My results meeting template

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When was the last time a monthly results conversation with a business leader went perfect for you?

Never?
Last week?
It’s been a while?

If you’re anything like me, then your instinct is to want to help the business get better at everything RIGHT NOW!

But trying to drive everything forward at once means precisely nothing will drive forward.

That’s why I want to share with you my step-by-step guide to having effective results conversations with business leaders:

You must over-prepare

Maybe you are extra special and can present complex financial storylines without preparation…

But I’ve yet to see someone do that well. And every time I try, I find myself stressing before the meeting.

So your goal is to prepare so much that it looks like you didn’t prepare.

• This often looks (and feels) like you remembering key stats mid-conversation

• Keeping a conversational tone throughout the discussion

• Not needing to rely on your notes for key takeaways

But you don’t unlock this level of fluency without over-preparation.

And here’s my exact process for preparing for a results conversation.

The day before the meeting, I’ll go through each KPI or result from top to bottom and make sure I know exactly what drove the variance to PY, Budget, Prior Forecast, PM, etc.

Which means I’ll fill up an entire page of a notebook with the $/% variances and the drivers.

Then I’ll go back through highlight the 3-5 trends that are concerning, favorable, or continuations of the previous storyline (more on this in a bit).

I’ll then script out exactly what I want to say during the results conversation… word-for-word. The trick is doing this in my exact tone of voice.

Then I’ll go back through and rewrite the script but this time leveraging abbreviated sentences. Here’s an example of what that looks like in my notes:

• Original script: revenue came in well over budget at +5.2% driven by an increase in average order value from product A. the variance to PY was +1.3% which is in line with prior months variances.

• Abbreviated script: Rev +5.2%, AOV product A, PY in line

Which means my final version of notes goes from a full page down to just a few bullet points.

Since I went through the full exercise of thinking about exactly what I’ll say, I can use my abbreviated script to glance at my notes if I ever get lost - then the full storyline will pop back into my head.

Only 3 highlights

A common mistake I see with finance teams and their results meetings is that they’ll try to cover 10 slides and 15 key takeaways in only 60 minutes.

Good luck having meaningful conversation about anything - especially the most important things.

Instead, rely on your pre-read to solve the issue of covering most of the facts and leverage the meeting to have a discussion about the most important 3 highlights.

Which means your pre-read material should call out the 3 things you want to discuss in the meeting so people are focused in their preparation.

Think about it from a business leader lens - they are juggling 100 different things every day. If you can distill the success of their operation into 3 key things that need to get done, your odds of actually driving those forward is much higher.

This also allows you as the finance leader to focus on only a few things each month and go much deeper with your analysis.

It’s a win-win.

It’s a discussion, not a presentation

This last nugget is a huge pet peeve of mine.

Great business leaders don’t need a presentation about the results.

They want a simple discussion:

• What is off

• What is the reason

• What are our options

• What happens if it continues

That’s it.

So drop the whole orchestration and theatrics.

It’s entirely selfish to make someone sit through your presentation.

Be brief, be bright, be gone.

In summary:

Driving results in an organization often comes down to the monthly results conversation.

And finance professionals have a knack for making it harder on themselves than they need to.

Put in extra work up front to prepare well, narrow your focus down to 3 areas, then turn the meeting into a discussion.

This will put you in the top 10% of finance leaders.

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