RTFM-IT-Services-LLC {{COMPANY_NAME}} Quarterly Business Reviews
This skill is the source of truth for how {{COMPANY_NAME}} runs recurring client business reviews. The QBR is the retention engine: it is the meeting that makes {{COMPANY_NAME}} a partner with a plan rather than a vendor who answers tickets. It is also the honest venue for the roadmap, the budget conversation, and repricing. Clients rarely leave a provider who shows up every quarter with their numbers, their risks, and a plan.
The QBR is never a sales pitch. Recommendations get framed as risk and outcome in the client's own numbers, per the sales philosophy in msp-sales. Selling and serving are the same thing here or the meeting dies.
Defaults you must review: the specific numbers in this skill are shipped example defaults from a working MSP. Review and replace them with your own before anything goes client-facing.
Cadence (example default)
- Quarterly for every managed client while the client count is small ships as the example default. The owner may flex the smallest accounts to twice a year as the count grows; until that decision is made, quarterly is the default.
- The first review lands about 90 days after go-live, built on the roadmap seeded by the 30-day review in msp-onboarding.
- 45 to 60 minutes, with the owner or decision-maker in the room. A QBR held only with a front-desk contact is a status call, not a QBR; reschedule rather than downgrade.
Prep Checklist (about 45 minutes, the day before)
Pull from your PSA (ticketing) system and the stack:
- Ticket volume for the quarter, by category, and the top requesters
- Response performance against the msp-helpdesk targets
- Backup success rate and the monthly test-restore log (cadence per msp-maintenance)
- Patch compliance and endpoint protection status
- Security posture items: MFA coverage, open advisories, incidents this quarter
- Project status: done, in flight, proposed
- Horizon items: warranty expirations, OS end-of-life dates, license renewals, hardware age
- Open recommendations, and any declined ones with their waiver status (msp-legal)
- The client's health scorecard from msp-metrics (internal; informs tone, does not get shown)
Then build the client-facing scorecard.
The Scorecard
One page. Green, yellow, or red across five rows, each with a plain-English sentence.
| Area | What it answers for the owner |
|---|---|
| Backups | If the worst happened tomorrow, would your data come back? |
| Security | Are the doors locked: sign-ins protected, machines protected, staff alert? |
| Updates | Are your systems current, or is anything running unsupported? |
| Hardware | What is aging out, and when will it need money? |
| Support | How fast did we answer, and how much did your team need us? |
Score honestly. A yellow that {{COMPANY_NAME}} flags itself builds more trust than a green that quietly should not be; the client eventually learns the truth either way, and only one version of that story has {{COMPANY_NAME}} as the one who said it first.
Meeting Agenda
- Their business first (5 to 10 min). What is changing: hiring, moving, new software, busy season. This is where scope changes surface early instead of as surprise tickets.
- Quarter in review (5 min). The support numbers and what they mean. Keep it short; nobody hired {{COMPANY_NAME}} to admire ticket counts.
- Scorecard walk (10 min). The five rows, plainly.
- Risks and recommendations (10 to 15 min). For each: the risk in plain English, what fixing it looks like, a rough cost band from msp-pricing, and a clear recommendation. Never invent a precise number in the room; "roughly" plus a follow-up quote beats a guessed figure that becomes a promise. Declined security recommendations start the waiver conversation (msp-legal), gently: "I need us to write down that we suggested it and you passed, so we are both protected."
- Roadmap (10 min). The next two to four quarters: refreshes, projects, budget shape. A budget the owner can plan around is one of the most valuable things {{COMPANY_NAME}} hands them all year.
- "What should we do better?" (5 min). Ask it plainly, then be quiet and write down the answer.
Repricing lands here. When a rate needs to change, the QBR is where it is said out loud, with the year's value on the table, followed by the formal letter per msp-client-comms and the notice mechanics per msp-legal. A price change that arrives cold in an inbox costs trust the QBR exists to build.
Output and Follow-Up
- Client-facing: the one-page scorecard, branded per msp-brand. For most clients a clean one-pager beats a slide deck. If a deck is warranted (larger client, board audience), 8 slides maximum, built with the pptx skill on msp-brand formatting.
- Follow-up within 2 business days: a short email in msp-client-comms style listing decisions made, quotes to follow, and scheduled items. Decisions that live only in the meeting evaporate.
- Internal: log decisions, declined recommendations, and scope observations in your PSA (ticketing) system. Feed scope drift and health observations to msp-metrics; the QBR is where the fire-or-fix data gets collected in person.
Setup Decisions
Values below are the shipped example defaults from a working MSP. Decide your own before this goes live.
- Cadence: quarterly for every managed client ships as the example default. Decide your own cadence, and whether and when to flex smaller accounts to semi-annual.
- Scorecard areas: the five areas below (Backups, Security, Updates, Hardware, Support) ship as the standing default set.
The scorecard one-pager template ships in the kit at templates/msp-qbr-scorecard-template.docx; restyle it per msp-brand once your brand is set.