- A QBR is a quarterly business review.
And you do this with the key executive stakeholders,
key stakeholders with your best customers,
your highest earning customers.
Now here's the thing.
When you do a QBR, it's a very specific presentation
and you actually go through it.
When, when done properly
you'll be able to reduce your churn.
You'll be able to actually sell them more.
You'll be able to increase your DRR.
You'll be able to accelerate growth.
QPRs are incredibly powerful, but here's the thing.
No one actually looks forward to doing a QBR.
Even the name itself, a quarterly business review
doesn't exactly incite excitement in any way
but when you actually do QBRs the right way
it completely transforms your business.
In this episode
I'm gonna walk you through the three principles
you absolutely need to follow
to turn your QBR from boring to brilliant,
three principles,
intro
(upbeat music)
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to unstoppable I'm TK.
And on this channel, I help SAS founders.
Like you navigate the path to the next stage of growth
navigate the path to product market fit
and navigate the path to actually accelerating the growth
for your SAS business, with an unstoppable strategy.
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Every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy.
If you're part of this community already, if you're part
of my SAS, go to market program, my SAS launch program.
Welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
Now, I remember when we started doing five figure deals
and six figure deals at ToutApp
we switched from just self service to sales driven.
One of the smartest things I ever did
I can't take credit for it.
One of the smartest things I ever did was hire a VP
of customer success and our VP
of customer success actually got hired
before we brought on a VP of engineering, VP of product.
Even our VP of sales,
VP of success was the first role we wanted to hit.
And credit goes to Jason Lincoln, who pulled me aside
at some random bar event that we were at.
And he said you should do the success first
customer success service.
And I'm like, that's weird.
I thought I'd hire a VP of sales.
All you ever write about is VPs sales,
but his his advice was spot on.
So we brought our VP of customer success
and he went on to actually establish a proper playbook
on renewing our revenue
and making sure our customers are successful.
And one of the critical things he did
was actually establish a cadence around QPRs
and actually a process on QPRs.
And because we did that because we did it a certain way
we were able to actually transform our growth.
In fact, I came across an old note
from like one of the quarters we were looking at.
We were doing a strategy session.
One of the quarters, we had 219% DRR
and granted this was from early days.
So we were literally, that was our first year
of going from self- service to a little bit of sales
to like true customer success where we're really pushing DRR
and upsells and cross-sells.
But 219% DRR was incredible
but that was because we properly did QPRs.
And so everything that I know
about building scaling SAS business, both from ToutApp
and Marketo knowing everything I learned about QPRs
I'm gonna give you the three principles
you absolutely need to follow because they're so powerful.
It actually help you accelerate the growth
of your SAS business.
If you're excited to dig in,
go in and smash on like button for the YouTube algorithm
and let's go into principle number one.
So principle number one is what you need
to actually do is really reframed QPRs.
If you can, you can call it QPRs.
And if that works then great
what I like to call them, especially now
for my best clients is I like to call them strategy sessions
and strategy sessions are quarterly.
So you can call it a quarterly strategy session.
If you have a certain word that you use.
So for example, if I was still
in the sales engagement space
I would call it an engagement strategy session, right?
So if you could call it something aside
from a quarterly business review
that's gonna help you a lot.
Just from a rebranding perspective
it'll just help you to get people excited
that, hey this is gonna be a big thing.
So that's kind of like a table stakes.
Just start with that.
This is almost principle number zero.
So once you'd have that, once you have your strategy session
or whatever you wanna call it sort of just
boring quarterly business review
the first minister will really need to adopt inside of this
these sessions, the first thing you wanna nail right
off the bat is you wanna highlight the actions taken
and the business ROI delivered
just like straight off the bat,
because I'll tell you I've been
on both sides of the QPRs.
And the thing I hate the most
is I walk out of there with a to-do list
and it's not even my QBR.
It's the vendor's QBR.
So I wanna go in
and I want to feel like there's gonna be value
something like I feel good about.
And if you can do that for me
then you're gonna earn the right
for me to do more for you.
Whether it's buying more seats
or actually pushing the transformation or something
if you can start off every meeting just without
without wasting any time with momentum
I'm like look our the last quarter
or since we started here, the actions we've taken
and here's a clear business ROI that we've delivered
which obviously you've got alignment
on as you were closing the deal, right?
If you can do that, if you can have a couple of slides
on that or even one slide on that,
literally action taken and business ROI
you are already off to a golden star, especially coming
from an executive who doesn't want more stuff
on my list to do.
I'm gonna feel really good.
And this is something I can probably tell others
about how good this initiative is going.
And that's what you really, really want.
The ultimate success truly for you
is if you get the person that actually bought the product
and sponsored it, if you can get them promoted
because of how successful this transformation has been
that's success for you.
So if you can start to give them fodder on
here's the key business ROI we're delivering
you're gonna start winning the game.
So that's principle number one.
principle number two
is you should introduce some sort of an X score.
