Distributor quarterly business review: agenda and template.

What the QBR is for

The weekly deal review and the monthly performance review keep the business moving. The QBR is where both sides step back and decide: is the plan working, what changes next quarter, and what each side owes the other. If nothing is decided, it was a presentation. It sits inside the rhythm set out in manage distributors like a sales team.

Who attends

From the distributor: the owner or general manager, the sales manager for your line, a product specialist, and finance or operations when stock or payment is on the agenda. From your side: the channel manager who owns the account, their manager at least twice a year, and a clinical or marketing person when the plan needs one. Six to eight people is enough. The distributor presents; you ask.

The pre-read: request it two weeks before

• Sell-out by account and product for the quarter.
• Pipeline with stage, value and expected close date.
• Stock on hand and in transit, by item, with ageing.
• Tenders submitted, won, lost and coming up.
• Competitor moves: new products, price changes, new distributors.
• Marketing, events and training delivered.
• Complaints and open quality issues.

You bring sell-in, payments, the support you delivered, and the licensed distributors that appeared in the territory this quarter. Market Watch sends those every week, free, which turns the market changes item into a list rather than a guess.

The half-day agenda

The scorecard page

Open with one page, the same layout every quarter: sell-in and sell-out against target for the quarter and the year, new accounts, weighted pipeline against the target still to reach, stock cover, days to pay, training completion and complaint handling time. The full list and why each number matters is in the distributor KPI set. Same page, same order, so trends show without a slide on each.

When the distributor misses target

Find the cause before you assign blame. Work through five in order.

1. Market: lower demand than planned, a delayed tender, a budget freeze.
2. Product: registration delays, stock-outs, a quality issue.
3. Price: deals lost on price, or margin too thin to push.
4. Distributor capacity: a rep left, or focus moved to another line.
5. Our support: late demo units, slow approvals, no clinical help.

Only one of the five is fully the distributor's. Agree an improvement plan of two or three actions, each with a measure, for 90 days, and check it at every monthly review. Incentives can help when the cause is focus; see how to incentivise distributors. Two missed quarters with a plan in place is when you look at replacing the distributor.

Worked example: single-use surgical instruments

A maker of single-use laparoscopic instruments reviews its distributor in Singapore, a market where the Index lists 232 independent distributors with surgical devices on record. The figures are an example. Sell-in is 20% under target, but sell-out is on plan: the distributor overstocked last quarter and is now running stock down. That is not a demand problem, so the target stays. One hospital has gone quiet after a competitor won its tender. The actions: a tender support price approved before the next round, a joint visit to the hospital's theatre manager, and a stock cover ceiling written into the rebate rules.

Copy this template

1. Scorecard: one page, quarter and year to date.
2. Results against plan: the gap and its causes.
3. Top accounts: status, next step, owner.
4. Pipeline and tenders: the commit for next quarter.
5. Market changes: competitors, prices, regulation, new licensed distributors.
6. Next quarter plan: targets, accounts, events, training.
7. Support asks: from them to us, and from us to them.
8. Actions: what, who, by when. First item at the next monthly review.

Common mistakes

• You present, they listen. The distributor should own the results section.
• Targets announced, not agreed.
• No pre-read, so the first hour is spent reading numbers aloud.
• Too many people in the room.
• Skipping the QBR when results are good. That is when the next plan is easiest to agree.