How to craft a perfect QBR Process

Quarterly Business Reviews are tricky. Some clients are not engaged with your QBRs and require a different approach, some clients don't justify the time spent on a QBR every quarter, and some clients are more mature and need different reports, even some demanding complete technology roadmaps and updates...do you need a custom QBR template for each client?! If there's no one fit-for-all QBR process or template it seems that scaling Account Management and vCIO is going to be near impossible, since every client is different.

In this article we show you a method to assess the complexity of your QBR needs and the time you can afford to run those meetings. Then we introduce three different types of QBRs with all the major agenda points, and we'll show you how those QBRs look in an example.

So you'd like to get set up and running quickly with your QBRs to generate client engagement and opportunities with Project Roadmaps?

The vast amount of selection of report templates, widgets and software functions can be overwhelming when you start. We put together a quick guide to let you choose not only the templates but the best approach and software functions as well.

STRUCTURE, MANAGE AND AUTOMATE YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO PROCESESS

Prerequisites:

Before we jump in, just a reminder of the four roles of Client Engagement. If you have not yet read the article you might start there. The four roles that make you a high value business partner

A quick refresher: The idea is that there are four critical roles your company needs in order to engage a client. These roles are distributed among Strategic/Tactical and Business/Technology domains. The challenges is to make sure you command all domains and communicate priorities with clients. This is a basis of planning and designing a QBR.

With respect to the four roles in your QBR there are communication agenda items for each:

What we are going to address here is which role and which agenda should be covered with the different types of clients and circumstances.

Walkthrough:

In this video we are going through the 3 steps that will find you the best template for your QBR.

1. How to do a quick self assessment - now you know what approaches you might need
2. How to choose from the three approaches - now you know what the different approaches do
3. How to perform each approach - now you know what topics are covered and how

Step 1: Self Assessment

Not all QBRs are created equal. Each MSP has their own way to interact with clients based on their current situation.

To choose the right template for your QBR you must first assess your current situation to determine the best course of action.

Assess the Complexity Scale

You should decide whether you have small, medium or high complexity in regard to QBRs.

Average Client Size

• • Large client 75+ seats (high)
  • Mid size client 25-75 seats (medium)
  • Small client 25- seats (low)

The larger your clients are the more complex their business and IT environments can be. This requires assembling more complex reports delivered to different stakeholders.

Your Team Size:

• • A Team delivers QBRs (high)
  • A single Account Manager or vCIO delivers (medium)
  • The MSP Owner delivers (low)

The bigger your team is the more communication, alignment and internal documentation is needed to stay productive.

Audience:

• • Business Focus and Technical focus with multiple stakeholders (high)
  • Mostly Business Focus with Executives (medium)
  • Mostly Office Managers or IT Coordinators (low)

The more people involved throughout the QBR process the more alignment, communication and documentation is needed to get ideas and approvals across.

Decide the Complexity: High / Medium / Low

Considering your answers decide whether you need a Small / Medium or High Complexity approach.

Assess the Effort Scale

You should decide how much time you would like to allocate on the development and the maintenance of the QBRs. This helps to make sure that the process is conducted efficiently and won't be wasted effort.

Time for learning and implementation

• • Less than 3 hours of initial implementation time (low effort)
  • 3-7 hours of initial development time (medium effort)
  • 7-10 hours of initial development time (high effort)

While it is possible to edit and customize the templates, we recommend you start by using the templates as provided. Once you've learned the basics, then, if you have the time and or resources, spend time on customization. 

Preparing a client report:

• • Less than 30 minutes per QBR (low effort)
  • 1 hour per QBR (medium effort)
  • Up to 2 hours per QBR (high effort)

The more time you can dedicate to a QBR the more widgets you can use and the more software functions you can leverage to generate more engaging processes with clients.

Maturity of the current processes:

• • You have a current process in place with automation (low effort)
  • You have a process but need better automation (medium effort)
  • You do not have a current process / best practice (high effort)

The more mature your current QBR process the less time you need to develop your processes and deliver them.

Decide on the Effort: High / Medium / Low

Based on your answers decide whether you have a Small, Medium or High Effort approach.

2. Three Approaches of QBRs

Based on the Complexity / Effort scales, choose which template you'd like to start with.  

Basic QBR

If the effort is medium or low and the complexity is medium or low we suggest you use the Basic QBR.

The process uses a simple IT Infrastructure Audit with a generic MSP IT Infrastructure Health Assessment. It helps to quickly assess a client, prepare the report, farm projects and handle all tactical elements ad-hoc.

• Simple and ideal for ad-hoc meetings
• Very quick adoption time (2-3 hours)
• Great for technical related conversations
• Can be done irregularly once or twice a year
• Farming projects to a roadmap
• Very quick preparation time (~30 minute)

Advanced QBR

If both the effort and the complexity sit in the middle we suggest the QBR report template and simply removing or hiding most of the widgets.

The process uses more content widgets to make recurring meetings possible such as meeting agenda, executive overview, what's new, technology landscape and widgets with embedded technology reports such as Brightgauge.

This can leverage the tool's Snapshot feature to show progress over time.

• Add a regular cadence
• Clarity on progress and value
• Accountability with logging the meetings

Expert QBR Approach

If your team is large and your clients are demanding or you are offering this process as a part of a paid engagement we suggest to go all-in. The modular report builder is going to give you many options and functions to use. Again, you can start small and add functions along the way.

Scorecards can be used for getting insights from internal resources, users or their executive team through simple questionnaires, and pushed into scorecards. 

Service Review widget is a way that you can associate service bundles to your clients and review the offered services one-by-one. This is a great way to officially review your services with high maturity and demanding clients.

• Very versatile approach for handling very complex use cases
• Can be branded to your organization for use as an internal report (for internal IT teams)
• High level of PSA integrations allows you to develop very efficient workflows
• The report can be version controlled by an admin and lower permission users can only complete reports
• Combining with the Client Engagement Software overall Client Engagement Scores can be generated

Conclusion

Finding the right way to craft and effectively deliver your QBR requires the following:

• Understanding your Client Engagement roles
• Understanding the QBR agenda for each role
• Understanding what level of complexity in QBRs your clients require
• Understanding how much effort you can put behind a QBR
• Choice of an approach (or multiple if needed)
• Designing the agenda items
• Building a dynamic report that reflects the required outcomes

It might be intimidating but for Managed Services Clients you just need to go through the decision making process and pick our pre-built templates. Customize what you need but always consider the required time of development and delivery implications of those developments.

How to help executives make strategic decisions in the bathroom

The two most prevalent trends in client engagement are the increased frequency and remote delivery of meetings. We see, however, another trend that may surprise you, and its impact is as significant in your client meetings as in your sales meetings.

The power of the traditional printed collaterals, pdf reports, and personal influence is fading from future decision-making processes. This trend shows that your client executives and prospects might be making strategic decisions sitting on the toilet….

I do not want to bury the lead. Our tool is used to prepare, deliver and follow up important client meetings. We measure engagement with shared reports and we’ve just found out that the majority of follow-up items from client meetings such as QBR Reports, Strategy Reports, and Sales Proposals are opened on mobile devices. 

This shows not just a surprising shift in engagement, attention span, information processing and decision making in general, but should send a wake-up call for every client-facing employee: the way to win deals, approve projects and upgrade contracts is not just doing the same thing in zoom.

Every account manager, vCIO and sales executive should rethink how their processes can help them succeed not just in the next 30-60 days but the years to come.

Here are 6 quick tips to think about in this new era of decision making:

1. Pro setup is not a luxury

At Managed Services Platform we’ve been performing ONLY remote meetings. We have first-hand experience with closing new clients more easily and showing off our services with confidence when the quality of our media - visual and audio - is non-amateur. Even your client’s trusted technology company loses credibility if your setup looks like home-movies brought to work.

• Pro lighting front (led lights for $150-400)
• Pro 4K webcam ($150)
• Pro Microphone ($100)
• Pro Background (well lit greenscreen or photo backdrop)

Ask us in chat and we’ll send you a good setup Amazon shopping cart example.

2. Add more engagement to remote meetings

Sales and client meetings are all about human influence. Shifting this experience to remote meetings can introduce a suite of barriers to the communication. Often the sound is choppy, body language doesn’t track, and your audience feels disconnected. Here are a couple things you can do to keep the realism in your remote meetings:

• Send an agenda ahead so people can prepare… even if it’s in the meeting invite
• Send any pre-work the other party needs to do in advance
• Ask questions frequently through the meeting

3. Follow up with a short video

Yes I know you can record a session with zoom and send it to the client. But this is like expecting them to read the 40 page proposal you'd have sent them in the past. This ain’t gonna fly. Let’s record a quick video with your webcam and put that into the report like it was designed for it.

• Use https://www.vidyard.com/ or https://wistia.com/soapbox  which will help you record your video inside your browser, share the screen and share with a client in a minute
• Keep it under 5 minutes long
• Summarize the findings of the meeting and the action items
• Make sure anybody who wasn’t an attendee can understand the video (as we hope they  pass it onto a teammate for follow up)

4. Create collaterals to promote quick decision making

Now your executive is likely watching your video while cooking dinner with the kids jumping around, or while walking the dog. You can’t count on deep concentration from your audience, and they want a shortened decision-making process. What you need them to do is send an email back with the word “Yes”.

• Send a complete report as a reference only
• Ask one question in one email right in the subject line so they can answer yes or no
• Put only the additional information like parts of the report that are related to the question into the email
• Do not get wordy - send a clear goal and calls to action

5. Always close the loop

Never finish a meeting without setting up the next one. This is Business 101 but in this remote work era calendars are full and chaotic with mixed family commitments and disrupted routines.

• Use an online scheduling tool and open it during the meeting
• Don’t wait until after the meeting or let them pick later (they won’t)
• Make sure you set the agenda and the time for the meeting before you leave

6. Increase the meeting frequency because meetings are cheap!

Imagine doing a meeting remotely with 1 minute to set up and 1 minute to close. You no longer need to travel 30 minutes, park, get in the building and find a coffee. Conducting quick 15 minute follow up calls is easy and cheap. These meetings generate focus on you and on the decisions they need to make. So let’s set up quick sessions to give them this focus time.

• Increase the meeting frequency with short sessions 
• Set up recurring weekly sessions until the decision is made
• Put in the effort to use the meetings wisely so you’re not wasting anyone’s time

Even if you’re still doing client meetings or sales meetings things have been changed fundamentally. These are quick tactical tips that you can expand on. It’s just as important to polish your remote meeting style in the new era to ensure your clients make the decisions you’re professionally advocating.

How to build client rapport under pressure & limited time

A new customer of Managed Services Platform called us the other day: “Guys, I have a concerned client and risk going into a meeting completely unprepared. I want to do it professionally so they see I am fully organized on their needs, that I can get my ideas across and have an engaging meeting with them. Oh.. did I say I have only one hour?”. We helped this client shift from being reactive, defensive and unorganized to professional, confident and prepared by assembling their personal committed overview ready for the meeting in 30 minutes using our pre-built templates and software. This is how the risk was turned into opportunity.

Get long term client loyalty

with regular and strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

Use Case Overview

After our session with the MSP, and getting a strong result quickly, we recorded a similar process internally with a mock client to be able to demonstrate the preparation process. We went through the process the same as we do with our MSP client. We should note that this is not a normal process, but an example of how our tool can be used in a fire fight to save a potential churning client.

