Quarterly business review (QBR)

What it is#

A quarterly business review (QBR) is the 90-day strategic checkpoint between an agency and a client. It has two parts: an artifact (typically a 20–40 page deck or brief) and a meeting (60–90 minutes, usually with the client's executive team).

QBRs differ from monthly briefs in three ways:

• Stakes: the QBR is where retainers get renewed, expanded, or cancelled
• Audience: typically reaches one or two levels higher up the org chart than monthly reviews
• Structure: explicitly retrospective + forward-looking, with goals and accountability for the next 90 days

Why agencies hate them#

For most agencies, the QBR is the single most painful recurring deliverable. Typical production cycle is 2–3 weeks of senior strategist time, multiple rounds of internal review, client back-and-forth, and a final slide-deck assembly week that consumes the entire account team.

For a 60-minute meeting that often produces three follow-ups.

The brief format works better#

When the QBR is treated as a structured brief instead of a slide deck, several things improve:

• Reviewers can read it before the meeting instead of being presented to in real time
• The meeting becomes a working session about decisions, not a one-way presentation
• The artifact persists at a stable URL with version history for next quarter's team to reference
• Goals roll forward automatically — "next quarter's goals" become next quarter's "did we hit them" section

In SendBriefs specifically#

The QBR template ships with four required sections (KPI metrics, wins/misses/learnings, next-quarter goals, approval log) and per-section approvers. See /solutions/qbr for the full motion.