Preparing for a Customer Business Review
As we reach the end of 2021, customer success teams are hard at work compiling end-of-year reviews for their customers. Whether your team conducts business reviews quarterly, bi-annually, or yearly, preparing well in advance is critical to presenting proactive, well-researched information to your customers.
Your CSMs can be more confident and prepared for their upcoming business reviews by following these steps to prepare for customer business reviews:
1. Set the who, what, and where. Advanced planning is key to hosting a productive business review. Reach out to your customers in advance to ensure the right people – aka the key partnership stakeholders on both sides – are in attendance. Find a date and time that works with all attendees, and make sure you have enough time blocked to go through your agenda items.
2. Review the data and insights. Research and preparation are critical to delivering the most effective business review possible to your customers. This means reviewing all data and insights available to your team. Work with other departments to gather product usage and adoption data, engagement, business and company updates, people changes, and other achievements that may be of value to your customer.
3. Prepare the deck. Having a clear and concise way to present your data can help your customers digest the information that much easier. Hopefully, your team has a business review deck template that you can work from to share your findings. If not, build a presentation that helps facilitate a conversation and flows well through the information you want to share. Make sure to keep the content in your deck targeted and appropriate for the audience.
4. Get a second set of eyes. Any customer-facing materials you or your team produce should always have a second set of eyes to review and confirm before presentation or publication. This ensures no typos or grammatical errors, that the presentation flows properly, and that the design is on-brand.
5. Get confirmation. Before your business review meeting date, send a confirmation note to all attendees, ensuring that the date and time still works and that all required attendees can make the entire session. Note any anticipated early departures or late arrives that may impact your presentation, and adjust your agenda accordingly.
6. Arrive early. On the day of your customer business review, make sure to show up early to ensure there are no technical issues or problems. Test out the audio, video, and visual presentation and do a final review of your slides and notes. Before diving in, ask your customer if it’s okay to record the presentation to share with the team in follow-up.
Preparation leads to flawless execution
The considerable time spent preparing a business review comes to fruition in the execution. The business review presentation itself should match the level of preparation and coordination that went into the planning of the review. This means that CSMs should kick off with a customer by establishing the agenda and objectives of the meeting, move into introductions, and then dive into the top-notch content they prepared.
You can learn more about preparing and conducting customer business reviews with these additional resources from ClientSuccess: