Preparing For Your Next QBR

Have you been struggling with consolidating all of your information into a professional presentation for your Quarterly Business Reports a.k.a. QBRs? Here are some quick tips to help with the planning and execution for your upcoming presentation.

First off, organization IS KEY!
Organize! Organize! Organize! You have probably heard this more than once, but I can’t stress this enough. Organization is the most crucial component to having an amazing presentation and not letting anything slip through the cracks when it gets down to crunch time.

Plan like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do!
You know those things we call ‘calendars’? Well, they do more than just tell you the date. Put those calendars to work! Create reminders, tasks, to-do lists, cover your desk in sticky notes, whatever it takes to help you plan.

Here are some ways to prioritize the way you put together your QBRs. I’ll use paid social as an example:

Pull all sorts of numbers from spend, engagements, video views, and hashtag mentions.

Compile a folder of the creatives that you will be using for the presentation. ***Note: the more the better!! You might end up using 1 or 2 out of the 3000 you have collected, but this helps save time when it comes down to your selection process.

Top and bottom posts for each social platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

Highlight those amazing CPCs (cost per clicks), CTRs (click thru rates), engagement rates, and hashtag mentions.

Call out any big campaigns and/or posts that have done well during the quarter.

New testing opportunities for your clients. Clients love new opportunities, even if they don’t tell you!

Time Breakdown

4 weeks before – Pull data, insights, metrics, and anything else.

3 weeks before – Start formatting the layout with all of your data, insights, metrics, and any other learnings. This is your rough draft. Notice how I said “rough” and not polished. Don’t stress about perfection – yet. Make sure you have all of the important data points and any other highlights before you start formatting. There have been a handful of times when I have started formatting a slide, soon to realize that I’ve missed half of the information.

2 weeks before – Start adding creative and start polishing your presentation. Make it look presentable. Have more than one person look at it with fresh eyes to help you with the presentation. When I create presentations I always keep K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple…Stupid!) in mind. No one likes to look at a lot of writing on a slide. Take your numbers and explanations, then visualize it with a chart and/or image.

1.5 weeks before – Finish polishing up your presentation. Send your presentation to your team and have them look at it to determine if the flow feels right and if there need to be any changes. Remember to take advantage of other people looking at it. We get so used to our reports that we miss the smallest mistakes.

.5 weeks before – At this point your presentation should be DONE and ready to show to your client. Take the extra time to PRACTICE your speech and prepare yourself with any questions your client might ask.

Presentations aren’t as bad as people make them out to be. Just give yourself enough time to organize all your information and most importantly, PLAN! As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day 😉