Dear Insider: What’s the Best Cadence for Business Reviews?

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Q: What is the best cadence for conducting Executive Business Reviews (EBRs) or Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for enterprise customers with a six-figure Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)?

‍Originally, Business Reviews were a staple of the consulting industry, designed to share the impact of work with clients. The SaaS industry quickly adopted this practice, using it to communicate the benefits their technology brought to customers.

However, as Customer Success Managers (CSMs) began handling more clients, the “white glove” approach evolved into a more reactive and tactical method. This shift altered the nature of business reviews.

Over time, many companies have misused the term Executive Business Review (EBR) or Quarterly Business Review (QBR). Instead of fostering a two-way conversation, these sessions often became one-sided presentations focused on usage stats, product roadmaps, and upselling new features.

For true enterprise customers, the best review cadence is one that suits the customer’s needs. Many companies dictate the schedule for these reviews, but it's more effective to collaborate with your customer to determine the best approach.

Here are five key questions to ask your customer:

1. How would you like us to communicate the impact we’re having on your business?
2. How often would you like these updates?
3. What’s the best format for these updates—meetings, asynchronous updates, reports, or another method?
4. Who should receive these updates?
5. How can we best collaborate on your business priorities to provide relevant recommendations and insights?

By addressing these questions, you can align with your customer on the best path forward. Ideally, you should connect with your customer every six months, but remember—you need to earn their time and collaboration by consistently providing real value and insights.

Q: I want to build my brand in Customer Success more publicly. How should I do that? For background, I have 8 years of CS experience and currently a Principal CSM.

‍Building a personal brand is so important, and when done well will be mutually beneficial for you and the industry you serve. But before you start, get clear on your “why”. Why do you want to build a public brand?

If your “why” only benefits you, then you won’t get very far.

Also, it’s great that you have several years under your belt, but it’s not the years that make your voice valuable, it’s your experiences, learnings, points of view and perspective.

That said, social media provides a wonderful platform for you to start building your personal brand. If you are starting with LinkedIn there are few places you can start —>

1. Start following and connecting with the influencers and thought leaders in your space
2. Read content and start commenting - Do not waste your time writing things like “Great Post” or “Totally Agree” etc. If you are going to use commenting as an early engagement strategy you must always provide value. Share a point of view, leverage a story from your experience - have something meaningful to say.
3. Be consistent - You don’t need to live on LinkedIn all day every day, but you need to make sure that your engaging constantly. This could be a few comments daily - do what works for you.
4. Post on your feed - Use your profile to share your stories, experiences and point of view.

Building a brand, takes time, and does not happen overnight - for anyone.

But if you start here, you’ll begin to see some traction in time.

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Q: I am an ex-C-Suite employee looking for a new career opportunity who has always had customer success at the heart of everything I have done. Having been in the C-Suite, I was never given the opportunity to use any of the platforms used by the CS team, as I had multiple responsibilities and relied on team leads for the day-to-day CS operations and activities. How does someone like myself with no actual "book of business" or "first-hand experience", but understands the "why" behind CS, get a learning opportunity to become part of the CS world?

You don’t necessarily need experience with a Customer Success Software platform to be a successful Customer Success leader. While having that experience can be beneficial, the real value lies in understanding strategy and business decisions rather than just the technical aspects of the technology.

If you’re looking to break into Customer Success, focus on your transferable skills. These are what will make you valuable in the role. Here are some key areas to concentrate on:

1. Skills: Identify your strengths and skills based on your past experiences. Knowing what you excel at is crucial.
2. Industry Focus: Leverage your knowledge of specific industries. If you’re familiar with particular sectors, position yourself as a subject matter expert in those areas.
3. Business Impact: Think about how you can drive impact for an organization. Demonstrating your ability to contribute to business success is essential.

These are the factors that truly matter. By positioning yourself correctly and highlighting your transferable skills, opportunities in Customer Success will become much more attainable.

Q: My organization is questioning the value of the CS dept. I am looking for your insights on some great metrics to showcase the value of the team

‍If your company is struggling to understand the value and impact of Customer Success, connect your efforts to revenue.

If the work your Customer Success team is doing is driving retention, growth and advocacy, it’s easy to justify.

If your Customer Success team, is not impacting the business metrics then there is going to be a real question on whether or not your team is valuable.

Metrics that you should be looking at are:

• Logo Retention
• Gross Revenue Retention
• Net Revenue Retention
• Number of Upsells
• Multi-Year contracts
• 2nd Order Revenue
• Referrals
• References
• Reference Close Rate

There are so many business metrics you can dig into but pick the ones that your company is prioritizing. If they are focused on NRR, then be able to tell a story around how your team is directly correlated to positively impacting NRR.