Executive reporting · 13 min read · Updated 2 Aug 2026
QBR Competitive Update Template (Free QBR Slide)
A blank QBR competitive update you can fill in today, plus the guidance for what belongs in each field. This is the competitive section of a quarterly business review, not the whole QBR: it reports the delta since last quarter, ties it to revenue, and ends in decisions taken in the room.
Copy pastes straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact. Downloads are free with a work email.
The QBR competitive update template
This is exactly what you get when you copy or download. Blank fields are yours to fill in; each table ships with one example row to show the pattern, which you delete.
Update details
Fill this in first. Note the minutes you actually get. Most competitive sections are built for fifteen and given six.
- Quarter and date presentede.g. Q3 2026, presented 14 Oct
- AudienceWho is in the room, and who makes the decisions in it
- Time slotThe real minutes, including questions
- Competitors coveredThree to five. More than that is a report, not an update
- The one decision we needA single sentence. If there is none, say so rather than inventing one
- Prepared byNamed, with the date the underlying data was last verified
1. The three things that changed
First row is an example, delete it. Exactly three rows, no more. This is the only part everyone will remember.
| What changed | Why it matters to this room | So what |
|---|---|---|
| ExampleOur closest competitor now bundles onboarding free above 50 seats | It removes the fee advantage we used in 6 enterprise deals last quarter | We need a decision on matching it before renewals season |
2. Competitive scoreboard, quarter over quarter
First row is an example, delete it. Same metrics every quarter, in the same order. Changing them is how a scoreboard stops meaning anything.
| Metric | Last quarter | This quarter | Change | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleWin rate vs Competitor A | 41% | 34% | Down 7 points | Their new packaging is landing, and this is the sharpest move on the board |
3. Competitor moves this quarter
First row is an example, delete it. Only moves with a source and a date. Rumour goes in the risks table, clearly marked.
| Competitor | What they did | Date | Evidence | Impact on us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleCompetitor A | Added free onboarding above 50 seats | 12 Aug | Their published pricing page, read 14 Oct | Directly affects our largest deals |
4. Where competitors showed up in the pipeline
First row is an example, delete it. Counts, not impressions. This table is what connects the competitive picture to revenue.
| Competitor | Deals faced | Won | Lost | Primary loss reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleCompetitor A | 29 | 10 | 19 | Total cost once view-only users are counted |
5. What we said we would do, and whether it worked
First row is an example, delete it. Copy each row from the decisions table of your previous update, wording unchanged, before you fill in the status.
| Last quarter's action | Owner | Status | Did it move the number? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleRetrain the team on total-cost comparison | Sales enablement | Done, 6 Aug | Partly, the objection fell from 4 of 5 losses to 2 of 6 | Loss reviews, Q3 |
6. Emerging risks and watch items
First row is an example, delete it. Things not yet confirmed, each with the signal that would confirm it. Label confidence on every row.
| Risk or signal | Where we saw it | Confidence | What would confirm it | If confirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleThey may be building the reporting we lead on | Two engineering job posts naming that area | Low, job posts only | A beta, a changelog entry, or a customer mentioning it | Our clearest differentiator narrows within two quarters |
7. What we need from this room
First row is an example, delete it. One to three rows. An update with no ask is a briefing, which is a legitimate choice worth stating.
| The ask | Why now | What it costs | Decision needed by | What happens if we do nothing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleApprove matching free onboarding above 50 seats | Renewals season starts in six weeks | Roughly 40k in foregone fees per quarter | 31 Oct | We keep losing the fee comparison in our largest deals |
8. Decisions taken in the room
First row is an example, delete it. Fill this in during the meeting, not after. Unwritten decisions get relitigated next quarter.
| Decision | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked | Revisit at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExampleMatch free onboarding above 50 seats for two quarters, then review | Elena V., CEO | 1 Nov | Onboarding fees stop appearing as a loss reason | Q1 QBR |
How to fill in your QBR competitive update
How to scope a QBR competitive update
Record the minutes you will actually get, because that number determines everything else about the artifact. Competitive sections are routinely built for fifteen minutes and given six once the revenue review overruns, and the version that survives that compression is the one written for six from the start. Cover three to five competitors at most. Beyond that you are producing a competitive intelligence report and presenting it to an audience that did not ask for one.
