I previously published my results from ditching traditional QBRs for strategic planning sessions, and I started seeing a trend.

Customer Success leaders across the industry were coming to similar conclusions. QBRs weren’t working. They were too tactical, too retrospective, too focused on product metrics that operational contacts cared about but executives didn’t.

The proposed solution? The Executive Business Review, or EBR.

The pitch was compelling: Move beyond quarterly operational check-ins to annual or semi-annual strategic conversations with C-suite leaders. Elevate the relationship. Get face time with decision-makers. Focus on business outcomes instead of product features.

In theory, this made perfect sense.

In practice, I kept hearing the same complaints from the executives I was actually sitting across from.

The Industry’s EBR Playbook

Let me first acknowledge what the EBR movement got right.

Executive Business Reviews correctly identified that QBRs were failing because they lived at the wrong altitude. Operational contacts can provide product feedback and report usage metrics, but they can’t tell you whether your solution is strategically vital to the business.

Only executives can answer that question.

The Typical EBR Framework:

• Annual or semi-annual cadence (vs. quarterly QBRs)
• Executive-level attendees (C-suite or VP minimum)
• Strategic focus on business outcomes (not product features)
• Forward-looking discussions about partnership opportunities
• High-level overview of value delivered over the past year
• Industry trends and market insights
• Alignment between the vendor roadmap and the customer strategy
• Identification of expansion opportunities

On paper, this is a massive improvement over traditional QBRs.

And it is better. I’m not arguing that it isn’t.

But here’s what I discovered: Better isn’t the same as effective.

The Uncomfortable Conversations I Started Having

About three months into running our Strategic Value Sessions, I was invited to speak at a customer advisory board for one of our largest enterprise clients.

The room was full of executives. CIOs, Chief Strategy Officers, heads of digital transformation. These were the exact people that EBRs are designed to reach.

During a break, I asked them a direct question: “When vendors request Executive Business Reviews with you, what goes through your mind?”

The responses were revealing:

Executive #1 (CIO, Fortune 500 Financial Services): “I know I’m going to see a deck with 40 slides showing me metrics I don’t care about. They’ll spend 30 minutes proving they delivered what they promised, then ask if we want to expand. I only go because my team tells me the relationship is important.”

Executive #2 (Chief Digital Officer, Healthcare): “The first 45 minutes are always a product review disguised as business strategy. By the time we get to anything actually strategic, we’re out of time, and I have another meeting.”

Executive #3 (VP Strategy, Manufacturing): “I don’t need an annual meeting to tell me if a vendor is valuable. I know that from whether my teams are using it and asking for more. What I need is someone who can help me think through problems I’m actually facing.”

That last comment stopped me.

Because that’s precisely what our Strategic Value Sessions (SVS) were doing, we weren’t showing up once a year to present. We were showing up every 60-90 days to think through problems together.

The Three Things Executives Actually Don’t Want

1. Executives Don’t Want to See Tons of Metrics

The EBR philosophy emphasizes demonstrating ROI and business value delivered. In practice, this means Customer Success teams build elaborate dashboards showing adoption rates, usage metrics, efficiency gains, cost savings, and feature utilization.

All the data that operational contacts love.

Executives? They already know if you’re delivering value. If you weren’t, they would have heard about it from their team before your EBR invitation arrived.

One Chief Strategy Officer told me, “If you have to convince me with metrics that you’re valuable, I’m already questioning the relationship.”

Metrics have their place. But when they dominate the conversation, you’ve lost the executive audience in the first 10 minutes.

2. Executives Don’t Want to Spend Time Reviewing the Past

This is where EBRs fall into the same trap as QBRs, just at a higher altitude.

EBRs are better about being forward-looking, yes. But they still typically include a “year in review” section. Accomplishments achieved. Milestones met. Commitments delivered.

Here’s the problem: Executives are already drowning in retrospectives. They just finished annual planning. They’ve reviewed last year’s performance with their board. They’ve done post-mortems on what worked and what didn’t.

What they don’t have is time to think about what’s next.

A Chief Digital Officer told me, “I have 40 hours of meetings every week. If I’m giving you one of those hours, it better be about solving tomorrow’s problems, not reviewing yesterday’s wins.”

Strategic Value Sessions eliminated the retrospective. We start every session with one question: Where do you need to be in 6-12 months, and what’s in your way?

The past only matters if it informs what we’re building together next.

3. Executives Don’t Want to Be Sold To

This is the subtle trap that most EBRs walk right into.

The stated purpose of an EBR is strategic alignment and partnership. The unstated purpose that executives see immediately is identifying expansion opportunities.

Now, let me be clear: There’s nothing wrong with expansion. That’s how businesses grow. But when the entire EBR framework positions the vendor as looking for ways to sell more, executives feel it.

One CIO put it bluntly: “Every EBR follows the same script. First, they show me value delivered. Then, they show me their roadmap. Then, they show me all the ways I could be using more of their product. It’s a sales pitch in strategic clothing.”

In Strategic Value Sessions, we flip this on its head.

We don’t present our roadmap. We ask them about their roadmap. We don’t identify opportunities for them to buy more. We determine the business outcomes they need to achieve, and then we might mention how we could help.

Sometimes the MVBO we identify has nothing to do with expanding our relationship. Sometimes it’s helping them think through an organizational challenge or a market positioning problem.

And that’s okay. Because we’re not there to sell. We’re there to be useful.

When you’re actually useful, expansion happens naturally.