Problem:

• Multiple issues had to be handled
• Both MSP and their client had legitimate issues (high-stakes meeting)
• Preparation time was extremely limited
• No customizations had been made yet from our pre-built templates

Result:

• MSP was able to control the communication rather than reacting to client complaints
• MSP was able to demonstrate the value of the services and show that the client issues were minor problems easily fixable with suggested projects (free in MSPL)
• MSP was able to get on the same page with a client on what to do next and to set proper expectations going forward
• The MSP owner was delighted in not just saving the client, but turning them into an advocate with a proper communication process

Use Case Brief:

• Roles - Account Managers / Technical Account Managers / vCIOs
• Maturity Level - Low / Medium
• MPSL Software Subscription - Entrepreneur Plan ($250/month)
• Solution Set Prerequisites - IT Infrastructure Audit Solution Set
• Time: 30-60 minutes

Solution:

• Use an IT Infrastructure Audit to frame the problems in a business context
• List all the issues onto a roadmap as custom solutions to client issues
• Score all other domains to demonstrate the value of services
• Use the missing score items to generate more project items
• Finalize a project roadmap with all current issues and all proactive projects
• Use the roadmap to move the client from reactive tactical thinking to a proactive strategic mindset

5 Questions that will make your Client Meetings Strategic

What would it feel like not just having great and engaging meetings with clients but being able to become true business partners? Progressive MSPs has been started because when the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) meetings aren’t focused on the “Client’s Business Review” but the “MSP’s Business Review” then engagement drops and the relationship gets mired in the technology partnership level. Although it raises a concern about the scalability of the process - as account manager employees seem to have trouble engaging executives with real business discussions - there are best practices that can be applied to empower employees to elevate the conversation.

In this blog we collected five great conversation starters that will generate huge engagement among high-value client business owners and executives. Your growth need not stagnate just because you as a business owner are the only one who can deliver these meetings.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

Prerequisites for making business conversations easy

We have been teaching, coaching and guiding MSPs to do better consultative sales meetings, quarterly business reviews, audits and annual strategy workshops. We have researched what types of questions work and what questions won’t engage executives.

There are seven common traits among great questions that can elevate your conversations. You can read later five of our favorite questions, but we wanted to empower you to be able to create your own sets of questions later.

1. Leading. Questions are open-ended and generally based to help the interviewer drive the conversation without need of great expertise in the topic.
2. Low-risk. Whoever answers the question feels no pressure or risk of being intimidated or sharing information that would not be shared openly anyways.
3. Trust building. Show honest curiosity and make the interviewees feel understood.
4. Contextual. Relevant in multiple potential contexts. Questions can be asked in annual meetings, quarterly meetings or even in ad-hoc social events.
5. Discovery. Ensure you take notes and go deeper when needed.  The answers can be used for general purposes or follow-up later with more information.
6. Actionable. Drive specific actions or generate complete action plans from the answers and topics.
7. Consultative. Ensure you conduct business and consultative conversations rather than promoting technology or solution specific outcomes. 

If the questions you ask executives are missing one or more of these traits then the result can be stalled conversations, uncomfortable feelings, and lost confidence.

Ok let’s dive into the questions one by one:

1. What made you successful in this business in the first place?

This question leads you to uncover the client’s main value proposition. That means they will talk about what distinguished them among their competition, why they started the business and what made them successful in the first place. This makes most executives proud as this is their story.

You can lead the questions towards the relevance of these aspects today. What puts their success at risk? How do they keep being successful in the future? Those avenues can help you to find potential business issues your company can help solve, either in the short term or in the longer-term.

2. What does your team do every day to keep clients happy?

This question leads to discovery of the core functions they have to do well to run the business. The team’s required focus on the critical things has to be maintained in order to keep clients happy. This is more important than ever as the competition is getting fierce in every industry.

That information gives you many clues of different operational challenges, bottlenecks and potential headaches for the executive. You can find initiatives they are working on and can capture important priorities you might be able to address with tech solutions.

3. What are the three things in your market that would not be relevant in the future?

This question leads to the future. What’s not going to be important in the future will reveal what will be important tomorrow. This is really a hidden strategy related question uncovering their perspective of future priorities.

That information gives you clues about how they see how technology itself will shape their industry, and how digital transformation is affecting their industry and company. You can understand what role they are giving to their technology initiatives. That gives you a great overview about what level they value your company’s help.

4. If you could work only one day a week, what are the critical things you would need to do to maintain the company?

This question leads to understanding their personal priorities. If they would have only one day to work a week, what roles and activities would they choose. This personal question can reveal many personal priorities. Also, it can be used to put in a negative order. See what types of work, obligations or roles they do not like. 

As an example, if they would answer: “I wish I would not have to do any cash flow management ever again” that can help you to see it’s a personal pain point for them. Or they may think about the core roles they play in the organization. 

This question is not an obvious one and very challenging. People usually do not have a quick answer for that but it can also unlock their personal goals with the company.

5. What habits do you want your leadership team to obtain

This is also a great question to unlock leadership gaps. Now, most executive’s main priority is to build a great leadership team. This question is focusing on the potential gaps the leadership team sees. 

This can help you to understand the personal leadership priorities and the leadership issues preventing them from growing - common needs such as better meetings, more accountability, better motivation or personal development. This will give you many clues to the pain points the leader has with managing and building a team. 

3 Steps to make this work

In the technology sphere most account managers, technical account managers, and vCIOs are engineers at heart and sometimes these types of conversations don’t come easy.

However, being in a comfort zone means going back to a technology conversation that is comfortable for the account manager but not engaging to the client.

Based on hundreds of sessions we have learned that confidence is everything when it comes to client meetings. Nobody wants to be in a situation where they don’t feel competent, confident and in control. Let’s follow these three steps to apply these questions to your next meeting. 

1. Read aloud and tweak it until you feel authentic. Make sure the questions are comfortable to ask and natural to you.
2. Think forward, what types of answers you might get and what would be your response to dig deeper or to switch the topic.
3. Call 3-4 friends, team members or even your CEO and include these questions in your natural conversation. Listen and see what happens.

This skill will change the type of conversations you have with business executives and can transition you from being a great technical gifted account manager to a very assertive business consultant.

