the board has no questions, or simply shares a ‘good job’, they likely weren’t listening or don’t care. Neither of which are good for you, or your team.
Here’s to that glimmer of light shining through from the other side of QBR season — see ya there!
Kaylee
Great points! + Most QBRs focus on successes and positive results, which is great. Teams should also share a failure case study in the QBR - would help review setbacks and lessons learned from it.