Quarter and date presented
Both, since the gap matters. A QBR presented three weeks into the new quarter is already reporting on a competitive picture that has moved, and stating the verification date is what stops the room treating stale figures as current.
Audience
Name who is in the room and specifically who can make the decision you are asking for. If the person who owns pricing is not present, an ask about pricing cannot be resolved, and the correct move is to change the ask rather than to present it anyway.
Time slot
The real minutes including questions. Ten minutes with three of questions is seven minutes of content, which is about three slides. Writing this down before you build anything prevents the most common failure of this artifact.
Competitors covered
Three to five, chosen by where they actually appeared in the pipeline rather than by who is most discussed internally. A competitor nobody met in a deal last quarter does not need a row in an executive update.
The one decision we need
One sentence, or an honest statement that this quarter is informational. Both are legitimate. What does not work is arriving with five asks, which produces a discussion rather than a decision and uses your slot on debate.
Prepared by
Named, with the date the underlying data was last verified. Competitive figures decay within weeks, and an executive repeating a number from a QBR two months later needs to know how old it was.
How to write the three headline changes in a QBR competitive update
Exactly three rows, and this is the only part of the update most of the room will retain. The discipline of three forces a ranking, which is the actual work: a list of nine changes is a research output, while three is an editorial judgement about what leadership should act on. If the section gets cut for time, these three lines are what you read out, so they need to stand alone without the tables behind them.
What changed
The delta, not the standing state. "Our closest competitor now bundles onboarding free above 50 seats" is a change. "Competitor A is strong in enterprise" is a description that was true last quarter too and tells the room nothing new.
Why it matters to this room
Translated into their terms, with a number where possible: "it removes the fee advantage we used in 6 enterprise deals last quarter". An executive audience will not do this translation for you, and a change presented without it reads as trivia.
So what
The consequence or the decision it implies. This column is what separates an update from a news bulletin, and if you cannot fill it in, the row probably does not belong in the top three.
Rank ruthlessly, and keep the rest in the tables
Everything that did not make the three is still in the detail sections for anyone who wants it. Nothing is lost by ranking, and a great deal is lost by refusing to.
How to build the competitive scoreboard in a QBR competitive update
The same metrics every quarter, in the same order, so the room reads the movement rather than the definitions. This is the section that makes a competitive update cumulative instead of episodic, and it is the one most often rebuilt each quarter because someone wants to show a different number. Resist that. A scoreboard whose composition changes is not a scoreboard, and the credibility cost of appearing to select favourable metrics is severe and permanent.
Metric
Four to six, and pick ones you can produce reliably every quarter. Head-to-head win rate per competitor, competitive deal volume, average deal size in competitive deals, and the count of deals where a competitor was named are a defensible starting set.
Last quarter and this quarter
Both columns, always. A single-quarter number is nearly uninterpretable to an executive audience, whereas a movement is immediately legible and prompts the right question, which is what changed.
Change
In points or percentage, stated plainly including when it is bad. "Down 7 points" presented directly buys more credibility than any amount of favourable framing, and executives are unusually good at detecting the alternative.
What it tells us
One sentence of interpretation per row. Without it the room invents its own reading, which is usually less accurate than yours and much harder to correct once stated aloud by someone senior.
Report small samples as small samples
A win rate over nine deals moves several points on one outcome. Say so in the row rather than presenting it with the same confidence as a hundred-deal figure, because a scoreboard that treats noise as signal will eventually recommend something expensive on the strength of it.
How to record competitor moves in a QBR competitive update
Every row needs a source and a date. This is an executive forum, which means anything you state will be repeated outside the room, frequently to customers and occasionally to press or investors, without the caveats you attached. Unsourced claims are how a rumour becomes a stated fact about a competitor within a fortnight. Rumour is legitimate content, but it belongs in the risks table with its confidence marked, not here.
What they did
Specific and factual: "added free onboarding above 50 seats", not "got more aggressive on pricing". Interpretation goes in the impact column, where it can be argued with separately from the fact.
Date
When the move happened, not when you noticed. The gap between the two is itself worth tracking, since a widening gap means your monitoring is falling behind and that is a finding about your own capability.
Evidence
Their own published page with the date you read it, a changelog entry, a customer report, a documented deal. Prefer primary sources: third-party round-ups get pricing details wrong routinely, and we verified several in August 2026 that conflated annual and monthly figures.
Impact on us
Concrete and bounded: "directly affects our largest deals", or "none for our segment, they moved down-market". A move with no impact on you is worth a row precisely because it stops the room worrying about it.
Include moves that did not affect you
Two or three rows of things that happened and did not matter are among the most valuable content in the update. They demonstrate that the monitoring is genuinely running, and they calibrate the room against over-reacting to competitor announcements.
How to connect competitors to the pipeline in a QBR competitive update
Counts, not impressions. This table is what connects competitive activity to revenue and it is the reason a competitive section earns a slot in a business review at all. Without it the update is interesting; with it, it is a business input. The data usually already exists in the CRM in some form, and the difficulty is nearly always data hygiene rather than analysis, which is itself worth reporting when it is bad.
Deals faced
Where the competitor was genuinely in the deal, not where a rep mentioned them. Define the threshold once and apply it consistently, because this denominator drives every rate in the table.
Won and lost
Both, with the numbers, and reconcile them to the deals-faced count. No-decision deals should be visible somewhere: they are frequently the largest category and hiding them makes a win rate look considerably better than the quarter felt.
Primary loss reason
One per competitor, from loss reviews rather than from CRM close reasons. Reasons recorded by the rep who lost the deal skew heavily toward price and toward causes outside their control, which is a well-known bias and easy to correct by asking the buyer.
Flag the data quality honestly
If competitor tagging covers 60 percent of closed deals, say 60 percent on the slide. Presenting partial data as complete is the single fastest way to lose an executive audience, and the gap is itself an actionable ask about CRM discipline.
Keep the deal-level detail out of the room
Executives need the counts and the pattern. The deal-by-deal log belongs in the win/loss report, which is the artifact this table summarises, and offering it as a follow-up is better than presenting it.
How to close the loop on last quarter in a QBR competitive update
Carry every row forward from last quarter's asks, including the ones that went nowhere. This section is the one most competitive updates omit and the one that most changes how the room treats the update. A team that reports on its own previous commitments, honestly, including the failures, is establishing that its asks have consequences. A team that presents fresh findings every quarter and never revisits the last set trains the room to treat the whole thing as commentary.
Last quarter's action
Copied verbatim from the previous update's decisions table. Rewording it in a more favourable light is transparent and expensive, and someone in the room will have the old deck.
Status
Done with a date, in progress, or not started. Not started is a legitimate entry and reporting it plainly is what makes the section credible. It is also frequently the most useful row, since it surfaces a resourcing problem that no other forum would raise.
Did it move the number?
The genuine question, answered against the scoreboard: "partly, the objection fell from 4 of 5 losses to 2 of 6". Actions completed that changed nothing are important findings, and burying them means repeating them.
Evidence
Where the answer came from. This is the same standard applied to competitor claims, applied to your own work, which is the point: the section only builds credibility if it is as rigorous about internal performance as about external activity.
Report the actions that failed
An update where every prior action worked is not believable and will be discounted wholesale. Naming what did not work is also the only mechanism by which the team stops doing it.
How to present risks in a QBR competitive update
Everything unconfirmed goes here with its confidence labelled and, critically, with the signal that would confirm it. That last column is what distinguishes a useful risk register from a list of anxieties. A risk with no confirming signal cannot be resolved, so it recurs every quarter, gradually loses meaning, and eventually trains the room to skip the section entirely.
Risk or signal
What you think might be happening, stated as a possibility rather than as a fact: "they may be building the reporting we lead on". The tentative phrasing matters because it is what will be repeated outside the room.
Where we saw it
The actual observation: job postings, a conference talk, a customer remark, a change in their documentation. Weak signals are worth reporting when their weakness is visible on the slide.
Confidence
Low, medium or high with the reason. "Low, job posts only" is honest and useful. An unlabelled risk in an executive room is treated as a prediction, and predictions get planned around.
What would confirm it
The most valuable column here: "a beta, a changelog entry, or a customer mentioning it". It converts a worry into a monitoring task with a defined resolution, and it gives next quarter's update something concrete to report.
If confirmed
The consequence, briefly. This tells the room whether to care now or simply to note it, and it prevents the two failure modes of this section, which are alarming people about something remote and burying something that deserves attention.
How to write the asks in a QBR competitive update
One to three rows, and each needs a cost and a deadline. An ask without a cost invites a yes that nobody has resourced, which is worse than a no because it consumes a quarter before anyone notices. An ask without a date drifts until the next QBR, at which point it reappears and the section loses standing. If there is genuinely nothing to ask for this quarter, say so explicitly rather than manufacturing something.
The ask
Phrased as a decision the room can actually make: "approve matching free onboarding above 50 seats". Not "we should think about onboarding", which cannot be approved or declined and therefore will not be either.
Why now
The timing argument, which is what makes it an ask rather than a suggestion: "renewals season starts in six weeks". Without urgency, the rational response from any executive is to defer, and they will.
What it costs
Money, headcount or engineering quarters, honestly. Understating cost to improve the odds of approval is the most expensive shortcut available here, because the correction arrives after the commitment.
Decision needed by
A date. It creates a follow-up point and it means the next update has something specific to report against, which is how the loop-closing section stays populated.
What happens if we do nothing
Stated plainly and without exaggeration: "we keep losing the fee comparison in our largest deals". Doing nothing is often the right answer, and an ask that survives an honest statement of the alternative is considerably stronger.
How to capture decisions in your QBR competitive update
Fill this in during the meeting rather than afterwards. Decisions reconstructed from memory a day later are reliably wrong about the qualification attached, and the qualification is usually where the real agreement lived. Reading each decision back before the room moves on takes fifteen seconds, surfaces disagreement while everyone is still present, and is the single highest-return habit associated with this artifact.
Decision
As agreed, including the conditions: "match free onboarding above 50 seats for two quarters, then review". The conditions are what get lost, and their loss is how a bounded trial quietly becomes permanent policy.
Owner
A named person present in the room who accepted it out loud. A decision assigned to a team or to someone absent is not owned, and it will be discovered unstarted at the next QBR.
By when
A date agreed in the meeting. Dates set afterwards by the person writing the notes carry no authority and are treated accordingly.
How we will know it worked
Tied to the scoreboard where possible: "onboarding fees stop appearing as a loss reason". This is what next quarter's loop-closing section will report against, so it needs to be observable rather than aspirational.
Revisit at
Which QBR this comes back to. Time-boxed decisions need an explicit return date or the box quietly expires and nobody notices, which is how a two-quarter trial becomes a three-year commitment.
Sourcing and upkeep: keeping a QBR competitive update credible
These rules apply to every section above. This artifact is unusual among competitive documents because its audience has authority and limited time, which changes what good looks like. Length is not thoroughness here, and detail that would strengthen a competitive intelligence report weakens an executive update. Every habit below is about earning the slot again next quarter.
Report the delta, not the standing state
The room saw the standing picture last quarter. What earns the slot is what moved, and an update that re-describes the landscape is asking senior people to re-read something they already have.
Source everything, because it leaves the room
Whatever you state will be repeated to customers, investors or press without your caveats. Primary sources with dates, and rumour confined to the risks table with its confidence marked.
Close the loop on last quarter, including the failures
The section most often omitted and the one that most determines whether the room treats your asks seriously. Reporting an action that did not work is what makes the ones that did believable.
Keep the scoreboard metrics fixed
Same metrics, same order, every quarter. Changing them for a better-looking story destroys the comparison that makes the scoreboard worth having, and the appearance of selecting metrics is difficult to recover from.
Say how complete the data is
If competitor tagging covers 60 percent of deals, put 60 percent on the slide. Executives handle acknowledged gaps well and handle discovered gaps very badly.
Three to five competitors, one decision
The constraint is what makes it an update rather than a report. Everything else belongs in the competitive intelligence report, which serves a different audience and can be offered as a follow-up.
Write the decisions in the room
Read each one back before moving on. Fifteen seconds, and it is the difference between a decision and a shared impression of one.
A QBR competitive update example
You run competitive intelligence at Pipedrive and have an eight-minute slot in the Q3 business review. HubSpot Sales Hub appeared in most competitive losses this quarter. This is that update, filled in.
Published pricing and packaging verified 2 August 2026, from the companies’ own pages rather than third-party round-ups, which frequently conflate annual and monthly prices. Pricing changes without notice, so re-check before quoting any of it.
Sections marked illustrative are invented for this example. Win rates, deal counts, discounting behaviour, customer quotes, owners and internal dates are not published by HubSpot, Pipedrive or anyone else, so those rows are a plausible fictional scenario rather than reported fact, and should not be read as claims about how either company performs or negotiates. Everything else comes from the two pricing pages linked below, read on the date shown.
Update detailsIllustrative
| Field | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Quarter and date presented | Q3 2026, presented 14 Oct 2026 |
| Audience | CEO, CRO, VP Product, VP Marketing. Pricing decisions sit with the CEO |
| Time slot | 8 minutes including questions, so roughly 5 of content |
| Competitors covered | HubSpot Sales Hub, one regional rival, and the status quo spreadsheet |
| The one decision we need | Whether to change read-only seat pricing before renewals season |
| Prepared by | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence. Pricing data verified 2 Aug 2026 |
1. The three things that changedIllustrative
| What changed | Why it matters to this room | So what |
|---|---|---|
| Free view-only seats decided more of our losses than any capability gap | It affected 4 of our 5 mid-market losses, worth 99k in ARR | This is a packaging decision, not a roadmap one, and it needs an answer |
| Our time-to-value advantage is real and measured but rarely mentioned in deals | We win the criterion buyers weight most heavily and lead with it in under half of demos | An enablement fix, available this quarter at no cost |
| A third of our churn last half was outside our control | Acquisitions and headcount reductions, 83k of the 143k lost | Retention performance is being judged against a number that includes it |
2. Competitive scoreboard, quarter over quarterIllustrative
| Metric | Last quarter | This quarter | Change | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Win rate vs HubSpot Sales Hub | 41% | 34% | Down 7 points | Real movement, though on 29 deals it is 2 outcomes from being flat |
| Competitive deals faced | 24 | 29 | Up 5 | We are meeting them more often as we move up-market |
| Deals where the status quo won | 6 | 9 | Up 3 | Rising, and the least visible category on this board |
| Losses citing view-only seat cost | 4 of 9 | 6 of 19 | Roughly flat in proportion | Persistent rather than worsening, which does not make it less expensive |
| Competitor tagging coverage on closed deals | 58% | 71% | Up 13 points | Improving, but every rate above is still drawn from partial data |
3. Competitor moves this quarterIllustrative
| Competitor | What they did | Date | Evidence | Impact on us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Sales Hub | View-Only Seats remain free and unbundled from editing seats | Standing position, re-verified | Their published pricing page, read 2 Aug 2026 | High, this is the mechanism behind most of our mid-market losses |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Automation continues to sit on Professional, at USD 90 per seat per month billed annually | Verified 2 Aug 2026 | Their published pricing page | Neutral, our automation is included a tier earlier at EUR 39 |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Onboarding fees are listed separately from seat pricing, as are ours | Verified 2 Aug 2026 | Both published pricing pages | None this quarter, recorded so the room stops asking |
| Regional rival | Opened an office in our second-largest market | 3 Sep 2026 | Their own announcement | None yet, they have not appeared in a deal since |
4. Where competitors showed up in the pipelineIllustrative
| Competitor | Deals faced | Won | Lost | Primary loss reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Sales Hub | 29 | 10 | 19 | Total cost once view-only users are counted |
| Regional rival | 7 | 5 | 2 | Local support expectations |
| Status quo, spreadsheets | 14 | 5 | 9 | No budget and no urgency |
5. What we said we would do, and whether it workedIllustrative
| Last quarter's action | Owner | Status | Did it move the number? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retrain the team to compare totals at the buyer's real edit or view split | Dana K., Sales | Done, 29 Aug 2026 | Partly. The objection fell from 4 of 5 losses to 6 of 19 | Loss reviews, Q3 2026 |
| Move time to first output into the opening of every demo | Maya R., Product Marketing | In progress, adopted by about half the team | Not yet measurable at this adoption level | Call reviews, Q3 2026 |
| Scope cross-team forecast consolidation for the roadmap | Sam L., Product | Not started | No | Roadmap review, Sep 2026 |
| Report controllable and uncontrollable churn separately | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence | Done, first split shown in this update | Yes, it changed how the number reads | This scoreboard |
6. Emerging risks and watch itemsIllustrative
| Risk or signal | Where we saw it | Confidence | What would confirm it | If confirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| They may narrow our time-to-value advantage with a guided setup | Two engineering job posts naming onboarding | Low, job posts only | A beta, a changelog entry, or a customer mentioning it | Our clearest measured differentiator narrows within two quarters |
| Status-quo losses are rising and we have almost no evidence about them | Up from 6 to 9 deals, with no loss interviews completed | Medium on the count, low on the cause | Discovery data on what teams use today, being added this quarter | We would be competing hard with a rival while losing more often to inertia |
7. What we need from this roomIllustrative
| The ask | Why now | What it costs | Decision needed by | What happens if we do nothing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A decision on read-only seat pricing, either way | Renewals season starts in six weeks and the objection is persistent | Modelling suggests a mid-single-digit percentage of mid-market ARR | 31 Oct 2026 | The objection keeps costing roughly 99k of ARR per half, and the topic recurs every QBR |
| Confirm the forecast consolidation work is deliberately deferred | It has been carried unstarted for two quarters | Nothing to confirm the deferral, two engineering quarters to do it | 31 Oct 2026 | It stays on the list without progress and the list loses meaning |
8. Decisions taken in the roomIllustrative
| Decision | Owner | By when | How we will know it worked | Revisit at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introduce a free read-only seat tier, capped at 10 per account, for two quarters then review | Elena V., CEO | 1 Nov 2026 | View-only seat cost stops appearing as a primary loss reason | Q1 2027 QBR |
| Forecast consolidation is deliberately deferred, not delayed | Sam L., Product | Recorded 14 Oct 2026 | It comes off the carried-forward list and stops recurring | Q2 2027 QBR |
| Report controllable and uncontrollable churn separately in all board material | Tom A., Competitive Intelligence | Immediate | The retention number leadership sees excludes acquisitions and shutdowns | Q1 2027 QBR |
| Add a what-do-you-use-today question to discovery, to close the status-quo evidence gap | Dana K., Sales | 31 Oct 2026 | Next quarter's update scores status-quo losses from data rather than inference | Q1 2027 QBR |
How to roll out your QBR competitive update
- 1Copy or download the blank update. Use Copy to paste it straight into Google Sheets or Excel with the columns intact, or download the CSV, Notion or PDF version.
- 2Write down the minutes you will actually get. Competitive sections are built for fifteen and given six. Build for six, and cover three to five competitors at most.
- 3Delete the example rows. Each table ships with one example row so the pattern is obvious. Remove it before you circulate the update.
- 4Rank the three headline changes first. Exactly three, each translated into what it means for this room. If the slot gets cut, these are what you read out.
- 5Keep the scoreboard metrics identical every quarter. Same metrics, same order, with last quarter beside this quarter. Changing them is how a scoreboard stops meaning anything.
- 6Source every competitor move with a date. Anything you state leaves the room without your caveats. Unconfirmed items go in the risks table with confidence labelled.
- 7Report on last quarter's actions, including the failures. Carry every row forward and say whether it moved the number. This is what makes the room treat your asks seriously.
- 8Bring one decision, and write it down in the meeting. One to three asks with costs and deadlines, then read each agreed decision back before the room moves on.
QBR competitive update FAQ
What is a QBR competitive update?
A QBR competitive update is the competitive section of a quarterly business review: usually five to fifteen minutes covering what changed in the competitive landscape since last quarter, a scoreboard of head-to-head performance, where competitors appeared in the pipeline, whether last quarter's actions worked, emerging risks, and one decision you need from the room. It is not the whole QBR and it is not a competitive intelligence report. The constraint that defines it is the audience: senior people with authority and very little time.
What is a QBR?
A quarterly business review is a recurring meeting where leadership reviews the previous quarter's performance against targets, examines what changed, and makes resourcing decisions for the quarter ahead. The term is used in two distinct ways that are worth separating: an internal QBR where a company reviews its own performance, and a customer QBR where a vendor reviews progress with an account. This template covers the competitive section of the internal kind. The customer-facing version is largely a customer success artifact and has a different structure entirely.
What does QBR mean in meetings?
In a business meeting context, QBR means quarterly business review. Depending on the organisation it may be run by finance, by the leadership team, or by customer success with an individual account. The competitive section covered by this template sits inside the internal version, typically after the revenue review and before resourcing decisions. Worth knowing that the acronym is also heavily used in American football for quarterback rating, which is why general searches for QBR return sports statistics.
What is a QBR update?
A QBR update is one contributed section within a quarterly business review, prepared by a function and presented into the wider meeting. Marketing, product, customer success and competitive intelligence each typically bring one. The failure mode common to all of them is presenting a standing description of their area rather than the delta since last quarter, which asks senior people to re-read something they already have. What earns a recurring slot is reporting what moved, what it cost or gained, and what decision is needed.
What should be included in a QBR presentation?
A full QBR usually covers performance against targets with variance explained, the pipeline and forecast, customer health and churn, product delivery against the roadmap, a competitive update, resourcing and hiring, and the decisions needed for the coming quarter. The competitive section is one part of that, and the discipline that makes the whole meeting work is the same throughout: report the change rather than the state, quantify the impact, close the loop on the previous quarter's commitments, and end in owned decisions with dates rather than in a summary.
What to include in a QBR presentation for the competitive section?
Six things, in this order. Three headline changes, ranked, each translated into what it means for the room. A scoreboard with the same metrics as last quarter and both columns shown. Competitor moves, each with a source and a date. Where competitors appeared in the pipeline, as counts tied to revenue. What you said you would do last quarter and whether it worked, including the failures. And one to three asks with costs and deadlines. Anything beyond that belongs in a competitive intelligence report offered as follow-up.
What are common mistakes to avoid in QBRs?
Seven recur, and most apply to the competitive section specifically. Presenting the standing state instead of the delta. Building fifteen minutes of content for a slot that will be compressed to six. Changing the scoreboard metrics between quarters, which destroys the comparison and looks like metric selection. Never reporting on last quarter's commitments, which trains the room to treat asks as commentary. Bringing five asks instead of one. Presenting partial data as complete. And leaving without written decisions, so the same discussion happens again next quarter.
How do you run an effective QBR?
Send the material in advance and use the meeting for decisions rather than for reading. Cost the agenda in minutes against the real slot length. Open each section with what changed rather than with context. Require every section to close the loop on its own previous commitments, which is the mechanism that makes the meeting cumulative. End with written decisions, each with a named owner, a date and how you will know it worked, read back in the room before moving on. Reconstructing decisions afterwards reliably loses the conditions attached to them.
How do you start a QBR presentation?
With the conclusion. Executive audiences read the first thirty seconds to decide how much attention the rest deserves, so opening with methodology, context or a landscape recap spends that window badly. For a competitive section, open with the single most consequential change and what it means: the packaging move that decided four of five losses, with the revenue attached. The detail behind it is in the tables for anyone who wants it, and the ranking you did to arrive at that opening line is most of the value you are providing.
What is the process of a QBR?
Typically: sections are prepared and circulated a few days ahead, the meeting reviews performance against targets, each function presents its update, decisions are made on resourcing and priorities for the coming quarter, and the decisions are written down with owners and dates. The competitive section usually sits after the revenue review, since it explains part of what that review just showed. The step most often skipped is the follow-up, which is why the loop-closing table in this template carries every prior action forward including the ones that went nowhere.
What are QBR metrics?
For the business review overall: revenue against plan, pipeline coverage, win rate, churn and net retention, CAC and payback, and delivery against the roadmap. For the competitive section specifically, a defensible set is head-to-head win rate per named competitor, competitive deal volume, average deal size in competitive deals, the count of deals where each competitor was named, and your competitor-tagging coverage as a data-quality measure. Keep them identical every quarter. A scoreboard whose composition changes cannot be read for movement, which is the only thing it is for.
What to talk about in a quarterly review?
What changed, what it cost or gained, what you did about it, whether that worked, and what you need next. Those five questions cover almost everything a quarterly review should contain and they apply to every section of the meeting. The most commonly missing one is the fourth. Teams report new findings each quarter and rarely revisit whether the previous quarter's actions moved anything, which is what turns a business review into a series of unconnected presentations rather than a mechanism for steering.
What is the point of a QBR?
To make resourcing decisions with the whole picture in the room at once. Every function has data, but the decisions that matter are trade-offs between them, and those cannot be made inside any single function's reporting. That is also the test for whether your section is doing its job: a competitive update earning its slot ends in a decision the room can only make collectively. If yours is purely informational this quarter, saying so plainly is more useful than manufacturing an ask.
How do you follow up after a QBR?
Circulate the written decisions within a day, while the conditions attached to them are still accurate, with owner, date and success measure for each. Then put every decision into whatever system the owners actually use, since a decision living only in a slide deck will be discovered unstarted at the next QBR. The real follow-up mechanism is structural rather than administrative: next quarter's update opens by reporting on this quarter's decisions, which is the only reliable way to make them stick.
