The Poorly Understood Quarterly Business Review

Quarterly Business Reviews are one of the most misunderstood tools in Customer Success.

SaaStr recently shared a great piece on how to do them right. They’re spot-on about a few things:
✅ Make it about the customer’s goals, not your product.
✅ Skip the disguised upsell; their trust in you is too valuable to waste.
✅ Show up prepared, but mostly make sure the right people are in the room.

In my own work, I’ve seen QBRs succeed when they truly become a conversation about the customer’s future, not a slide deck about tactics and past activity.

Just this month, I was talking with an experienced enterprise CSM who said, “I could never get executives to attend QBRs.” And that’s a challenge I see often. You can prepare the perfect story, but if the right executives don’t join, the opportunity to align strategically disappears. So, sire, it’s about format, but it’s also about access and engagement.

Another layer I’d add is to tailor QBRs to customer maturity. A newer customer still chasing value needs a very different kind of discussion than a long-standing customer exploring more value. Treating all QBRs the same misses the nuance of where the customer is in their journey.

And above all, QBRs should point forward. Executives really don’t want a recap of everything you did last quarter. They want clarity on how you’ll help them win in the next 12 months. That’s where trust deepens and where the partnership really takes shape.

I like how the SaaStr article frames QBRs as a chance to prove you’re more than just a vendor. In practice, the most successful QBRs I’ve seen are the ones where:
🔹 The right people are in the room
🔹 The conversation matches the customer’s stage of maturity
🔹 The focus is squarely on the future, not the past

Do that consistently, and renewals and expansion won’t need to be “sold” bur rather will be the natural outcome of a strong partnership.