Tips For Quarterly Business Reviews In The eLearning Industry
There comes a time in the life cycle of your eLearning company to outsource a service. Let's say you found the right agency and service for your business. Fast forward a few months, and now you need to check how the service is performing—it is time for the first quarterly business review (QBR).
What Is A Quarterly Business Review?
Knowing the progress of your campaigns is essential for your business. You need to know at least the basics. Let us say, for example, that you collaborate with one of the best content marketing agencies. You would want to measure content marketing performance. Is it working? How is it working? Can it perform better? All these questions can be answered with the valuable information a quarterly business review will provide.
In general, a quarterly business review, also known as an executive business review, is a quarterly meeting held by two collaborating parties. In this meeting, the emphasis lies on showcasing value rather than on status or technical matters. Essentially, it provides an opportunity to highlight Return On Investment (ROI) and foster a deeper connection among partners, simultaneously accelerating business growth.
These valuable meetings stand out as highly effective tools within the toolkit of a Customer Success Manager (CSM). And it goes way beyond that, as relevant stakeholders and decision-makers participate. These gatherings can include customers or even multi-disciplinary teams, such as Sales, Relationship Managers, or Customer Success, to discuss products and relationships. However, QBR effectiveness is often balanced, underscoring the significance of mastering quarterly business reviews.
It is challenging to master QBRs; therefore, they require a strategic approach. Quarterly business reviews offer a platform to gain a profound understanding of the customer's business and future objectives while providing the essential elements to create strategies that increase added value. More often than not, throughout this process, QBRs offer reliable advice for your ongoing initiatives and clarify the collaboration between the two parties. Eventually, they contribute to building trust and solidifying a mutually beneficial partnership.
Why Is A QBR Important For Your eLearning Business?
Staying on top of your campaigns, especially when you outsource them, is difficult. Moreover, a regular meeting cannot fill the gap when a large amount of data is needed. That is precisely why your company should request QBRs on a regular basis throughout the campaign to keep the partnership healthy and profitable.
However, as your eLearning company experiences growth, sustaining those relationships becomes increasingly challenging. The task of scaling personalized interactions efficiently can become nearly impossible. Nevertheless, building such relationships remains necessary for your ongoing success across all stages of growth.
Here's where QBRs come into play.
Quarterly business reviews offer a structured approach to ensure that your efforts in the campaigns you maintain don't diminish over time. Similarly to iterative testing in marketing, they reveal valuable insights that can be leveraged to craft more positive outcomes—outcomes that not only provide additional value but also align with your broader business growth strategies.
Here are the most important benefits of performing QBRs:
- Clarifying the campaign. In a QBR, you can touch base on the basics of the campaign, making sure that there is no confusion between the two parties about the process.
- Showcasing ROI. The main reason you might want to perform QBRs is to understand if the campaign is paying off. Generally, during QBR meetings, you mainly discuss the performance and ROI of the campaign.
- Answering questions. At the end of the day, such meetings can be fruitful for asking questions directly and cutting impersonal emails.
- Building trusting relationships. QBR meetings have the tendency to personalize the environment. You get in touch with the partners, personalize your campaigns, and work together for the benefit of your eLearning business.
Now that you know the benefits of quarterly business reviews for your eLearning company, let's dive deeper into what they entail.
What To Expect In A Quarterly Business Review
Some might think that QBRs are regular meetings where you talk with your outsourcing partners and ask questions. However, doing so might lead to missed opportunities and campaigns that do not reach their full potential.
That is why you should approach QBRs strategically. Have a plan in mind to make the most out of these important meetings. So, let's address the main points to be included in your QBR.
1. Concise Plan
Corporate meetings can be extremely valuable or a complete waste of time. The difference between these two occasions is the presence of a solid plan. Especially when it comes to important meetings like a QBR, time should be respected by both sides.
Therefore, expect a concise plan of the meeting from the other party. Otherwise, you have to use your marketing leadership skills and ask for it. The danger in some of these meetings is that agencies often spend time discussing the data without explaining how to utilize it to maximize campaign performance.
When choosing the best digital marketing agency for your eLearning business, avoid agencies that do not walk beside you every step of the way. A trustful agency would enter the meeting, showcase the performance, and explain how to utilize the data presented in the current campaign.
2. Account Health Assessment
It is highly important to check how well the customer account is doing during a quarterly business review. This means looking at things like how much the customer is using the service and if there are any problems. As an eLearning business, you should always expect that from your agency.
With a health assessment, both parties can see if everything is going well or if there are things that need improvement. Hence, it assists everyone in working together to ensure that your company is happy and getting what it needs. A company that cares about your company's performance can keep providing a good service that matches your needs.
3. Emphasis On Business ROI
Similarly to a health assessment, in a quarterly business review the focus should also be on something called "business ROI." This means looking at how much value your company gets from using the products or services compared to what they spend. Your aim is to see that you are getting a solid return on your investment. That means getting a lot of benefits for what you pay for the service.
By focusing on avoiding marketing mistakes and maximizing ROI in the QBR, you can understand how the products or services are helping you save resources or make even more money. It showcases the positive results you get from working with the particular agency, which can also make you happy and confident about maintaining a collaboration with them.
4. Competitor Performance And Case Studies
Competitor performance and case studies could not be missing from quarterly business reviews. It is quite common for an agency that you collaborate with to have worked with others in the same industry. Therefore, they have valuable competitive intelligence in their hands, which can benefit your company. It may include information on performance in the same service or errors to avoid.
Eventually, this can help you understand how you compare to other companies in the eLearning industry and how you are doing with the same products or services. By looking at what others are doing and how they're succeeding, you can get valuable ideas on how to improve and do even better in the campaign.
These stories, called case studies, show real examples of how the products or services have helped other customers. They are just like success stories that can inspire your company to keep working with an agency and achieve similar success.
5. Customer Feedback
For agencies that care, the voice of the customer matters, so you should always appreciate constructive feedback in every aspect of a corporate environment. During a quarterly business review, you should really expect to express your thoughts on the project and its performance. This is what we call "customer feedback." Often, an agency may ask you questions to see if you like the products or services and if there is anything you think they could do better. By answering these questions, you can make sure the agency is meeting your needs and increasing your company's ROI.
After all, it is mutually beneficial if your eLearning business reaches its goals with the service. It is a win-win situation since it means that you are more likely to keep using their products or services. Also, you might even spread the word about how great the agency is. Consequently, in the QBR, part of the focus should be on discussing how the collaboration could help grow your eLearning business.
6. Setting Up The Next Session
As discussed earlier in this article, planning plays a vital role in a quarterly business review. Therefore, during the meeting, you can also talk about planning the next QBR. This means you decide when you will meet again in the future to keep checking the progress and working together.
By setting up the next meeting during a QBR, you make sure that you stay connected and keep moving forward together. You essentially make a plan to stay in touch and keep helping each other. This way, you can keep this partnership strong and ensure you are always on the same page with the other party.
No matter if you're meeting in real life or via Zoom, you can make it work because great agencies know how to build strong relationships.
Key Takeaway
For eLearning companies, quarterly business reviews are extremely important. They help you witness how your company is currently performing and what can be done to maintain or even improve it.
By keeping QBRs to the point and time-managed, you ensure that the partnership is profitable. So, make sure that the quarterly business reviews have a plan. They should focus on your ROI, provide valuable information about your performance, and remain scheduled.
Here at eLearning Industry, we emphasize the value of a well-constructed QBR for our products. If you want to witness its effectiveness firsthand, feel free to download our Media Kit and find the service that suits your business needs.
You would be amazed to experience what a healthy partnership can offer to your eLearning business in the long run.
