Who attends, how long
The right QBR has 4-6 attendees, 75-90 minutes. From the vendor: channel manager, SE, marketing manager. From the partner: principal or VP, lead sales rep, customer success lead.
Avoid the trap of inviting every stakeholder. QBRs with 12 attendees produce no decisions. Keep it tight, with named owners. If a topic requires a wider audience, hold a separate focused session.
Standard agenda (75 minutes)
- Trailing quarter recap (15 min): pipeline generated, deals closed, joint marketing activity, customer wins and losses.
- Current quarter pipeline (20 min): top 10 opportunities reviewed, blockers identified, named action items.
- Customer health (10 min): at-risk customers, expansion opportunities, retention signal.
- Joint marketing forward (10 min): next quarter's planned activity, MDF eligibility, named owners.
- Open issues / escalations (10 min): anything blocking, anything requiring vendor or partner exec attention.
- Action items recap (10 min): named owners, due dates, where they will be tracked.
The dashboard (one page, not ten)
A working QBR is anchored on a one-page dashboard. The standard fields:
- Trailing 12-month booked revenue (this partner)
- Open pipeline (count, total value, weighted)
- Average deal size
- Average sales cycle
- Win rate on registered deals
- Active certified reps
- MDF utilization vs allocation
- Customer retention rate (12-month gross)
- Tier (current and target)
One page forces priority. Ten-page dashboards become ignored ritual.
Action item tracking between QBRs
The action items from each QBR live in a shared tracker (the Mutual Action Plan template in the Reseller pack). Each item has a named owner, due date, and status. The first 10 minutes of each subsequent QBR is reviewing the action items from the prior quarter — what shipped, what slipped, what changed.
Action items without a tracker disappear. Action items without an owner do not happen. Both rules are non-negotiable for QBRs that produce outcomes.
When the QBR is the wrong meeting
The QBR is a quarterly cadence. It is not the right meeting for urgent escalations, mid-quarter pipeline reviews, or deal-specific support. For those, use weekly office hours or ad-hoc escalation calls. Trying to handle everything in the QBR turns it into a marathon that exhausts both sides.
For Premier-tier partners, supplement the QBR with a monthly 30-minute pipeline review. Below Premier, the QBR plus weekly office hours is enough.