Every salesperson knows the drill. Every quarter they spend a massive amount of effort and time painstakingly putting a presentation together so that everyone can complain how big of a waste of time it is to do them. And when customers are involved, there’s even more pushback.
In fact, 72% of senior executives in various industries believe they’re a waste of time, there’s too much information shared, the meetings are too long, and way too tactical.
I’m talking about Quarterly Business Reviews — otherwise known as QBRs.
These reviews (when done well) provide an invaluable opportunity to assess progress, address challenges, and realign goals with stakeholders. However, for QBRs to be truly effective, they need to be more than just a routine meeting — they must offer meaningful insights, actionable strategies, and foster transparent communication.
In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through the essential components of a successful QBR, share best practices for preparation and execution, and provide expert tips to ensure your reviews not only meet expectations but drive real business growth. Whether you're leading a client-facing team or driving internal performance reviews, this blog will help you elevate your QBRs into a strategic tool that delivers measurable results — so no one feels like their time was wasted.
Key highlights:
- Learn what QBRs are and why they’re important
- Understand the benefits of QBRs
- Learn how to conduct a QBR and best practices for making them impactful
- Discover the challenges and common QBR mistakes
What is a QBR?
A QBR (Quarterly Business Review) is a strategic meeting or presentation that typically occurs every quarter (every three months) between a company and its clients, stakeholders, or internal teams.
External QBRs are often used to evaluate the relationship between a business and its clients, discuss key performance indicators (KPIs), identify any challenges or opportunities, and ensure both parties are aligned on expectations moving forward.
Internal QBRs focus on assessing the company’s progress, including performance, project outcomes, and overall business health, while also strategizing on areas for improvement and growth.
Sales QBRs assess how well the team has met its sales targets, understand the factors influencing performance, identify areas for improvement, and align strategies and goals for the upcoming quarter.
What is the purpose of quarterly business reviews?
The purpose of quarterly business reviews is to assess and reflect on performance, ensuring that teams are on track to meet their goals. These reviews provide a structured opportunity to evaluate progress against key metrics, identify successes, and uncover areas that require attention or improvement. By reviewing past performance, businesses can stay aligned with their strategic objectives and adjust course as needed for the upcoming quarter.
QBRs also foster strategic alignment across teams and stakeholders. They create a space for transparent discussions, allowing everyone to stay on the same page and adjust priorities as necessary.
“Sales is the voice of the business and, ultimately, the customer,” says Carolyn Bates Hogan, AVP, Strategic Accounts at Mural. “QBRs are an opportunity, once a quarter, for leadership to be in the room, and have the AMs take the stage to talk about the competitive landscape, and what they’re hearing in terms of product feedback.”
Beyond reflecting on past performance, QBRs are also a forward-looking tool for planning. They allow teams to forecast, adjust strategies, and allocate resources effectively for the next quarter. Additionally, QBRs provide a forum for feedback, which drives continuous improvement by highlighting areas that need refining or optimizing.
Benefits of hosting a QBR meeting
The benefits of QBR meetings are numerous and impactful for both businesses and their clients or partners. Here are some of the key advantages:
- Higher customer satisfaction through regular check-ins
- More growth opportunities and expanding partnerships
- Improved transparency with data-driven insights
- Enhanced collaboration between internal and external teams
- Evaluate performance and foster accountability
- Alignment and strategic refinement
- Identification of gaps and challenges
- Opportunity to forecast and plan for the future
- Increased motivation and focus
Related: Explore 8 cross-functional collaboration frameworks for teams
What should a quarterly business review include?
In this section, we’ll list topics to discuss in a quarterly business review meeting.
A clear quarterly business review agenda with defined objectives
With a structured agenda, discussions remain focused and efficient, preventing conversations from straying off-topic. It also helps participants prepare appropriately, knowing what to expect and what’s expected of them, leading to more meaningful contributions.
