Qbr Account Planning

---
name: qbr-account-planning
description: "Veteran playbook for freight key-account work — the QBR agenda and deck structure (partnership recap, value delivered, honest assessment, next-quarter goals, joint action plan), the account-plan template (relationship map, whitespace, growth plays, risks), service-recovery, incumbent defense, and the account-health read. Consulted by key-account-manager."
---

# QBR & Account Planning Skill

**Purpose:** help `key-account-manager` run reviews and build plans that retain and grow accounts by leading with the **customer's** outcomes. Activity is never the headline.

## When to use
- Preparing a Quarterly Business Review.
- Building or refreshing an account plan.
- Recovering a service failure or defending an account going to tender.

## 1. QBR structure (the deck)
A strong freight QBR has five parts, in this order:
1. **Partnership recap** — period, scope, lanes, volumes handled. One slide, factual.
2. **Value delivered** — tied to the **customer's** KPIs: on-time delivery %, cost saved vs benchmark/prior, claims/exceptions and how they were resolved, visibility/reporting improvements. This is the heart; lead with their results.
3. **Honest assessment** — what was hard this quarter (a delayed lane, a billing issue), owned plainly. Credibility comes from candor; a too-perfect QBR isn't believed.
4. **Next-quarter goals** — the **customer's** objectives (new markets, peak readiness, cost targets) and how you'll support them.
5. **Joint action plan** — concrete actions, **named owners, dates** — on both sides. A QBR without a joint action plan is a status meeting.

**Cadence:** quarterly for key accounts; align to the customer's planning rhythm. Bring data, not slides-of-words.

## 2. Account plan template
- **Account overview & supply-chain footprint** — what they make/move, origins/destinations, seasonality, volumes.
- **Relationship/decision map** — champion, economic buyer, operational users, blockers, and *coverage* (single-threaded = risk). Plan to widen.
- **Share-of-wallet vs whitespace** — what they buy from you vs what they buy elsewhere: modes (air vs ocean), lanes, customs brokerage, warehousing/contract logistics, insurance, value-added services. Whitespace is the growth map.
- **Growth plays** — ranked, each with the value, the give-get, the owner, and the trigger/timing.
- **Risks** — incumbency challenge timing, single-thread, service debt, contract/renewal dates.
- **12-month plan** — quarterly milestones tied to the customer's calendar.

## 3. Whitespace & cross-sell (the cheap growth)
Growing a happy account beats winning a cold one on every cost metric. Natural next buys: add lanes, mix modes (move their air spend partly to sea or vice-versa where it fits), customs brokerage, warehousing/3PL, cargo insurance, track-and-trace/reporting, and peak-season capacity commitments.

## 4. Service recovery (the retention moment)
A delay, damage, or customs hold handled **visibly and fast** retains and grows better than a quiet flawless quarter. The sequence: **acknowledge fast → contain/fix → root-cause honestly → prove the fix with data → ask for the next opportunity.** Convert the incident into trust.

## 5. Incumbent defense
Defend **before** the tender drops — by RFQ time the relationship lever is mostly spent. Reinforce delivered value (bring the QBR numbers), widen relationships, pre-empt with a give-get re-rate, and make the **switching cost** (integration, KPIs, trust, onboarding effort) explicit and real.

## 6. Account-health read
Green/Yellow/Red on: volume trend, margin trend, service KPIs (on-time, claims), relationship coverage (single vs multi-thread), engagement (QBR attendance, responsiveness), and contract/renewal proximity. A Red on any one is a retention action, not a footnote.

## Hand-offs
- A re-rate or new-lane price for a growth play → `freight-pricing-mechanics` skill / `freight-rate-quoter`.
- The account goes to competitive tender → `rfq-tender-response` skill / `rfq-tender-strategist`.
- Pulling the growth/forecast numbers → `pipeline-forecasting` skill / `pipeline-forecast-coach`.