QBRs aren't just for customer executives
“I wasn’t part of the decision to buy your product”. Whatever you call the quarterly business review (QBR/EBR etc…), the value of a QBR goes well beyond customer executives. It should engage all of your customer stakeholders - especially those who are using it on a daily basis and will have the most say in keeping you around. While it’s important to involve executives and to have an “executive summary” as part of your QBR, the message of the QBR needs to extend past the senior stakeholder level.
Typically, the people that will make or break the success of your product are a few levels down. Should they not be included as part of the QBR? Are they not important to demonstrate value to?
The goal of the QBR should be to sell the value of your company, align with your client’s priorities, and create a plan of action. You should involve customer representatives from a few levels (where applicable) to make these discussions impactful. While you don’t want the QBR to be too tactical where you get into bugs and operational issues, concentrating too far up the totem pole can have negative consequences. As an example, I had a situation where I was discussing a point of contention with a customer executive and we went around in circles as the customer contact who had the concerns wasn’t part of the discussion.
One approach I’ve used that has been helpful is to send questions to your customer a week prior to the QBR that will provide you with useful discussion points. For example:
What has been successful with our product? How do you measure success and what are the key metrics you use?
What are your current upcoming priorities (the next 1 to 6 months)? Are there certain areas you may focusing on?
What else do you need from us?
These can bring up some hot topics and can help you determine who should be part of the meeting. You may determine you need additional people from your organization including product managers or executives. If a CSMs’ job is “Customer Success” then you need to go beyond executives as part of this process. Focus on the entire customer. Focus on helping them achieve their outcoes.