Defined quarterly business review objectives ensure the meeting aligns with business priorities, guiding discussions toward the most critical issues. This clarity promotes better decision-making, as participants can address specific challenges and opportunities in a structured way.
Additionally, people’s time is valuable — especially your customers’. A clear agenda prevents scope creep, ensuring that only relevant topics are covered and minimizing any tangents that veer off-topic.
Key performance metrics and business insights
Quarterly business review metrics provide a focused, measurable way to evaluate performance and track progress. Without clear goals, the meeting can become unfocused, with discussions lacking direction and clarity on what success looks like. Defining goals ensures that everyone knows what is being worked toward and aligns the team on shared objectives. Use Mural’s ROI calculator template to help define financial goals for your business.
KPIs offer a tangible way to measure success and identify areas for improvement. They help teams assess whether they’ve met their targets, highlight trends or challenges, and provide data-driven insights to inform future strategies. By using clear goals and KPIs, a QBR meeting becomes more actionable, allowing teams to make informed decisions and adjust plans to stay on track for the next quarter. This alignment and transparency ensure that the meeting delivers value, improves performance, and drives continuous progress.
Related: OKRs vs. KPIs: What's the difference?
Benchmarking data
Benchmarking data provides a clear point of reference for evaluating performance. By comparing your results to industry standards, competitors, or past performance, benchmarking helps identify whether you're on track, excelling, or falling short. This data allows you to assess how well your business or team is performing relative to others, providing valuable insights into areas for improvement or growth.
Additionally, benchmarking data helps to set realistic, data-driven goals and expectations for the upcoming quarter. It ensures that targets are not only ambitious but also achievable, based on what is happening in the industry or within your specific market.
It also enables more strategic decision-making by highlighting trends, risks, and opportunities that may not be visible through internal data alone. Use this data delivery template to highlight these trends.
Customer feedback and pain points
Discussing customer feedback and pain points during a QBR meeting provides valuable insights into how well your products, services, or strategies are meeting customer needs. By addressing feedback, both positive and negative, you gain a clearer understanding of customer satisfaction, identify areas where you’re excelling, and highlight opportunities for improvement.
Understanding customer pain points is particularly important as it allows you to proactively address issues that could impact customer loyalty or retention. These discussions can reveal patterns or recurring challenges, helping you make data-driven decisions to improve the customer experience.
By bringing customer feedback into the QBR, teams can align their strategies to better meet customer expectations, ultimately driving business growth and strengthening relationships. It also fosters a customer-centric mindset, ensuring that customer needs remain a top priority in future planning.
Need a place to aggregate your customer feedback? Look no further than this Customer insights template.
Strategic planning and goal alignment
Strategic planning and goal alignment keeps all teams working toward the same objectives and verifies that efforts are aligned with the broader business strategy.
Strategic planning during a quarterly business review also allows teams to assess whether current strategies are effective or need adjustments based on the previous quarter’s performance. It’s an opportunity to realign goals based on market changes, customer feedback, pipeline review, or new business insights. By focusing on goal alignment, teams can prioritize initiatives that will have the most significant impact on the company’s success, driving greater efficiency, focus, and collaboration across departments.
Want to keep all your QBR presentations structured and concise? Don’t start from scratch. Use Mural’s QBR template to create a dynamic and collaborative presentation.
5 quarterly business review best practices
Follow these structured best practices to make QBR meetings more effective, engaging, and results-driven.
1. Prepare for quarterly business review questions
Be ready to address any concerns, provide insightful answers, and showcase the progress made during the quarter. Anticipating and preparing for key questions helps you present a well-rounded view of performance, challenges, and opportunities, allowing you to demonstrate a clear understanding of the business and its direction.
Related: 12 techniques to improve client communication
2. Collaborate on actionable next steps and follow-ups
This collaboration ensures that all stakeholders are aligned on what needs to happen next, who is responsible for each action, and the timeline for completion. By clearly defining the next steps, you ensure that the discussions and insights from the QBR meeting are translated into concrete actions that will drive business progress.