On a bumper sticker

Think about the following briefly:

• Think about how many times you are covering these types of topics with your clients? 
• What you are missing out by not having these discussions?
• What are the obstacles preventing you to put these questions into your client meeting agenda?
• How would you be perceived when asking these types of questions as a technology provider?
• What is your comfort level to lead conversations in these points?
• What would you get by having these business-related conversations?

The more you and your team are getting comfortable diving into your client’s businesses the more opportunities, loyalty and trust you are going to obtain. Put together your own versions of the questions, tweak them and make sure you are becoming a high-value business partner by helping your clients as best you can.

How to get out of your “Client Engagement Debt”

As a Technology Provider, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the symptoms of your clients' "Technology Debt." This is the manifestation of the inherent costs of perpetual support for less-than-optimal technology. This is a drain on both you and the client. Client Engagement Debt is a similar concept that encompasses the implied cost of not having enough quality Account Management, Technical Account Management, vCIO or IT Consulting activities with your clients. This costs you money, erodes trust, loses opportunities and even lowers the value your clients see in your services. Let’s take a look at how much debt you have and how to get rid of it this year.

STRUCTURE, MANAGE AND AUTOMATE YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO PROCESESS

7 Symptoms of Client Engagement Debt

Let’s cut to the chase and see whether you have Client Engagement Debt. The following list will provide symptoms of unhealthy Client Engagement Debt.

1. Meetings are ad-hoc - meetings are set not well in advance but because of an issue, opportunity or client request
2. Conversations are tactical -  issues have piled up so the discussion is long and strategic topics go unaddressed
3. Too much preparation time - there are no snapshots or baseline reports so conversations have to start from scratch every time
4. Conversations are technology-focused - the lack of business discussions leads the meetings to technology discussions usually with non-executives
5. There is no Strategic Governance - the quarterly meetings stand on their own and aren’t supported by a strategic roadmap
6. The MSP owner is the only one who can do QBRs - the MSP owner is overtaxed with integrating all the missing pieces to present to a client

and this symptom is very tricky… as it presents as a great outcome of hard work..:

1. Efficiency gains - reduced ticket count and efficient operation generate less natural facetime with a client. This is positive in general but it might relegate the MSP to a “low touch” partner role if there are no consistent proactive Account Management meetings in place.

Potential implications for different MSP size

Client Engagement Debt is not something that happens overnight because of a sudden issue or problem. Rather it’s a result of a slow eroding process of various inhouse and external factors. 

External factors like technology commoditization, more millennials in the workplace, general technology adoption, tech savviness and the overall maturity raise the managed services market.

Internal factors like Account Management processes, quality of client meetings, time invested on client meetings, discussed topics, previous attempts of developing client engagement initiatives.

Here are the potential implications for MSPs of different size and maturity:

Small MSPs

If your company has less than 5-7 employees the chances are high that the owner is the only resource capable of delivering engaging client meetings. The obvious time pressure limits the resources available for developing programs or delivering quality interactions with proper follow-ups. The challenges are in streamlining the process and becoming more strategic with these conversations. This goes back to defining an Annual and a Quarterly process with clients, and support it with an application that helps the sharing of conversations and action plans.

Mid Size MSP

If your MSP has 8-20 employees the chances are high that there is a full-time individual responsible for Account Management and/or vCIO activities. The challenges at this point are related to accountability, scalability and a unified experience through the process. Properly set expectations for the client segments, proactive playbooks for activities, measurement of engagement as well as defined and adopted technology standards. These are the foundations of a process that will scale.

Large MSPs

If your MSP leadership were able to pass the 20 person mark then your 2nd layer of management should be in place and, due to your size, multiple people are responsible for different levels of client engagement. Account Managers, Technical Account Managers and vCIOs are working together as a team to drive client engagement. Now the challenges are more on the management and scalability side of the house. Processes, unified workflows, shared information, productivity and duplicate-able client meetings are the priority. As the team has to work together, a single QBR process might include 3-4 people in various roles to prepare a report, deliver the meeting and follow up all tickets, projects or opportunities. This leads to internal client engagement operation initiatives.

Regardless of the size of the MSP the real solution for managing Client Engagement Debt is similar to getting out of financial debt.. First create a momentum to start paying back the debt, then stabilize the operation to prevent future debt arising. That is why a holistic approach is needed rather than a quick fix.

Holistic Client Engagement Development

Let’s not go into the details too much here. If you feel you have these symptoms and are less engaged with your clients, you need to fix it soon. It’s critical because being an MSP is a “High-Touch” business model. Your foundation is a very close relationship with clients. In the past “Solving the IT Problems Together” created a natural bond with your clients. Now that you’ve been so successfully efficient you need different activities to maintain quality engagement.

Client Engagement Development has four components:

1. Client Engagement Foundations

Before we hit the road and cut the Client Engagement Debt we need to lay down the foundations of your Client Engagement.

Essentially, what is the level of Client Engagement your MSP wants to provide, who is going to provide it and what will comprise its requisite activities?

1. Client Engagement Goals and Strategy
2. Client Engagement Roles
3. Client Side Roles
4. Client Segmentation
5. Client Segment Playbooks

2. Standardization

Once we have these foundations you have to define your standards. These standards are required to create an overall scoring of the technology health, applied best practices and technology stack adoption by your clients. These make the misalignments actionable for your team and standardize the operation, and will hugely attenuate ticket noise, as well as render the Account Management process easy and repeatable.

1. General Standardization Strategy
2. General Standardization Process
3. Service Standardization
4. Technology Stack Standardization
5. Technology Best Practices Standardization

3. Client Engagement Activities

Now you can start establishing your client engagement activities. What is going to happen in the Annual Strategy Meeting, what will you do in the Quarterly Business Review Meeting, what types of Audits will you have (Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Office 365) and so on. This is going to define the various activities you’ll provide to the distinct client segments you’ve defined.

