Five Things about the QBR

[canyonwalker]

Our sales QBR (quarterly business review) on Tuesday started at 9am and was done at 3:30pm. Running long is the standard for these— there were points at which I figured we'd be there 'til 5pm— but we pulled it in on time by skipping things at the end (which is not the best strategy overall). If you're interesting in learning a bit about how sales teams work, read on; if not, maybe skip. Five Things:

1. Typically the main part of a QBR is for each of the AEs (account executives, aka "salespeople") to review their territory plans. Each (a) highlights their successes from the previous quarter, (b) reviews their plans for key opportunities in the coming quarter, sometimes with robust Q&A, and (c) discusses lessons learned / help needed. This is all useful and important stuff; but piled together it's Death By Powerpoint.


2. This particular QBR went light on #1 because we only have two AEs at the moment. There are two open spots. That's where we saved some time late in the day. Though it would have been good to hold the sales team leader's feet to the fire on key accounts he's holding for TBH-1 and TBH-2.


3. Because of #2 we spent more time hearing from other functions in adjacent teams— channel partners, sales engineers, customer success, business development, and professional services. It was kind of cool that each of those teams got more than a few minutes of airtime. It was still Death By Powerpoint... just different Powerpoint.


4. Almost everyone's presentation runs long because, well, (a) all presentations tend to run long. Most people underestimate how much time will be taken to discuss the slides they prepare. But especially (b) the AEs' presentations run long because the leaders present cannot help but grill them on every little detail. Often with 45 minutes assigned per AE the first AE to present gets held on the spot for 90 minutes, then the second for 60 minutes, then the rest shorter because the leaders suddenly realize "we" are going too slow and instruct "us" to speed up.


5. This was the first time I've joined an in-person QBR in 4 years. It's not just because the Coronavirus scrambled things for a few years but also because a previous senior leader in our sales organization preferred to do these reviews more like one-on-one calls. The value of having the whole team present, though, is all of understanding what each of the AEs is committing to, and each AE making that commitment not just to their boss but to the whole team. Plus, there are fun relationship-building activities like a long dinner together the night before.

I was happy we were done at 3:30pm. The day was already feeling long. It was 6 hours of Death By Powerpoint. I left by about 3:45 and could've been home by a little after 5 except instead of going straight home I unexpectedly had somewhere else to be.