Quarterly Business Review (QBR)
Definition
A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a formal session held at the close of a quarter to examine what actually happened — results against plan, financials, pipeline, and the state of major initiatives — and to decide what changes as a result. It looks backward at the period just ended, and usually runs immediately before planning for the next one.
Two different meetings travel under the name. Internally, a QBR is leadership reviewing performance against the targets set last quarter, normally with a written pre-read circulated days in advance. Externally, in customer-facing organizations, a QBR is a session with an account covering usage, outcomes, open risks and renewal. Both share the same skeleton: numbers everyone has already agreed on, plain variance analysis against what was forecast, and decisions recorded with owners and dates rather than left as sentiment in the room.
QBRs tend to become presentations. When a team spends the preceding week assembling slides, the session starts rewarding a well-told story rather than an accurate one, and uncomfortable variances get framed instead of examined. Reviews that stay useful generally publish the numbers before anyone gathers, so the meeting time goes to why rather than to what.
Example
Q2 QBR: plan $1.8M new ARR, actual $1.42M (79%). Variance sits almost entirely in enterprise (plan $900k, actual $480k) where win rate fell from 26% to 17% after two competitors repriced. Decision: pricing review before Q3 planning, owner CRO, due 12 July.
See also: leadership meeting software