Ensuring your EBRs drive real value

A very typical part of the job of a Customer Success Manager is to organize and conduct Executive Business Reviews. These are high-level meeting that you would normally do at an annual, bi-annual or quarterly cadence, depending on the nature of your business and the relationships with your customers.

Executive Business Reviews have the power to really transform and up-level your relationship with your customers, as well as to drive strategic growth. However, to achieve that, you need to make sure that you are planning and structuring your EBRs in a way that they are valuable and useful for your customer. The moment they become a waste of time, you will lose the presence and the commitment from the executive / decision-maker persona on your customer’s side.

How to make EBRs valuable for your customer? Here are a few things to consider for your next EBRs.

• Who will be in the room? It is very important that you study all the participants well, along with their roles and leverage within their business.
• What do they care about? Once you’ve done the above, try to find out what drives them, what are they passionate about? Then, make sure you will touch upon exactly those things in your meeting.
• What’s the state of their business at the moment? The conversation during an EBR can really change depending on the state of the customer’s business at the moment. Whether they are really successful and doing great, or have ambitious plans, or are working on an exciting, transformational project, these things will have an impact on how they talk, how much they talk, and how they see your company’s role as part of their plans. Try to anticipate and get informed about some of these things ahead of time.
• Work with your champion. Preparing for an EBR should be a shared task between you and your customer. Your champion is the best suited person to involve in the preparation process. Make sure you leverage them to learn about and set expectations, as well as to make sure that the content you are planning for the meeting will be relevant for them to hear about.
• Remember to keep it high level. Do not forget you will likely be speaking to executives or similar roles. They are not as close to the nitty-gritty of your daily errands with their company. Make sure you are not going to end up in the weeds and the unnecessary details, but that you will use their time in a way that helps them stay informed and get a clear and full view of the value you bring to their company through your partnership.
• The more you can get them to speak, the better. In my experience, the most successful EBRs are the ones where the customer speaks the most. Make sure you plan for this and give them all the time they need to express and share their opinions and any information with you. EBRs are great opportunities for you to learn things you didn’t know about, both about the individuals that are a part of it but also in general about how they think of you and what you do for them. It is also a great sign of dedication and engagement when you have a customer that’s willing to TRULY participate in the conversation!
• Find the right time. Remember to consider things like: when is their fiscal year, when do they go through budget planning, will they require our inputs for that, what are their busiest times of the year, and any other similar things going on within their business that can have an impact on the quality of your EBR. To give an example, if the CMO at the customer’s side is busy with a new website launch, and you schedule an EBR, it is likely that they will be less engaged because their mind will be elsewhere. But if they are going through planning for next year and your company is part of their plans, then that might be great timing!
• Impress. This is your true chance to shine in front of the people on your customer’s side that you might not engage with daily, but are very important for the partnership. Make sure you bring an element of positive surprise – in something you present or share, or simply in the perception you create about yourself. Make sure you approach the meeting with positivity, high energy, flare, and that you come across as a pleasant and knowledgeable person that is a true, valuable partner they can lean on.
• Prepare, prepare, prepare. I cannot say this enough, but there’s nothing like overpreparation for an EBR. This does not mean that you need to spend hours and days staring at your slides and memorizing every word (please do not ever do that!), but it means that this should be top of mind for you. Absorb any information you can get, think about it, think creatively and out of the box… talk to other colleagues that work with similar customers and get tips on things that worked really well. Connect dots and be prepared to share things that are very specific to this customer. Do your research about their latest news online. Internally, make sure everyone from your company who is joining the EBR is well prepared, comfortable, briefed about this client, the participants, their business, potential challenges in the conversation, any anticipated questions… etc.

After the EBR… Make sure to do a solid follow up. Reach out to all relevant parties, share notes, slides, etc. Make sure you do your follow up soon after the EBR while it’s still fresh in everyone’s memory. If you needed to send any additional resources or proposals as part of your follow up, make sure to do that work and send it over as soon as possible.

Other than the email follow up… you might want to consider going even further and sending personal Thank You notes. Point out something someone said during the EBR that really stood out, and perhaps expand on that. This could help you start certain conversations and engage new people that otherwise might not be so involved in your relationship. Or, go even even further, and perhaps send your champion or other key people a small gift, to acknowledge them going above and beyond and helping you prepare an execute a successful meeting.

There’s a lot more that can be said about EBRs. I plan to expand on this discussion with a mini-series of articles that include what goes into an EBR, some ideas around valuable information and content to share, as well as what not to do/cover in an EBR.