So for example, we had a tout score
a tout score was a measure
of how effectively you were using the platform, right?
So let's just pretend there's a score
between zero and a hundred.
If you're doing like 90, then you're crushing it.
You're using everything in the platform.
If you're at 50, then there's lots of room for growth.
What this does, you wanna communicate through this slide?
or a set of slides
in this score is like, look, you are at X score.
So what that means is there's certain things
you're doing Well,
you wanna highlight the things that you're doing well
you also wanna highlight what the benchmark is
for that score.
Maybe you say like for companies that have been with us
for let's just say 3/4s in
usually at this score.
So you're above that score.
Like you wanna make them feel good.
And then what you wanna highlight
is what are the opportunities?
How do you actually increase that score?
This is your way of showing
like look, here's how you're doing.
This is going well, here's the benchmark.
You're either below the benchmark or above the benchmark.
Here's a corrective action, you can take if necessary.
And here's the opportunities that exist.
Here's how you can unlock more of our platform.
And this is a great way
to without selling for an upsell or a cross sell
highlight, oh, if you add our analytics package
and your tout score goes up by 10
but also here's a business ROI you're gonna get.
Here's how your engagement strategy is gonna
be 10 times better.
You guys starting to see this.
So what you wanna do is highlight the X score,
the X meaning whatever your name is like
it could be your company name.
It could be whatever movement you're doing,
whatever your manifesto is called,
whatever you want to call it, just call it that score
and say, look, here's where you're doing Well,
here's the benchmark
and here's opportunities for continuous improvement.
Now I have one more principle, but before I go into that
let me just pause here for a second
just by doing these two things and rebranding it
rebranding it and giving it a better name.
Can you start to see the power
you start to see the power of
how you can actually complete transform these QPRs
from just boring QPRs
and no one likes to like, these are awesome.
They're momentum.
Here's what you're doing great.
Here's what you can tell others about it,
here's your score and here's how you stack up.
And here's how you can do better.
You start to see the different energy you can bring
to these QPRs or this strategy session.
Start to see the power in this
can I just get a yes in the comments below
also smash out like the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
And so is my team.
Also, if you are in that stage where you're building out
the growth strategy
you trying to figure out, well
how do we do the CSM piece?
How do we do the sales piece, the marketing, product.
I invite you to check out my five point
SAS growth strategy guide
inside of that guide.
I Give you much more details on how to craft
a one-page strategy for successful growth.
It's completely free.
I'll tell you more about it
at the end of this video, but let's go to principle
number three, all right?
Principle number three
is you should then have a roadmap slide.
This is super important.
A lot of times CSMs forgot it
or they couldn't quite drive alignment with product.
Get that roadmap slide, but that's easily fixable.
You should absolutely have is now
that you've shown them,
Hey here's what you've done really well.
Here's like how cool you are and what your score is.
And here's the opportunities you wanna like really
put the cherry on top with saying,
here's where we're going.
Here's the bigger opportunities that are coming down
in the roadmap.
Here's even more stuff that we're gonna be bringing
to you.
This does is it reinforces the fact that not only
are you working hard to make sure that they're successful
and you're gonna continue to do that.
And this opportunity is already on the plate.
You are gonna be the best in the business
and you gonna innovate the most to show
that you are a long-term partner.
You do these three things.
You will completely transform your QPRs
and people will love you.
Executives will love you because you're gonna
give them actual fodder to tell others
and you're gonna make it actionable for them.
And that's super, super powerful.
So to recap, give it a better name.
Don't call it a QBR, call it quarter strategy session.
For example,
number one,
start with action taken and business ROI delivered.
Number two, introduce the X score show
that they're doing well
show the benchmark show opportunities for growth
and number three, get them excited about the future
and the partnership ahead, the roadmap, the vision
and also ask them for feedback,
ask them like, hey what would you like?
Make them advisors it'll feel special
and they'll actually want to help you even more.
And all of these ask for a referral and then number QBR
like are there other companies
peers that would love using this platform
would love an introduction and that's super powerful.
Those are my core strategies to completely
transform your QBR.
And by the way, if you're in this stage where
you're figuring out all these key pieces to drive growth
for your SAS business, be sure to check
out my five point SAS growth strategy guide inside of it.
I go into much more detail
on how to actually craft a one-page strategy
for growth across all your key functions.
All I need to do is go to getunstopple.com/strategy.
getunstopple.com/right
It's completely free.
You can download it.
It's it's awesome.
Also, if you got value from this video
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
We put a lot of love into these videos
put a lot of work into them.
It just means a lot to us.
When you hit the like button, it means a lot to us.
When you share this with other founders
we wanna help impact as many SAS businesses
and SAS founders and SAS teams as possible.
And lastly, also remember I drop a video
like this two to three times a week
with actionable strategies like this
because I've literally been through the trenches
I've done this and now I'm helping others do it.
So be sure to hit that subscribe button
and that bell icon, if you haven't already,
lastly remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK.
I'll see you in the next episode.
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