Follow-ups are equally important, as they help maintain accountability and track progress on the decisions made during the meeting. Collaborating on follow-up actions creates a sense of ownership and ensures that the team stays focused on the goals discussed in the QBR.
3. Ensure consistency by standardizing the quarterly business review process
By standardizing the process, you ensure that all QBRs follow a clear, defined structure that includes key components like performance evaluation, goal alignment, and actionable next steps. That way, no critical areas are overlooked and every QBR delivers the same high level of value.
A standardized process also makes it easier to compare results from one quarter to the next, allowing you to track progress over time and spot trends more easily. It provides a reliable basis for decision-making, ensuring that all team members and stakeholders are aligned on expectations and objectives. Create a formal documentation process that houses all expectations and guidelines for creating QBR presentations, or just use this QBR template.
Consistency in the QBR process fosters trust and transparency, as everyone knows what to expect and can prepare effectively. This standardization ultimately drives better communication, more effective strategy execution, and continuous improvement.
4. Make it visual!
Well-designed visuals like charts, graphs, and infographics help convey key insights clearly, making it easier for attendees to understand and retain critical data. Visuals capture attention and maintain focus, ensuring that your audience remains engaged and that key messages aren’t lost in a sea of text.
Additionally, a polished, professional presentation reflects attention to detail, which builds credibility and makes the information more accessible. By using visuals strategically, you encourage discussion, improve clarity, and support data-driven decision-making, making your QBR more impactful and actionable.
5. Keep it short and simple
Provide tips on avoiding information overload, focusing on key takeaways, and structuring presentations with valuable insights to build stakeholder engagement.
This might be the most important one of all. A concise QBR respects everyone's time and helps prevent information overload, making it easier for participants to digest key insights and takeaways. By avoiding unnecessary details or lengthy discussions, the meeting remains productive and the most important points — such as performance highlights, challenges, and next steps — are front and center.
Common QBR mistakes and how to avoid them
QBR mistakes are common but avoidable. Let’s dive into some dos and don’ts of QBR presentations.
Overloading the presentation with data
Don’t: Presenting too much data or overly complex information can overwhelm participants and distract from the key takeaways.
Do: Focus on the most relevant metrics and insights that align with your goals. Use visuals like charts or graphs to make data more digestible, and highlight the most important points for clarity.
Ignoring clear challenges
Don’t: Glossing over challenges or underperformance can create a false sense of progress and prevent necessary improvements.
Do: Be transparent about both successes and challenges. Openly discuss obstacles and work together to come up with actionable solutions to overcome them.
Failing to align the QBR meeting with strategic goals
Don’t: Not aligning the QBR discussions with long-term business goals can make the meeting feel disconnected from broader objectives.
Do: Ensure the QBR is focused on aligning teams with overall business strategy, evaluating progress against strategic goals, and setting objectives that drive long-term success.
Too long or unfocused meetings
Don’t: Allowing the QBR to drag on for too long or veer off-topic can lead to disengagement and reduced productivity.
Do: Keep the meeting concise and focused. Stick to a clear agenda, stay on topic, and be mindful of time to ensure that the meeting is efficient and valuable.
No actionable next steps
Don’t: Ending the QBR without clear, actionable next steps or follow-up tasks can result in a lack of accountability.
Do: Conclude the meeting by collaboratively defining clear next steps, assigning responsibilities, and setting timelines for follow-up. Ensure everyone knows their role in executing the plan.
Run your QBR meetings with Mural
Mural promotes visual collaboration, enabling teams to actively contribute, provide feedback, and brainstorm ideas during the meeting, regardless of their physical location.
With Mural, you can easily capture feedback, track action items, and keep the conversation focused in a central space, making it easier to revisit decisions and follow up after the meeting.
Overall, running your QBRs in Mural fosters a more dynamic, interactive, and productive session, ensuring that the meeting is not only informative but also collaborative and action-oriented.
Get started with Mural for free and streamline your quarterly business reviews.
