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The importance of quarterly reviews and coming up for air
June 8, 2022
How long can you hold your breath underwater before coming up for air?
Unfortunately, humans haven’t mastered the skill of breathing underwater. It’s a luxury that our land-dwelling ancestors never afforded us. So instead, we experience an overwhelming life-saving urge to surface for breath and look around to figure out exactly where we’ve emerged.
Working in a fast-paced PR agency can sometimes feel like swimming underwater. Head down, plunging into the depths of KPIs, thought leadership articles, press releases, features – not to mention keeping up with industry news and events, status reports, weekly catch ups, and day-to-day email correspondence. Sometimes, the hard work we put in can be swept to one side as an instant response, news jack or global announcement suddenly means we must momentarily alter course.
It is amid this speed and volume of communication that quarterly reviews with our clients allow us to stop and assess where we are and where we’re heading. When time is tight, meetings may get pushed back or skipped, but taking a step back to look at progress and results is invaluable. These reviews provide us with an opportunity to evaluate and celebrate the hard work we’ve achieved over the past three months and plan for the next three.
Having joined Pumpkin at the end of September 2021, some of my first contact with clients was during the Q3 review meetings. And although the reviews are created for the client’s benefit, they were a very useful window into what to expect in the months ahead and offered valuable insight into the highly rewarding nature of agency work.
Quarterly reviews are essential for strong client agency relationships. It is an opportunity for clients and colleagues to share and discuss what went well and not so well, what the investment in PR achieved in terms of client reach, where new opportunities were found, what may have been missed, and what to expect on the horizon.
It is a benchmark as well as being an important meeting to stop, assess and review progress. We are now working toward our Q2 2022 reviews for clients: collecting and collating data, results, coverage and readership figures, forming learnings and recommendations and planning for the quarter ahead. These reviews keep the account teams firmly on track to meet the business goals – even when the pressure of day-to-day workload takes over.
To have all this information in one place as a quarterly review deck and to discuss our objectives for the next period with our clients, creates a vivid picture of what we want to work towards. It allows for more effective teamwork, to challenge our ways of working and produce more efficient practices, as well as to reflect on everything that’s led us to this moment. They are the dry land above water – providing clarity and focus and firm ground; they prevent us from being swept out to sea and losing sight of what’s been achieved, or where we are going.
Henry Smith