1. Technology Engagement Activities - Technology Roadmap Planning, Quarterly Business Reviews, Technical Audits etc.
2. Business Engagement Activities - IT Strategy Planning, Quarterly Business Reviews, Business Workshops etc.
3. Sales Engagement Activities - Renewals, vCIO Project Scoping, Consultative Sales Meetings

4. Client Engagement Operations

Parts 1-3 were about developing your Client Engagement - and now we move to execution. Now you need to manage your people (or your calendar if you are alone), schedule meetings with the right contacts, manage meetings and generate and maintain client roadmaps for governance. This part is about efficiency: less time in preparation, more effective conversations, and productive handoffs to the delivery team. Here’s where we are going to learn how to run an effective client engagement operation.

Your Reward: Client Engagement Excellence and Account Management Dividends

Client Engagement Activities done well reduce your Client Engagement Debt and prevent future Debt happening.

1. You run an efficient, profitable operation by adopting technology best practices, a unified solution stack, and well-defined services.
2. Your clients are better engaged, value your services more highly, feel they’re getting what they’re paying premium rates for and generate sustainable growth for you.
3. You can differentiate your brand and demonstrate your value to your clients.

Without a strategic effort, your next Client Engagement initiative will likely stall and never take off for scalability. Let’s do it right this time. 

How you steal money from your own MSP and how to stop doing it

Unfortunately this is not a cheap cliffhanger title just to grab your attention. You’re reading it on your mobile so I’ll be brief like a bumper sticker: you steal money from your own MSP because you address the symptoms of problems with tactical Bursts of effort. That only generates more work and expends resources to generate tiny bits of unsustainable value. Sure, you feel busy and productive, but you don’t solve the problems in the long run. Sound familiar? Let's take an example and see how to fix it with Smart Goals and an action plan.

We’ll go through this process by analyzing a typical MSP use case: Account Management.

1. Focusing on the symptom instead of the root problems

Say you go to a client meeting that doesn’t go as planned. Maybe the client was not engaged, they did not seem to value your services, they weren’t interested in the next project you offer or were simply looking for a price cut of your services.

You come out feeling "we are no longer relevant", "our competition is stronger", or “we need a better QBR process". These are not the root problems to solve - these are the symptoms.

2. Focusing on a tactical solution

Now you feel you should take action and start browsing the net on how to conduct a better client meeting and  become more relevant.

You check out some software applications and spend some time evaluating them, download templates, figure out the best processes and talk to peers about how they do their client meetings.

You land a software package, the team is happy and feel the solution is on the way.

3. Premature scaling:

As you execute the implementation you start to see the big picture and imagine how you’ll be doing 15 QBRs monthly for your 45 clients. The challenge becomes terrifying - the amount of activities and tasks to get done, all the preparation and connecting the dots. You start working on processes, customizing collaterals, and working on the process day and night.

Then time goes by and a handful of meetings is done; the team feels this is way too much effort for too little gain and loses momentum. The team finds another urgent project to work on and suddenly the QBRs fall by the wayside, and client meetings are not delivered.

Does this not describe what’s happening with your MSP? Let's go through this list...

• Why did your vCIO initiatives, IT Strategy Services and monetization of IT consultancy never take off?
• Why can your Technical Account Managers not communicate the increased values to clients and you find clients don’t value your services anymore?
• Why is your team still addressing the noisy clients rather than focusing on the high value clients with opportunities?
• Why can’t you get in front of new prospects and close high-value opportunities in a predictable way?
• Why do you cover the increased costs of IT security services in your MSP package rather than monetizing on IT Security as add-on services?

This is not your fault... this is a common symptom of what’s missing - a strategic approach to make improvements in your company.. Let's try another spin on this story:

1. Analyzing the symptoms but working on the root problems:

You go to that client meeting which did not go as planned. The client wasn’t engaged, didn’t seem to value your services, and were only interested in a price cut and not your next projects.

You go back and think it through and you realize that your service company has no Client Engagement "Department" at all. No foundations, no client segments, no roles, no playbooks defined and clients are generally served in a technical/tactical level but are not managed in a strategic way. Holy smokes, we need to do something.

We need to define the complete Account Management program and create resources to get somebody to run it!

2. Set a Smart Goal for a focused Burst:

We need a Burst of effective effort which will start the process in a low maturity setting and help us generate revenues to make it sustainable, work on the system and fine tune it. The goal, however, is not to get it perfect right away, only to start it and get momentum so you can set the foundation to fix it in the long term.

Set a Smart Goal for the quarter: "Increase Project Revenues by $100k in the next 90 days". We do not say "do a better QBR" or "Structure Account Management". We say something quite specific that we can achieve if we reverse engineer the goal to manageable pieces. Like doing 10 QBRs and landing $10,000 each. Now we can focus on the best course of action to land $10k on each QBR. This is actionable, feasible, and the team can actually get results AND develop the process at the same time.

3. Execute the Burst with the end in mind:

Now we have a plan, so we can work on the details that will generate momentum. We’re going to use the Burst of effort to generate as much value as we can with the limited resources we have. But we’ll focus on revenue generation which will be used to create the resources for the higher maturity operation later.

• We deliver QBRs to 10 clients who have security and infrastructure technology debts.
• We generate project roadmaps focusing on security and infrastructure averaging $10,000.
• We list 5 -10 low-hanging-fruit projects and customize our collaterals to focus on selling only those items to make the process simple enough.
• We run a high-value client meeting that results in agreement on the relevant projects.
• We do not customize, do not try to build a rocket ship and we do not automate... just ship it.
  
  

4. Create a machine to grow the momentum:

Now the Burst of effort was intentionally "immature", "simple", "minimum viable" or "beta". Why? Because the goal was not to fix symptoms but to be able to create capacity for delivering the required client engagement activities, introduce the concepts to clients and test the waters before we scale anything. We do not have an integrated approach, things are clumsy internally but the client facing part is optimized.

