Q1 Strategic Review, Executive Template & Getting Ahead Of Q1 QBR

This is a preview for my Marketing Unfiltered post this week, how to break down Q1 performance and get ahead of your QBR with the right level of update, allowing you to talk openly about the performance of the team, leading your department and enabling you to display (cautious..) confidence for the future.

Q1 Strategic Review, Executive Template & Owning Your Department’s Future  

As it is the end of Q1, and it can be a daunting place to update the business on what’s happened and potentially highlight performance and cross-functional issues, I created a quick template you could use or areas to incorporate into your update to the company.

If you would like a Google Docs version of this template, happily request here.

A Quick Reminder To Remember To:

• Always use an exec summary

• Be brutally honest about performance and any gaps

  • Call out what worked 

  • Call out the challenges, but include your action plan for the department and business — always focus on solutions over problems (act as the leader and own the solutions)

• Identify and call out leading indicators in performance (if there are themes occurring or long-term trends, call these out) 

• Include confidence levels  - these are critical to highlight prioritisation and alignment across management and leadership teams (specifically across the C-Suite)  

• Be transparent in your asks 

• Call out cross-functional dependencies, any cross-functional requests shouldn’t be a surprise and should be called out clearly and concisely 

• Any tradeoffs you have had to battle with, and going to have to battle with 

• Call out short-term performance and integrate into the longer-term plan 

• Call out the biggest concerns and how you are going to tackle these (don’t ask for permission)

• If you are a deck culture, create a few slide deck/presentation; if you are docs or wiki culture, flip this into a doc - remember this is likely to be forward and shared outside of your exec team so consider language, tone and calling out individuals.

Your Q1 Update Template

Section 1: Overview & Intro

• Department & date 

• Executive Summary of Q1  — The 3-5 sentences of the department’s impact and core performance 

  • Always include 

    • Financial performance 

    • Any variations from goals or targets 

Section 2: Update On Goals & Key Objectives 

• KPIs (Or OKRs / KR’s) 

• Q1 Target 

• Q1 Actual 

  • Any Variance 

• Trends  

• 3-5 Lessons  

• Include the most important metrics - CAC, LTV, etc 

Section 3: Market Insights 

Including - snapshots of 

• Voice of the customers 

• Competitive landscape 

• Economic Impact 

Section 4: Team Health 

• Headcount 

• Hiring and Attrition 

• E-NPS or other internal engagement metric(s) 

Section 5: Q2 Outlook 

• Plan overview

• Key Initiatives & Metrics 

  • Break down initiatives simply, include milestones, with the expected impact and delivery date 

• Cross-functional dependencies 

• Executive Support (never be nervous of including this as they will be expecting it, and the likelihood is you have discussed throughout the planning phase, sign off and Q1

• Any risks 

• Contingency Plans

• Appendix to research, data etc

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