The Fundamental Problem: Frequency

But here’s the issue that undermines the entire EBR model, regardless of how well you execute it.

Annual or semi-annual meetings with executives are not frequent enough to build a strategic partnership.

Think about it from the executive’s perspective. You meet with a vendor in January for an EBR. You have a productive conversation about strategic priorities. Maybe you even identify some interesting opportunities.

During those six months:

• Market conditions change
• Strategic priorities shift
• New initiatives launch
• Other vendors solve the problems you discussed
• Your internal teams move forward without you

By the time you show up for the next EBR, half the conversation is reestablishing context. What’s still relevant from our last discussion? What’s changed? What are your priorities now?

You’re not building momentum. You’re restarting the conversation every time.

One VP of Strategy told me, “I can’t maintain a strategic relationship with someone I only see twice a year. I have strategic relationships with people I talk to every week and every month. Everyone else is just a vendor I occasionally meet with.”

That comment crystallized something for me.

EBRs give you access to executives. But access isn’t the same as a relationship. And a relationship isn’t the same as a strategic partnership.

What Both EBRs and SVS Get Right

Here’s what I want to acknowledge: The instinct behind both Executive Business Reviews and Strategic Value Sessions is correct.

Both recognize that:

• Traditional QBRs are too tactical and too focused on the past
• You need strategic conversations at higher altitudes
• Business outcomes matter more than product features
• The relationship should be forward-looking and collaborative

The EBR movement deserves credit for pushing the Customer Success industry in this direction.

Where they diverge is in execution and frequency.

EBRs elevated the conversation but kept the presentation format. SVS eliminated the presentation in favor of collaboration.

EBRs moved to an annual/semi-annual cadence to respect executive time. SVS operates on outcome-driven cycles (30-90 days) because strategic partnerships require continuous momentum.

EBRs focus on strategic alignment. SVS focuses on strategic value creation.

The Middle Ground Nobody Talks About

After these conversations with executives, I started testing a hypothesis.

What if we treated EBRs and Strategic Value Sessions as complementary rather than competing?

Here’s the model we’ve been experimenting with for our highest-value strategic accounts:

Strategic Value Sessions every 60-90 days (MVBO-driven):

• Collaborative workshops with executive team members
• Identify and deliver MVBOs in rapid cycles
• Build continuous momentum and generate tangible value
• Establish us as active strategic partners, not periodic vendors

Annual Executive Business Review:

• Once a year, we do a proper EBR
• But instead of proving value, we reflect on the MVBOs we delivered together.
• Instead of presenting our roadmap, we discuss how the strategic landscape has evolved.
• Instead of identifying expansion opportunities, we discuss the partnership’s long-term vision and where it could go over the next 3-5 years.

The EBR becomes the strategic capstone on top of continuous value creation through SVS.

And here’s what changed: Executives actually show up for these EBRs. Because they’re not coming to be presented to, they’re coming to reflect on what we’ve built together and think about what comes next.

One CEO told me, “This was the first vendor EBR I didn’t dread attending.”

The Honest Assessment

Look, I get why the industry gravitates toward EBRs.

They’re easier to execute than Strategic Value Sessions. You don’t need to train your CSMs in facilitation and collaborative problem-solving. You don’t need to build rapid execution capabilities for 30-60 day MVBOs. You don’t need to rethink your customer engagement model fundamentally.

You just need to elevate your QBR content and get executives in the room once or twice a year.

That’s not insignificant. It’s progress.

But let me be direct: If your goal is to become a strategic partner, annual presentations won’t get you there.

A strategic partnership requires continuous engagement, rapid value delivery, and collaborative problem-solving.

It requires showing up not with decks, but with questions, not with past performance reports, but with future-focused thinking. Not to sell more, but to help them achieve more.

What I Tell Customer Success Leaders

Do EBRs if:

• You need executive visibility, but can only commit to annual/semi-annual engagement
• Your organization isn’t ready to support rapid MVBO delivery cycles
• Your customer relationships are fundamentally transactional
• You’re managing high volumes of accounts that require standardized engagement
• Your CSMs are product experts, not facilitation experts (yet)

EBRs are better than QBRs. They’ll give you executive access and more strategic conversations. That’s valuable.

Do Strategic Value Sessions if:

• You want to transform from vendor to strategic partner
• You can deliver rapid value in 30-60 day cycles
• Your team has or can develop facilitation capabilities
• The account has high strategic value that warrants intensive engagement
• You’re focused on expansion through demonstrated value, not sales motions
• You want to differentiate in a crowded market where everyone else is doing EBRs

SVS is harder. It requires more from your organization. But it builds the kind of relationships where renewal conversations don’t exist because customers can’t imagine operating without you.

Do both if:

• You have high-value strategic accounts that warrant the investment
• Use SVS for continuous engagement and value creation (60-90 day cycles)
• Use annual EBRs as strategic capstones to reflect and envision long-term partnership
• Let mid-tier accounts stay on traditional QBRs or EBRs while you perfect the SVS model

The mistake is thinking you have to choose one model for everyone. The sophisticated approach is matching engagement intensity to account for strategic value.

The Real Question

Here’s what this all comes down to:

Are you trying to defend the relationship you have, or build the relationship you want?

EBRs help you defend. They give you executive visibility, demonstrate value, and position you for renewal.

Strategic Value Sessions help you build. They create continuous momentum, generate new value, and embed you into the customer’s strategic roadmap.

Both have their place.

But don’t confuse executive access with strategic partnership. Getting executives in the room isn’t enough. What you do when they’re there is what matters.