• We use the projects to get some breathing space and positive cash-flow,
• We refine the process and start customization and automation,
• We build on top of the foundation of QBRs and start conducting them regularly with lower value clients, and
• We introduce new ideas and new outcomes for each new QBR and start adding new tools like plans, budgets, roadmaps and so on.

Conclusion:

Creating Smart Goals for a conscious Burst of effort with the end in mind and generating the capacity to put the process to the next level is a way to actually create something sustainable.

Without Smart Goals and the quick Burst, followed by no execution machine our initiatives, all we’ll become is noise makers, never taking off and not generating value within our MSP...like stealing money from ourselves?

Why your QBRs are costing you, customers

For those of us who have been in technology for a while, we have seen some pretty crazy setups from well-meaning people. Largely this is because we have very smart capable people trying to work in environments with limited knowledge.  Most were trying their hardest but just didn’t know any better.  

Some of the crazy things I saw back in the day were “vlans” that were actually just subnets, firewalls with giant holes in the ruleset, and unrestricted VPNs that were completely insecure. These mistakes were not made by lazy admins, they were made by well-intentioned technicians that didn’t know they were doing anything wrong. All they knew was that things were working smoothly.

But how do we know when we are doing something incorrectly?

This is how it works in the technical industry,  new items come out so often that we do our best to learn what we can.  Most of us will reach out when something isn't working. Google is always there. We can also hire a consultant who specializes to review our work and can show us the ropes. But how do we know when we are doing something incorrectly? After all ‘Any-Any’ firewall rules will get the job done right?

The same problem exists within vCIO programs and QBR delivery.  How would you know if you are doing them wrong? Are you assuming things are going well just because your client is present and getting details?  If this is the case then it is very much like putting an Any-Any firewall rule in place. Sure it will work, but what happens when your client experiences the right way?

There is definitely a ‘right’ way to deliver a vCIO program and definitely a ‘right’ way to deliver business-focused QBRs.  We have many stories of MSPs who lose customers when the customer sees a better way and realizes what they have been missing.

The best way I can think to help you identify whether or not you are running quality QBRs is to compare and contrast a tactical vs a business-focused QBR. Tactical QBRs are very useful when talking to technical professionals, business QBRs are best suited for talking to...yes you guessed it...business professionals.  Let's take a look at a QBR delivery by a vCIO. The first situation will focus on a tactical delivery and the other will focus on the business. 

Tactical QBR:

MSP R Us comes in to deliver a review of their activities for the quarter. They do a fantastic job of showing the customer how many tickets were processed and give them progress reports on the firewall upgrade. There is even a review of the new features the firewall offers. The customer is happy with the progress on the upgrade and they can see that tickets are being handled in an appropriate amount of time.

Business-focused QBR

MSP R Us comes in to deliver their review of activities for the quarter.  However, they do not talk about tickets or the firewall upgrade. Instead, they talk through how the business is doing and review major business objectives from the previous quarter.  It is brought up that last quarter the training team was having issues sharing videos with clients and hosting webcasts so a firewall project was started to stabilize the connection. The conversation centers around how things are going with the training team and if they are meeting their goals now. It turns out the upgrade has helped significantly. 

They have noticed though that while the streaming has stabilized, they are not getting high resolution and would like to know if someone could help them out. The vCIO notes the request for the coming quarter as a project and will open a ticket.  

The conversation continues with any other areas of business that need to be addressed in the next quarter. The client states that they have an big product release coming up and are feeling anxious.  The vCIO also notes this and creates a change freeze during that time to ensure that disruptions to workflow are minimal. 

Review

In either situation, nothing was done “wrong” persay but you can see the business-focused QBR was much more fluid and quite a bit more information was gathered about how to help the client.

Most MSPs will run tactical QBRs because it is familiar and sticks to their wheelhouse. However, they are missing out on a big piece of customer experience. They are also missing out on valuable insights as to upcoming projects and whether or not project delivery is meeting business goals.  

The question is,  how do you get your QBRs to be less tactical and more business-focused? The good news is, with focus and hard work you can build this. The bad news is that just like learning appropriate firewall design it is a bit of a process.  You need a few pieces:

• An annual framework for delivery where you have created a relationship with your client.
• A continuous feedback loop for business objectives.
• Give your staff the confidence to lead non-technical conversations.

You can create this process with hard work, or you can also hire a consulting/coaching agency to come in and develop the process and employees.

The one thing we know is that if you do not start delivering business-focused QBRs someone else will. So the real question you need to ask is:

Do you want to be the MSP clients switch FROM, 

or do you want to be the MSP clients switch TO?

Systematic service development process

One of the hot topics in the bootcamp was a typical MSP issue - managing client agreements. The problem gets verbalized in different ways: "I have many new services I would like to sell to existing clients" or "I have to re-onboard all of our customers because the agreement is very old" or "I want to increase our prices to reflect the improvements and additional tools we introduced" or "I barely make any money and I need to renegotiate our prices". Sound familiar? We’d like to introduce a systematic approach to solve this problem for now and the future.

What is the real underlying problem

The original problem is nothing more complex than the ad-hoc and un-managed service development process period. As a service company you spend a whole lot of time developing your services. All internal processes are service development, all tool deployments are service development, all new vendors are service development...meaning everything you do that isn’t providing a service to a client is you developing your services. If you do that without any control mechanisms the result will be misalignment with clients.

We all know that service development doesn’t happen without reason. The technology is always changing, the market needs new services, old services become obsolete, clients come and go, and new opportunities arise. As a managed service provider, a plethora of moving parts to deal with can result in less profitability, under-utilized services and obsolete agreements. The usual solution is to spend more facetime with clients and explain, negotiate, present, and discuss with the owners or account management team why you need to re-align. Sometimes, however, we need to manipulate prices, introduce new services or otherwise change the set agreements.

Solving these symptoms requires identifying the root problem: make the service development, deployment and communication a conscious effort.

Differentiate yourself from your competition and

become sales ready in 30 days

Service Development and Deployment Process

Without going deep into details, let's go through the process quickly. It’s surprisingly simpler than we’ve found most people fear. This is because of the closely related industry with which we face this challenge: software companies. We don’t have to do much more than understand how they’re solving this problem, and apply the practices.

1. Roadmap: Software developers have an internal bible called The Roadmap. This document lists out all the changes they have to make in their tool - new features, updates, fixes, internal processes, and everything else. That roadmap is a central element of their efforts, and the majority of their team is guided by that document.
2. Agile development: the gist of being agile is not to execute long term plans, but get the most important items from the roadmap and ship a version of them early. That helps get to the endpoint step by step, while giving the customers tangible value along the way. It also helps focus the development effort with (typically) understaffed teams.
3. Beta: Sometimes developers will ask you to participate in beta programs, where you get access to improved features faster (and take on the risk of reliability), and they can test out the user experience and further develop the product, validate their ideas, fine tune processes and the optimize the user experience.
4. Release: As a software user, and even more so, a cloud application user, you know that applications are changing all the time...not minute by minute while you’re using them, but by release cycles. The development team develops new features, new modules, enhance the UI, etc, and you get it as a package in the new release.
5. Upgrade: Sometimes it turns out that the function you just started to use is going to be an add-on or in a higher-priced tier. You still can use the product in the beta period, but you might have a decision to make whether you want to upgrade to enjoy the new features.

To summarize:

• They have a conscious effort to develop their products and services
• There is a guiding document for everyone to be in focus
• There is a mechanism (releases) to deploy and communicate changes with customers
• There is a mechanism (beta) to engage users with the new experience
• There is a mechanism to redefine the offering, giving the customer the option to stay on the current plan or upgrade

So let's put these basic principles into play as an MSP

1. Roadmap: as an MSP you need to have a guiding document listing out all the changes you want to make with your services. Internal process fixes, new tools, new processes, new services - everything related to your services. As you plan your development activities the roadmap helps your team to stay flexible while keeping priorities clear.
2. Agile development: based on your roadmap you pick the most important developments, selecting what matters most, instead of scrambling to deal with everything on the board. Every week you can have a development meeting and focus your efforts on specific internal processes, your customer interfacing or implementing certain features of vendor applications. That gives your team focus and a sense of accomplishment as opposed to the futility of firefighting on internal projects.
3. Beta: you might pick specific clients to enjoy the benefits of new services. You can introduce vCIO, Technical Account Management, Application management or even security services to your clients as a beta program. The process helps you to get their consent of the experiment (and also lets them know development is progressing) and you can offer these new services or updated experiences for free for a while.
4. Release: the main thing to consider in release cycles is to minimize internal stress and enhance communication. You can batch many items together and send a quarterly email, letter or a complete webinar to let all clients know about changes being made, and how they affect them. If you provide Account Management, the Quarterly Business Review (QBRs) are perfectly suited to presenting innovations to customers.
5. Upgrade: let's assume you made four quarterly updates on your services during the year. You communicated well what’s beta, what’s sustainable fixes, upgrades (which will be part of their current plan) and what are going to be new service line items (extra charge). Typically once a year you can repackage your offering to include all new services to the current packages and also display the add-ons and features they can access if they upgrade. This method of repackaging means only those clients will enjoy the new features and benefits who upgrade. This will be their decision.

Benefits

• proactive process gives you control over your services to make sure clients are seeing the value of your developments and progress
• the roadmap can give you peace of mind, clarifying where to develop, and helping allocate the necessary resources to streamline development
• agile development gives the team clarity - a process for working on your company instead of for your company - crucial to your ability to scale
• the beta can help you develop services with clients without incurring the pitfalls of nascent services
• releases help you communicate changes very effectively without creating confusion
• upgrades help you restate your value proposition every year, set expectations and give your clients a sense of progress and choice

Five principles behind an engaging Quarterly Business Review process

 In our design of the new Quarterly Business Review tool we wanted to ensure that MSPs can find business opportunities with existing clients, enhance the quality of their engagement, become a business partner and demonstrate the value they provide all at once. Achieving those multiple goals in the midst of commoditization of traditional infrastructure management services requires finding a balance among five different strategies. Let's check those success factors to make sure you deliver timely and engaging QBRs.

UPSELL YOUR CLIENTS WITH STRATEGIC QBRS AND IT STRATEGY MEETINGS

We’ve identified several common mistakes managed services providers are making during the QBR
process, leading to less and lower quality client engagement, over complicated processes and too much work. We wanted to create a tool that’s straightforward, easy to use, and guides the service provider to optimal client engagement.

1. 360 Degree view of IT

Most MSPs’ QBR is all about the explanation of their services, performance and ‘speeds and feeds’ of the infrastructure, and the motivation is to show they work hard for the money. This is hardly engaging.

Being engaging of course requires the ability to ask questions from the client’s leadership regarding their business priorities, problems they’re facing or opportunities they see or think they could find. It gives you the chance to put your services in their business context. You also need to be able to ask questions of front-line people - struggles they have with applications, processes or any user-related opportunity. This all gives the service provider the ingress to solve real problems and start scoping projects you can deliver. If you can’t focus on 360 degrees of their business with technology, you can’t have a sustainable client engagement process, so we designed the tool to gather variegated input from several distinct sources in preparation for the QBR, where you’ll have a more comprehensive, holistic view through the meeting.

2. Balance the business and technology

MSPs are often the victims of their own aptitude. When they start working with a client, that client is usually dealing with a suite of frustrations and confusion...nothing seems to be working. We can’t let them set the conversation in this miserable frame. It has to elevate from the technology issues to finding solutions to business problems in order to deliver visible business value.