What is the difference between QBR and OKR?
Different kinds of thing. OKRs are a goal-setting framework, popularised at Intel and Google, defining what you are trying to achieve and how you will measure it. A QBR is a meeting where performance is reviewed and decisions are made. They connect naturally, since a quarterly review is the obvious moment to assess progress against quarterly objectives, and many organisations run them together. But one is a target-setting method and the other is a governance forum, and an organisation can run either without the other.
What does QBR mean in Agile?
In agile organisations QBR usually still means quarterly business review, but it sits alongside a different ceremony that is easy to confuse with it. In the Scaled Agile Framework, PI Planning is a cadence-based event where an Agile Release Train plans the next eight to twelve weeks together. The two are not substitutes: PI Planning is forward-looking delivery alignment producing committed objectives and a dependency map, while a QBR is a backward-looking business accountability checkpoint that also allocates resources. Some organisations schedule them adjacently, which is where the confusion originates.
What is the difference between QBR and passer rating?
This is a sports question that shares an acronym with the business meeting, and it dominates general searches for QBR. Total QBR is a proprietary quarterback rating ESPN introduced in 2011, scored on a 0 to 100 scale, which weights every play by its contribution to winning and adjusts for the strength of the opposing defence. The traditional NFL passer rating is a much older formula based only on passing statistics, with a maximum of 158.3. Neither has anything to do with quarterly business reviews.
What is the QBR template for sales?
A sales QBR typically covers attainment against quota by team and by rep, pipeline coverage for the coming quarter, win rate and its movement, average deal size and cycle length, loss reasons, and hiring or ramp status. The competitive update is a section within it, and the connection point is the loss-reason analysis, since that is where competitive activity becomes visible as revenue. This template covers that section rather than the full sales review, and it is designed to be presented into one.
Are OKRs still relevant?
The debate is real and worth engaging with rather than dismissing. The common criticisms are that OKRs drive activity toward what is measurable rather than what is important, that quarterly cycles are too short for meaningful work and too long for responsive teams, and that in practice they frequently become a reporting burden. Those criticisms have force, and many organisations have moved to lighter approaches. What matters for a competitive update is narrower: whatever the goal framework, your section needs to tie competitive change to something the room is accountable for, or it will not survive a busy agenda.
How long should the competitive section of a QBR be?
Build for five to eight minutes even when you are promised fifteen. Competitive sections sit late in the agenda and the revenue review reliably overruns, so the version that gets presented is the compressed one. Practically that means three headline changes, a scoreboard the room can read in twenty seconds, and one ask. Everything else stays in the appendix or in the competitive intelligence report. A section that cannot survive compression to five minutes has not been ranked.
What is the difference between a QBR competitive update and an executive brief?
Cadence and trigger. A QBR competitive update is scheduled, covers the whole quarter, and reports the delta across several competitors on a fixed scoreboard. An executive brief is triggered by a single event, written when it happens rather than when the calendar says so, and covers one issue in depth with a recommendation. They serve the same audience and are not substitutes: a significant competitor move in week two of a quarter needs a brief immediately, and it will also appear in the quarterly update as part of the pattern. Our executive brief template covers the event-driven one.
What is an example of a QBR competitive update?
Slot: eight minutes in the Q3 review, audience of CEO, CRO, VP Product and VP Marketing, covering three competitors, with one decision needed on read-only seat pricing. Three headline changes: free view-only seats at a competitor decided four of five mid-market losses worth 99k; our measured time-to-value advantage is mentioned in under half of demos; a third of last half's churn was outside our control and is being counted against retention. Scoreboard: win rate against the main competitor down 7 points to 34 percent, flagged as two outcomes from flat on 29 deals; competitive deals up from 24 to 29; status-quo losses up from 6 to 9; competitor tagging coverage up from 58 to 71 percent, so every rate above is drawn from partial data. Loop-closing: of four actions from last quarter, one done and partly effective, one half-adopted, one not started, one done and useful. Risks: two engineering job posts suggest they may narrow our time-to-value advantage, marked low confidence. Ask: a decision on seat pricing either way by 31 October, with the cost of doing nothing stated.
Every QBR competitive update, built on evidence
Flares tracks competitor moves continuously, so each quarter's update is assembled from dated sources rather than memory.
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