Most “QBRs” are two people reading a slide they both already knew. A useful QBR ends with a decision.
Who is in the room
Your owner and theirs. One seller or CS lead if there is a number. Not eight people who will only nod. If their VP wants to come, let them, and keep the document to one page so they can actually read it.
The one page
- Active connections this quarter vs last.
- Pipeline the pairing touched, with the definition you already wrote down.
- Support load: tickets, error rate, time-to-fix.
- One customer story (a name, a workflow, a result).
- Next build, or an explicit no-build.
- The ask: engineering, a seller intro, a listing change, a SPIFF.
If a row is zero, write zero. Hiding zero is how you get surprised at renewal.
The decision
Deepen: more surface area, a co-sell experiment, a better listing. Hold: keep it live, do not add scope, keep the cadence. Sunset: customers migrate, listing comes down, the email is sent.
You cannot run a book if every QBR ends in “great to stay in touch.”
Cadence
Quarterly for anyone with a number. Half-yearly for a quiet but healthy integration. Never for a zombie. If you need a meeting to remember they exist, sunset them.
Send the page 24 hours ahead. Use the live time for the decision, not for reading.