QBR’s – Rest In Peace
QBP’s – Viva la Difference
For decades we have all been doing minor variations on the same theme. Quarterly Business Review. We did them as sale individuals, we did them as groups, teams, and business units. We all spent hundreds of hours preparing text material, spreadsheets, charts, graphs, and cute little cartoons. We morphed from simple paper to transparencies (remember overhead projectors), and on to Harvard Graphics and inevitably the now-infamous POWERPOINT. We would prepare literally hundreds of “slides” that told all the story we wanted to tell about all the wonderful things that we had accomplished, in great detail, in the quarter/year that had just passed. We could hold court and verbosely “pontificate” on the greatness of what had been accomplished. Even if, in fact, we had not actually grown revenue in that same period. Our stories of days gone by were well detailed. Tons of information!
I won’t judge the past, as that is not of value. We all did this and it just WAS!
What I offer up is a proposal for your consideration. A new way of thinking for a changed time!
Let’s put the massive rearview mirror starring in the past. Let’s look forward. I can hear it all now, “but all that information that we shared was important”. Maybe it was. And just maybe that’s not enough NOW! Let’s shift into a higher gear, play a bigger game, and work to move all things FORWARD as our sole/primary focus. Revenue growth is the primary responsibility of any “sales team”. We own that purpose for the rest of our entire corporate team.
I propose the shift to a Quarterly Business PREVIEW. Information is good, even old information… IF it creates ACTION that moves our business forward, AND we can quantify the IMPACT of that action in growing our revenue. Otherwise, let’s spend our PREVIEW time looking at the specific actions that we are going to take as a team, quantifying the impact that they will have and creating detailed execution plans.
If you ARE in the REVIEW mode then you are looking at what was DONE, and finding insight into what has to be done NEXT. Information leading to actions!
This shift is darned near sacrilegious to many of us that are addicted to DATA. Wonderful DATA. In fact, within the halls of my own company we often hear the words “in GOD we trust, all others bring data”! My proposal to shift this is….
In God we trust, all others bring ACTION PLANS!
And the pragmatic side of me concedes…. We are not going to be able to rid ourselves of our data addiction. So, let’s leave a bit in just to pacify our data scientist’s side. I propose that we take a big lead forward, yet not go total cold turkey….let’s make a shift to 75% PREVIEW and 25% review of all of our wonderful PowerPoint charts and graphs. AND hopefully when we do that even the 25% side of the house will still have ACTION PLAN outcomes that manage to escape from the data jail. (We need a bit of time in each PREVIEW session to look at the last planned actions from the last PREVIEW and see what we can learn from their outcomes.)
Long-winded explanation to this ask… And this week I propose that you tackle converting ONE of your many business review report card sessions over to a PREVIEW, 2-way discussion where you put commitments on the table for things that YOU are going to DO that will grow revenue for your team and that you quantify the IMPACT that those actions will have. Get your crystal ball out, polish it up nicely, and give it your best gaze. Remember these are YOUR actions, YOUR plan, and YOU are responsible for the outcome!
Time to PREVIEW!
OK, Let’s ROLL!
Mitch