It’s always a good idea to keep your target audience entertained, and for us that’s the various opportunities they can leverage with their technology. When you stay relevant you’ll generate visible value persistently. To this end we designed a specific thought-provoking mini questionnaire for the leadership team that you can run prior to the meeting, giving you the opportunity to understand their business related issues, problems and goals. Once they feel understood, your suggestions and advice will be more on target, more easily adopted and more valued by your customer. Just focus on their goals rather than your agenda and you’ll sell them new projects.

3. Nurture maturity

Many MSP client has just started their journey with you and many are your clients for years. Many client of yours have pretty big complex business models many of them has very small and simple operations. That diversity creates a wide range of IT maturity which need to be managed.

Our philosophy is this maturity needs to be nurtured all the time. If your client has a super low maturity you need a tool not to overwhelm them, however if they have a pretty mature IT you still should nurture it further. We designed the QBR tool to be modular. If there is a super small client you do not cover everything. You might just focus on the IT metrics first then quarter by quarter introduce new aspects such as the business goals or applications. However, if their maturity is high enough you can involve more people to the conversation, focus on different line of business applications or offer additional vCIO services with more IT strategy and execution.

4. Cadence of Accountability

Many MSPs do Quarterly Business Reviews once or twice a year, either because they cannot allocate the time or believe there’s no need for quarterly interactions. There is no real cadence to communication, just occasional meetings.

We believe that having a strict quarterly rhythm of the process is crucial. We even designed the report in a way that incentives regular completion - it feels awkward if a Quarter is missing. We wanted to make sure the process becomes an easy routine for the team, not a one-off. Some items in the QBR report relate to only the current quarter, while others display their progress across them. For example the latter shows the trend of fixing business problems better than just a snapshot of current issues, while for technical details we need to work on current issues with a narrower focus.

5. The right level of details

One popular strategy among managed services providers is creating standards to which all clients must comply. While this is a great initiative to simplify processes, it can create too much work and misalignment with clients at the same time.

We’ve designed service standards with enough flexibility for you to evaluate and implement alongside your processes and best practices, to increase your efficiency. It doesn’t make sense to create detailed standards nobody feels are relevant, or have the time to follow. We let you define standards for each infrastructure or application category so you aren’t bombarding clients with detailed standards they don’t even comprehend. We give you a 1-100 scale to evaluate their performance against a standard, so you can best approach the balance of compliance and effectiveness. For example one level of performance can get a lower score for a more mature or bigger organization than a small simple one. Maybe focusing on that area doesn’t deliver tangible value to a small organization, but for a mature corporation it’s a necessity. You’re able to stay relevant to your clients while implementing your skillfully crafted standards that deliver value to them and you.

Conclusion

Implementing a professional, relevant and engaging Quarterly Business Review process is a must theses days. The success of this process can literally make or break your relationship with your clients. Let's learn from other MSPs and improve your chances to stay relevant to clients in years to come!

Leveraging the IT Quarterly Business Reviews

Many IT managed services providers are doing some type of Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) and most have trouble delivering it with the right cadence and voice.  It’s too technical and fails to shows business value to the executive team. Introducing QBRs poorly can backfire and land the MSP into a more technical role. Let's take a look at some cool techniques to engage clients with Quarterly Business Reviews.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

Hint #1 - Talk business

Challenge: Whereas it is not a significant challenge to talk business with most owners as they are fluent with marketing, can connect the dots with typical business process issues and understand the overall pains of the client, this is not the case with tech people.

Solution: We cannot give every account manager an MBA but we can help them to ask the right questions. Questions make magic happen in this process, especially if they discover a problem related to the customer’s business. We have put together Executive QBR Power Questions that discuss relevant business issues during the meeting. Asking the right questions can engage the client and allow you to offer technical solutions for most business problems.

Hint #2 - Find out some bottlenecks

Challenge: We all know clients who could do with a better document management system, better task management or a better general management system for the company. The trick is to qualify them quickly and get them on the same page during the QBR.

Solution: Graders can be used to qualify clients for a defined IT solution. For example, we can ask seven relevant questions with possible Yes/No options about their general productivity. The seven questions lead to 7 solutions/best practices/features and so on. Where they have low scores a ready productivity application can help solve their issues. This helps start a business conversation based on real needs. Graders about security, document management, SaaS applications are a great way to introduce this conversation.

Hint #3 - Proactive Development

Challenge: If we keep checking the warranties, antivirus subscription, bomb reports, risks and hardware replacements during the QBRs, it can become a boring technical conversation. We’d rather show them we would like to proactively develop their business and elevate their maturity.

Solution: Proactive Customer Development is an expression we use to truly assess where they are and the needed next steps in becoming more competitive with IT. It can be to implement IT Budgets, to better manage their vendors, to invest in an IT strategy workshop or just focus on NIST cyber security. We can pre-package 10-15 QuickWin IT management projects and typically sell these easy to fix low hanging fruit items. It can be a Disaster Recovery Plan, a Mobile Security Project or training the staff in going online securely. We use a questionnaire to measure many different elements, to learn what’s missing and to offer prepackaged projects.

Hint #4 - Internal Compliance

Challenge: If we do not set some goals or achieve mutual vision with the clients, it will be hard to be on the same page down the road. Setting the stage for what we mean about being competitive with IT is important. Without that, we are missing the business context of our services. It can lead to conversations of costs instead of investments.

Solution: The QBR is a questionnaire and report determining the IT benchmark by which we measure the progress for our clients. It sets standards and constraints of internal compliance with which we suggest to them. The questions are business rather than technology related, designed to understand the ‘what and why’ needed to be in place to be competitive with IT. Why does it matter to have an IT strategy? Why does it make sense to manage the vendors and check the budget? Why does it make sense to manage every device from a security point of view? It helps you to use the QBR to set goals and deliverables for the next quarter, and then track progress. This exercise can generate many opportunities with your clients.

Conclusion:

There are many ways to make the QBR better by being more client focused. The tools you’ve seen here are integral Managed Services Platform methods, and just a sample of the opportunities.  

Business focus need not be so complicated...we have the tools needed to make it easy and engaging for both you and your clients.