Guide
What is the difference between a QBR and a TBR?
A QBR, or quarterly business review, looks at the relationship and the results: service performance, satisfaction and what the client needs next. A TBR, or technology business review, looks at whether the client’s technology supports their business: risks, lifecycle, security and a roadmap. Many MSPs blend the two into one meeting.
The labels matter less than the outcome. A good business review leaves the client more confident in their MSP, with a short list of agreed decisions and a date for the next one. A bad one is a ticket report read aloud. This guide covers how to run the good kind: who should be in the room, a 60-minute agenda, a consistent way to score the environment, how to present findings so clients act on them, and a template you can reuse.
Why it matters
Why should an MSP run business reviews at all?
Because a managed services agreement is renewed on the client’s memory of the value they received, and most of that value is invisible when things go well. A business review makes the work visible, surfaces risks before they become incidents, and is where most expansion projects are agreed.
Retention, expansion and position.
Clients rarely leave an MSP over a single incident. They leave when they stop seeing what they pay for, or when a competitor is the first to talk to them about the business rather than the tickets. A regular review is the antidote to both.
It also changes your position. An MSP that only appears when something breaks is a vendor. One that sits down every quarter with a scored view of the environment and a roadmap is an advisor — and advisors are asked about projects before they go out to quote.
How often to run them.
Quarterly suits most clients on a full managed agreement. Smaller clients may only warrant a review twice a year; larger or regulated clients may want a short monthly check-in plus a fuller quarterly session. Set the cadence by agreement size and risk, write it into the agreement, and keep to it — a review that slips twice has stopped existing.
Attendees
Who should attend an MSP business review?
From the client: the person who signs the agreement, plus whoever runs operations or finance and your day-to-day contact. From the MSP: the account manager or vCIO who owns the relationship, and a technical lead for questions. Keep it small enough that decisions can actually be made.
The decision-maker is not optional.
If the person who controls the budget is not in the room, recommendations become homework for someone who has to sell them internally on your behalf. If they cannot attend, shorten the meeting and move it rather than holding it without them.
- Client: owner or managing director, operations or finance lead, internal IT contact.
- MSP: account manager or vCIO (runs the meeting), technical lead (answers detail).
- Optional: your owner for the largest clients, or a specialist for a specific recommendation.
Agenda
What should a QBR or TBR agenda include?
Open with the client’s goals, review last time’s actions, summarise service briefly, walk through the scored environment, present the top risks with recommendations, agree the roadmap and budget, and close on named actions and a date. Sixty minutes is enough; ninety is a sign the agenda is too loose.
| Segment | Time | Purpose | What to bring |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Goals and context | 5 min | Hear what has changed in their business since last time | Last review’s notes; questions about growth, hires, sites |
| 2. Last review’s actions | 5 min | Show you did what you said; surface what they did not | The action list, with status |
| 3. Service summary | 10 min | Brief proof of the work; trends, not raw ticket counts | Ticket trends, recurring issues, satisfaction |
| 4. Environment scorecard | 15 min | A consistent, scored view of where they stand | The scorecard, compared with last time |
| 5. Risks and recommendations | 10 min | The three things that matter most, in business terms | Each risk with impact and options |
| 6. Roadmap and budget | 10 min | Place recommendations on a 12-month plan the client can fund | Roadmap draft, budget ranges |
| 7. Decisions and next date | 5 min | Leave with named owners and a booked next review | Action list template |
Put the client’s goals first even when you are short of time. Everything after it is easier to land when it is framed against what they told you they want.
Scoring
How should an MSP score a client’s environment?
Use one fixed template across every client, a short rating scale with written definitions for each rating, and the same categories every time. Consistency is what makes a score worth presenting: it lets two engineers reach the same answer and lets this quarter be compared with the last.
A four-point scale beats a ten-point one.
Ten-point scales invite arguments about whether something is a six or a seven. A four-point scale — poor, fair, good, excellent — forces a judgment and has no comfortable middle. Write down what each rating means for each item, so “good” for backups means the same thing at every client.
Score items, not impressions. “Security” is too broad to rate; “multi-factor authentication enforced for all users” is not.
Categories most MSPs score.
Adapt these to your stack and your clients’ industries, then keep them stable.
- Security: MFA, endpoint protection, patching, email security, admin rights.
- Backup and continuity: coverage, restore testing, offsite copies, recovery time.
- Infrastructure lifecycle: hardware age, warranty, operating-system support dates.
- Cloud and licensing: right-sizing, unused licences, configuration standards.
- Compliance: the frameworks or obligations that apply to their industry.
- User experience: recurring issues, onboarding speed, satisfaction.
