agency-qbr-upsell

name

agency-qbr-upsell

description

Run agency quarterly business reviews that expand accounts - the four-part QBR agenda (results retrospective, goal re-alignment, roadmap, expansion proposal), an expansion trigger inventory, land-and-expand sequencing, and price-increase timing. Use when an agency owner says "our QBRs are just bigger status meetings", "how do I grow existing retainers", "when do I raise this client's price", or "the client's goals changed and our scope didn't". Do NOT use for SaaS customer-success QBRs run by a CS team - use customer-success-qbr instead.

Agency QBR Upsell

The cheapest revenue an agency will ever win is the next $2,000/month from a client already paying $6,500 - no pitch, no audit, no onboarding cost, and it lands at existing margin. The costly mistake this skill prevents is the QBR-as-status-meeting: ninety minutes of recap with no proposal, which wastes the one scheduled moment each quarter when the client's decision-makers are in the room expecting to talk about the future. Every QBR ends with a forward-looking ask - an expansion, a renewal confirmation, or a repriced scope.

Work the example agency throughout: Northbeam Digital, an 8-person marketing agency with 11 retainer clients averaging $6,500/month and a 62 percent gross margin target. The QBR is the top rung of the cadence ladder in client-comms-cadence; a founder attends every one.

Operating procedure

Step 1: Prepare from the record, and gate on capacity

Pull the quarter's three monthly reports from agency-monthly-report - the QBR retrospective is those reports rolled up, never a new analysis the client has not seen. Pull the client's margin from retainer-economics-calculator, because margin decides the play:

• Client at or above the 50 percent floor: expansion candidate.
• Client below 50 percent: the QBR proposal is a reprice or re-scope, not more scope at the same broken rate.
• Client below the 30 percent fire-or-fix line two months running: the QBR is the fix conversation.
• Agency above 85 percent utilization: do not propose expansions anywhere until capacity exists - sold-but-undeliverable expansion is churn with extra steps.

Step 2: Run the four-part agenda (60 minutes)

1. Results retrospective (15 min). The quarter against the goals set last QBR, led by the client's metric-that-matters. Misses stated plainly with corrections - by now none of this is news, per the no-surprises rule in client-comms-cadence.
2. Goal re-alignment (15 min). Ask before telling: "What changed in the business this quarter? What is the number you're on the hook for next quarter?" Goals drift every quarter; a scope aligned to last year's goals is a churn risk hiding in plain sight. This section is where expansion triggers surface.
3. Roadmap (15 min). Next quarter's plan inside current scope, tied to the re-aligned goals.
4. Expansion proposal (15 min). One proposal, sized and priced, connected to something the client said in section 2. One, not a menu.

Step 3: Work the expansion trigger inventory

Listen for these in section 2; each maps to a concrete proposal shape:

• New goal or KPI ("we need to hit $X by Q4") → scope extension serving it directly.
• Seasonal spike ahead (holiday, event, launch) → a 2-3 month sprint on top of the retainer - easiest first expansion because it is bounded.
• Adjacent channel mentioned ("we keep meaning to do something with email") → land-and-expand into it.
• New budget owner or funding → re-anchor goals, then propose at the new ambition level.
• Client asks for anything out of scope during the quarter → the QBR is where it gets priced instead of absorbed. Unpriced scope creep is how healthy clients drift toward the margin floor.

Step 4: Sequence land-and-expand

Expand one bounded step at a time: retainer → one adjacent channel as a 90-day pilot with its own success metric → pilot folds into an enlarged retainer at the next QBR if the metric hits. Northbeam's pattern: Bluepine Outdoors landed at $7,000/month for paid social; the Q2 QBR surfaced email as an adjacent channel; a $2,500/month 90-day email pilot was proposed with a revenue-per-send target; at the Q3 QBR it folded in at $9,000/month total. One step per quarter - proposing three new channels at once reads as invoice-padding and usually loses all three.

Step 5: Time price increases to the QBR

Raise prices at a QBR immediately following a strong quarter - never mid-quarter, never by email, never in the same breath as delivering bad results.

• Standard annual increase: 5-10 percent for healthy accounts, framed against documented results and rising delivery scope.
• Below-floor clients: the increase is whatever restores the 50 percent margin floor per retainer-economics-calculator, presented with the re-scope alternative ("same price, adjusted scope") so the client keeps a choice.
• Give one full quarter's notice, effective at the next renewal date, in writing after the meeting.
• If a priced-right increase triggers churn language, that is a client-churn-save conversation - do not preemptively cave in the room.

Inputs to collect

• The quarter's three monthly reports and the goals set at the last QBR.
• Per-client margin and agency utilization from retainer-economics-calculator.
• Out-of-scope requests logged during the quarter.
• Any known client-side changes (budget cycle, new leadership, seasonal calendar); label secondhand intel as unconfirmed.

Worked artifact: expansion proposal skeleton

EXPANSION PROPOSAL - [FILL: client] - [FILL: quarter]

You said: "[FILL: the client's own words from goal re-alignment]"

Proposal: [FILL: one scope addition, e.g. 90-day email program pilot]
Success metric: [FILL: one number and target, e.g. $18k email-attributed
  revenue by day 90]
Price: $[FILL]/month for [FILL] months, then reviewed at next QBR
Starts: [FILL: date, contingent on access/assets by FILL date]

If the metric hits, we fold this into the core retainer at the next QBR.
If it doesn't, it ends cleanly and we'll say so first.

Deliverable

A QBR deck and a one-page proposal: the quarter's results rolled up from the monthly reports, next quarter's re-aligned goals in the client's words, the roadmap, and one priced expansion (or reprice) with a success metric and a start date - plus the written price-change notice where one was agreed.

Do NOT

• Do not run a QBR without a proposal; a status meeting at QBR scale trains the client that nothing here requires a decision.
• Do not propose a menu of expansions - one proposal tied to one thing the client said. Menus get "we'll think about it."
• Do not expand a below-floor client at current rates; more scope at a losing margin digs the hole faster.
• Do not raise prices mid-quarter or by surprise email; the QBR after a strong quarter is the slot.
• Do not skip goal re-alignment because the goals "haven't changed" - undetected goal drift is the top source of "great work, but we're going another direction."
• Do not sell expansion the delivery team cannot staff; check the 85 percent utilization line first.

Quality bar

• The retrospective contains no numbers the client has not already seen in a monthly report.
• Next quarter's goals are written in the client's words, not the agency's.
• Exactly one expansion or reprice proposal, with a price, a success metric, and a start date.
• Price increases come with one quarter's notice, in writing.

Escalation and neighbors

Install after agency-monthly-report - three strong reports are the QBR's raw material. Margin and capacity gates come from retainer-economics-calculator; QBR scheduling and attendance from client-comms-cadence. Won expansions get papered with statement-of-work-writer. If the QBR surfaces churn language instead of expansion appetite, switch to client-churn-save before proposing anything.