What belongs in a QBR deck.

What is a QBR for?

A quarterly business review is where the customer's leaders check whether they are getting what they bought you for, and decide what happens next quarter. Every page should serve one of those two jobs. Three things fill a lot of QBR decks and serve neither:

• A product demo. A new feature earns one line in the plan, with why it matters to this customer.
• A usage dump. Logins and a dozen dashboard charts answer your question, "are they using it?", not theirs, "is it working?"
• A renewal pitch. If the renewal is close, give it its own conversation.

A test for the whole reviewAfter the meeting, could the sponsor tell their own boss in two sentences what changed and what was decided? If not, you held a status update, and that could have been an email.

Which pages belong in a QBR deck?

The body of a good review is nine pages, in this order. The example headlines come from Brightlane's review for Harrow.

1. Cover. The customer, the quarter, the meeting date and the names of the people it is for, on both sides.
2. Summary. The page a sponsor reads if they read nothing else: the main result, the main problem and the decisions you need, with page numbers. Write it last.Example headlineNew hires are ready to work in 10 days. Two decisions will keep it that way.
3. Last quarter's goals, and where each stands. Copy them word for word from the last review, each with its target, today's number and a status: met, on track or behind. Harrow had three: new hires ready to work in 12 days or fewer (met, at 10), six new stores on Brightlane from their first day (met) and every store manager signing off new hires in the app (behind, at 71%).Example headlineTwo of the three goals we set in July are met.
4. Outcomes, in the customer's own numbers. Use the measures their leaders already report on, such as time to ready, cost per hire or store opening dates, and show before and after. Get the figure from your champion's team rather than your dashboard. Nobody argues with a number their own team produced.Example headline1,240 new hires this quarter, ready to work in 10 days instead of 17.
5. Usage, only where it explains an outcome. Harrow's seats are 94% active, which explains why time to ready fell. The same page shows where the third goal stalls: store managers in the North region still sign off on paper. Usage that explains nothing goes to the appendix.Example headline94% of seats are active. The gap is manager sign-off in the North region.
6. What did not work, and the fix. Raise it before they do, own your part and give the fix a date. Brightlane trained managers on one video call during trading hours, and most of the North region could not join. The fix is a short session in each store, before the region switches to the app. This page is what makes the good news believable.Example headlineOur manager training missed the North region. Here is the fix.
7. The plan for next quarter. Three goals at most, each with a target, a date and an owner on each side. They become page 3 of the next review, so write them the way you will want to check them.Example headlineNext quarter: 600 seasonal hires ready to work before peak trading.
8. Your asks. What you need from them to deliver the plan, specific enough to get a yes in the room: a named owner in the North region, dates for the store sessions, time from Harrow's HR systems team.Example headlineThree things we need from Harrow to get there.
9. The decisions. Each one written as a choice, with the options and your recommendation. Harrow's two: move the North region to sign-off in the app in December or in January, after the Christmas peak, and give seasonal hires the full onboarding or a one-week version. Brightlane recommends January and the one-week version.Example headlineTwo decisions for Thursday.

Everything else goes in an appendix: usage by store, support tickets, release notes, the roadmap. Nobody presents it and nobody has to read it. It is there for whoever asks how the Leeds store is doing.

How long should a QBR presentation be?

A QBR presentation you deliver can run long, because you are there to explain each slide. A deck read beforehand has to explain itself to people fitting it between other things. Aim for a body most people finish in about ten minutes, in practice eight to twelve pages, with the rest in the appendix. Brightlane's review for Harrow has 18 pages: nine of body, nine of appendix.

The page count matters less than whether each page makes its point without you. Read the headlines alone, in order: they should tell the whole story. Topic titles fail that test.

Label every number with its period and source ("Harrow HR system, July to September"), spell out your product's own terms, and rewrite any page that only works when you talk over it. If you would rather start from a layout than a blank page, there are quarterly review templates to work from.

Why send it before the meeting?

Because it changes the meeting. When people have read the deck, the first question is about what it says, not "can you go back a slide?" The sponsor arrives with a view on the decisions, the team arrives with questions about the plan, and the time goes to what only a meeting can do.