Set a target, not just a score.
For each low-scoring item, agree what “better” looks like within 90 days. A target turns a red cell into a plan, and next quarter’s review becomes a check against it rather than a fresh list of problems.
Presenting
How do you present findings so clients act on them?
Lead with business impact, not technology. Limit yourself to the three most important risks, explain what each could cost the business in plain language, offer options rather than a single price, and tie every recommendation to a goal the client named at the start. Never use the review to surprise them with a big quote.
Translate every finding.
“Twelve workstations are on an unsupported operating system” is a fact. “Twelve machines will stop receiving security fixes, which puts the finance team’s data at risk and may matter for your cyber insurance renewal” is a reason to act. Write the second version for every finding before the meeting.
Offer options.
Give each major recommendation two or three options: do the minimum now, do it properly over two quarters, or do it properly now. Options let the client make a decision instead of a yes-or-no judgment on you, and they make budget conversations far easier.
Use the client’s own words.
If the owner said in the last review that they are opening a second office, the network recommendation should start there. Quoting their goals back to them is the most persuasive thing in the room, because it is theirs.
Template
What should a QBR or TBR template contain?
A cover with the client’s goals, last review’s action status, a one-page service summary, the scorecard with trend, the top three risks with impact and options, a 12-month roadmap, the decisions needed today, and the next review date. Ten to twelve slides is plenty.
A slide-by-slide outline you can copy.
Build this once as a template and reuse it for every client, so preparation becomes filling in rather than starting over.
- 1. Cover: client name, date, attendees, and their top goals in their words.
- 2. Since last time: each agreed action with its status.
- 3. Service summary: trends and recurring issues on one page.
- 4–5. Scorecard: ratings by category, compared with the previous review.
- 6–8. Top three risks: one slide each, with business impact and options.
- 9. Roadmap: the next 12 months by quarter, with budget ranges.
- 10. Decisions today: what you need from them, specifically.
- 11. Next steps: named owners, dates and the next review booked.
Preparing a review without losing an evening.
Most of the pain of business reviews is preparation, and most of that is gathering information that already exists somewhere. Fix that once with a standard preparation checklist, run a week before each review by whoever owns the account.
Pull the ticket trends from your PSA, update the scorecard from the latest assessment or monitoring data, check the status of every action agreed last time, and write two sentences on what has changed in the client’s business since you last met. With those four inputs, the deck is mostly assembly. If a review still takes a whole evening to prepare, the template is doing too little of the work.
Common mistakes to avoid.
Most failed reviews fail in the same few ways.
- Reading ticket statistics aloud instead of explaining what they mean.
- Presenting twenty findings instead of three.
- Bringing a quote nobody asked for to a meeting the client thought was a check-in.
- Changing the scoring template between reviews, so nothing can be compared.
- Leaving without a booked date for the next one.
In MADDOX
How can a CRM help with business reviews?
By assembling the review from what is already on the record rather than a blank deck: the client’s agreements and renewal dates, open recommendations, last review’s actions and the scored assessment. In MADDOX that is the QBR builder, with assessment scoring and the deck available through the IT Audit add-on.
What MADDOX provides, and what is an add-on.
MADDOX includes a QBR builder with templates and preparation, a renewal pipeline with a monthly recurring revenue view, and account health scores. A TBR campaign pack in the Marketplace runs the push to get the review on the calendar, with the prepare and conduct tasks attached.
Scoring and the client deck come from IT Audit, an add-on installed from the Marketplace and switched off until enabled. It scores each item from one to four with a derived 90-day target, and the presentation builder assembles findings, impacts and recommendations into the deck. Reassessments compare the same company over time.
Related
Questions
The things people actually ask.
How long should an MSP QBR be?
Sixty minutes is enough for most clients. If you regularly need ninety, the agenda is too loose or you are presenting too many findings. Send materials two working days ahead so the meeting is for decisions, not reading.
Is a TBR the same as a QBR?
Not quite. A QBR focuses on the relationship, service and results; a TBR focuses on whether technology supports the business, with risks and a roadmap. Many MSPs combine them into one quarterly meeting, which works well if the agenda covers both.
Who from the MSP should run the review?
The account manager or vCIO who owns the relationship, with a technical lead present for detail. The engineer who fixes things day to day is valuable in the room but is rarely the right person to lead a business conversation.
Should I bring a quote to a QBR?
Bring options and budget ranges, not a surprise quote. Agree the direction in the review, then send a formal proposal afterwards. Clients who feel ambushed in a review start declining the next one.
Build the next review from the record.
Ask for an invitation and we will show you a business review assembled from agreements, actions and a scored assessment rather than a blank deck.