Sales quarterly business reviews (QBRs) allow organizations to address issues that can hurt revenue generation. QBRs offer sales teams the opportunity to come together to assess progress and performance every 90 days.
These meetings serve as an open forum for sales reps to garner ideas, get motivated, and demonstrate critical thinking and strategic planning skills. As for managers, they get to reconnect with their sales reps, share observations, study the nuances (hows, whys, dos, etc.) and learn from each.
When conducted correctly, QBRs help sales teams make breakthroughs that can accelerate business growth and strengthen company culture. However, QBRs are sadly underutilized in most organizations.
Elevating Your Sales QBR
A sales QBR primarily helps revenue leaders better understand what worked and what didn’t work the previous quarter, including developing an action plan for next quarter’s success. But in most companies, QBRs are treated like chores, not a data-driven performance-elevating tool.
The typical QBR format is as follows. Every sales rep walks through their results, explaining what happened and why. Participants also discuss their forecasts, objectives, and strategies for the next quarter. So QBRs are pretty much a verbal report card in most organizations.
It’s no wonder too many employees and managers treat QBRs like a useless chore they must go through, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
A QBR can be a game-changer that skyrockets revenues, not just an obligation.
With Ops-in-a-Box, sales managers and employees can get excited about QBRs again. Managers won’t have to waste precious meeting time sorting through reports to fact-check data. And employees can focus on developing plans instead of worrying about gathering data.
Further, Ops-in-a-Box ensures your critical deal and pipeline data are always present and reliable, practically eliminating the likelihood of inaccuracies.
Maximizing your sales QBRs with Ops-in-a-Box
Ops-in-a-Box will support your planning, helping you easily identify the most critical questions for an effective QBR meeting. Here are some essential areas of support.
Focusing on the big picture
You can take a bird’s eye view of your data – review the past results, KPIs, assess current quarters, and predict future trajectories.
Accurate numbers help sales managers, reps, and other stakeholders agree on everyday struggles, crucial trends, and revenue operations health. A united front on these matters is essential for team collaboration and success.
Essential questions that Ops-in-a-Box helps you address include:
- What are the common trends?
- Where in the cycle are your representatives struggling the most?
Evaluating your last quarter results
Every sales leader knows how crucial it is to drill into the last quarter’s performance during QBRs, and Ops-in-a-Box simplifies that process. You can quickly figure out what your sales reps committed and what was closed week-over-week.
Discussing successes and failures can help leaders spot serious issues they’d have otherwise missed and provide invaluable insights for growth.
Some key questions you can efficiently address with Ops-in-a-Box include:
- What happened?
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
- Do we have any key lessons to take away?
- What can we do differently next quarter?
Evaluating the current quarter pipeline
Like previous quarters, inspecting the current quarter is a breeze with Ops-in-a-Box . You can get tactical about your current opportunities by digging into pipeline volume, mix, health, timeliness, and priorities.
Critical questions you can address include:
- Can we hit our objectives?
- Do we have enough coverage to hit the targets?
- Do we have the right mix of deals?
- Are we ready for the next quarter?
Planning the action steps
The path to revenue victory is much clearer when you have the right data and tools. As everything is visible in Ops-in-a-Box , you can plan your action steps without breaking a sweat. Plus, ensure all sales reps plan to hit targets and are holding themselves accountable for commitments.
Some important questions you can address include:
- How can we win?
- Is the team ready for the next quarter?
- How can we optimize results?
- What coaching opportunities are present?
How Ops-in-a-Box Supports Sales QBRs
Ops-in-a-Box provides a built-in data-driven QBR template that makes preparation and meetings more efficient and effective.
Below, you’ll find a screenshot of the template and, after that, a summary of its capabilities.
Here’s a quick summary of what you can do with it.
- Reps can adjust their target conversion rate for the current month/quarter to the respective call number, allowing you to see if they are calling above, below or at the same rate as previous months/quarters. If a rep is calling below, maybe they are sandbagging. If they call above, perhaps they are stretching. Digging into the starting pipeline will help you determine if a pushback is necessary.
- The “Monthly Pipeline Summary” table shows what was won, lost, and pushed from the previous month/quarter. You can click each of the numbers to view the deals, allowing you to have a more focused conversation about the last period.
- The “Top 10 Deals” table lists the best deals along with every data you’ll need to make sound decisions at a glance.
- The “Starting Pipeline” charts will help you understand the quality of the given rep’s pipeline. Ops-in-a-Box groups the data by stage, but you can cycle through different categories, including the age of opportunity, industry, forecast category, type, etc.
You can install Ops-in-a-Box directly from AppExchange and have it running within seconds. Get it now.