Send the QBR pre-read three working days ahead: Monday for a Thursday meeting. That gives busy people a few chances to find ten minutes, without the deck sinking under a week of email. Before it goes out, walk your champion through the draft and ask two things: are these your numbers, and what will the sponsor push back on?

Send it as a link, in the email and in the calendar invite, so everyone reads the same version and a wrong number can be fixed without a second file. Say how long it takes, which pages matter most and that you will not present it. People read the deck when they know the meeting will not read it for them.

Who needs to read which pages?

A review has readers with different jobs, which is why the email points Priya and Marcus at their own pages. At Harrow:

• Tom Avery, the executive sponsor, needs the summary, the outcomes and the decisions: pages 2, 4 and 9.
• Olivia Bennett, the champion, runs People Operations and will be asked about every page, so she reads it all.
• Priya Shah, who runs Harrow's HR systems day to day, needs the plan and the asks, pages 7 and 8, because they change her next three months.
• Marcus Hill, who runs store operations, owns the problem on pages 5 and 6.

By the day before, you want to know who has read what. Send the review as a Decktrace link that asks for the reader's email, and each stakeholder's visits land on a timeline next to the meeting, with the pages they read and the time on each. Readers see a short notice about what is measured.

By Wednesday evening three of the four had read it, and page 5, seats and adoption, held readers longest. Use that to prepare, not to quote: the reading report shows where people spent time, not what they thought. Tom, whose decisions you need, had not opened it.

What if the sponsor has not opened it?

Do not send "Did you get a chance to look at the deck?" It asks them to admit they have not and gives them nothing new. Do not resend it as an attachment either, which only puts two versions in their inbox.

Send a note that works even if they never open the deck: the one result, the one decision you need from them and the page it is on. Brightlane sent Tom this at 17:30:

Tom read the whole review on his phone at 08:15 the next morning. If yours still has not opened it, ask your champion how the sponsor likes to prepare, and print pages 2 and 9 if the answer is paper. If they arrive without having read it, open with a two-minute summary of page 2, then keep to the agenda. Never fall back to reading the deck together. If the sponsor cannot come at all, keep the meeting, agree a recommendation with the room and ask the sponsor for a yes or no by email.

What should the agenda look like?

With the reading done beforehand, Brightlane cut Harrow's review from an hour to 45 minutes. Here is the quarterly business review agenda for Thursday:

There is no slot for reading or for a demo, and questions come first instead of last. That second slot is where the pre-read pays off: page 5 held readers longest, so expect the North region first and have its numbers by store ready. If anyone asked a question on a page during the week, answer it in writing that day and bring it to the meeting too.

What do you send after the meeting?

Send the recap the same day, and not as a new attachment. Update the deck they already have: add a page after the cover, "What we agreed on Thursday", with each decision, its owners and its date, and correct any number that changed in the meeting. Then reply to the pre-read email, so one thread holds the whole story:

Whoever opens the link from the invite, the email or a forward now sees the agreed version, and in Decktrace the version they read before the meeting is kept with its date.

When is a call, a PDF or an email better?

A pre-read link is the right default, not a rule.

• Bad news that changes the relationship, such as a missed goal that puts the renewal at risk or a serious outage: call the sponsor first. Nobody should learn it from page 6.
• A customer who needs a file, because their security team blocks outside links or the sponsor keeps everything for a board pack: send a PDF made from the same source, so the two never disagree.
• A small account: a short email with the goals, the results and one ask can do the work of 18 pages.

A checklist for your next QBR

• Copy last quarter's goals word for word and mark each met, on track or behind.
• Put outcomes in the customer's own numbers, agreed with your champion.
• Keep usage only where it explains an outcome.
• Write headlines that state the point, and read them alone, in order.
• End with the decisions, each with the options and your recommendation.
• Send the link three working days ahead, with each person's pages.
• The day before, send the sponsor a note that works without the deck.
• Update the same link with the decisions on the day of the meeting.