How to Build a Recurring Planning Meeting Cadence Beyond QBRs

Meeting cadence refers to the frequency with which you touch base with your client. Whether it’s monitoring project goals more often or avoiding overcommunication, competitive MSPs need a strategic framework that optimizes meetings, addresses pain points, and identifies upsell opportunities.

Establish a recurring meeting plan to ensure consistent alignment. This article explains how to plan efficient client meetings outside of Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for effective IT planning and management.

Tailor meeting cadence to your clients

Avoid cramming months of important progress updates into QBRs with frequent meetings or adopt a slower meeting cadence to avoid bloating your schedule with unnecessary check-ins. Here’s how you can optimize IT client meetings:

📌 Prerequisites:

• Defined categories of meetings (tactical, project, strategy, risk review)
• Clear understanding of client priorities and preferred communication style
• PSA or calendar tools to manage recurring invites and reminders
• Documented agendas and templates for each meeting type
• Governance reviews to go over meeting cadence changes

Step 1: Map meeting types to client needs

Clients that vary in size and service requirements each operate at a unique pace. Determine how much upkeep their projects require, and maintain an appropriate meeting cadence to supplement future QBRs. To do this, create a table that maps out your clients, showing frequency, audience, and purpose.

Here are the most common meeting cadence types and how long they take on average:

1. Daily huddles: 15-20 minute status updates that set shift goals and productivity barriers
2. Weekly meetings: 1-hour meetings for major milestones, progress updates, and discussions for next week’s goals
3. Bi-weekly sessions: 30-60 minute strategy planning for small-scale performance reviews and impactful team changes
4. Monthly meetings: 60-90 minute discussions involving larger projects and comprehensive reviews
5. Quarterly reviews: 90-120 minute checkpoints with upsell potential that evaluate your MSP’s alignment with client-facing dashboards while assessing necessary adjustments to service goals
6. Annual conferences: Half-day event that reflects on strategic direction, celebrates major milestones, and sets ambitious goals for the fiscal year to come

Step 2: Standardize agendas and outcomes

It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when you don’t have a goal in mind. For every meeting, set a clear agenda and outline your team’s main objectives.

This can look like removing blockers during quick check-ins or highlighting the need for centralized dashboards in a strategic project meeting.

To simplify this step, prepare agenda templates (or cheat sheets) to outline the expected IT planning outcomes.

Step 3: Balance meeting cadence to prevent overload

Increasing IT client meetings can seem productive at first, but without consistent monitoring, both sides can quickly become fatigued from the sheer number of check-ins.

A recent Microsoft study found that 68% of more than 30,000 workers attributed lost productivity to excessive meetings. Avoid disrupting your client’s business by making your huddles effective and efficient.

Set strict time limits, spread out your meetings, and only invite relevant stakeholders (for example, CTOs for project approvals or system administrators for Remote Monitoring and Management adjustments) to balance frequency with business impact.

Step 4: Automate data prep with dashboards

Important meetings require substantial amounts of data condensed into client-friendly reports and visualizations. Add endpoint management tools that demonstrate clear ROI to your toolkit for faster reports.

NinjaOne provides a single-pane-of-glass view that can automatically generate QBR-ready reports on fleet health, ticket volume, and patch compliance metrics.

Step 5: Review and adjust cadence over time

Clients must adapt to the changing needs of cybersecurity compliance as threats evolve. A recurring meeting cadence provides strategic value by keeping your MSP informed of their growing list of needs.

Add governance checkpoints to determine if the number of meetings requires adjustment. Take surveys. Remove unnecessary meetings from your calendar or combine them to eliminate overlap. And from there, tailor check-ins as needed.

Best practices for pacing IT client meetings

Automation touchpoint ideas

Managing hundreds of clients with specific expectations underscores the need for lightweight automation solutions. Streamline report generation and client invites by:

1. Using Professional Services Automation (PSA; such as ConnectWise) features to generate a recurring task for the account manager in advance.
2. Exporting relevant infrastructure reports via NinjaOne:
   1. Open/closed tickets
   2. SLA compliance
   3. Patch status
   4. Device health
3. Compiling reports into a standardized agenda packet using a specialized NinjaOne Docs template.
4. Attaching the agenda packet to the participant’s calendar invite.
5. Automating reminders for your internal team.

NinjaOne integration simplifies IT planning

NinjaOne’s all-in-one dashboard, integrated documentation platform, and backup solutions simplify cadence monitoring through custom templates and reporting tools. Here’s how:

Recalibrate meeting cadence for evolving client needs

Recurring meetings create ongoing forums that also give MSPs more opportunities to upsell additional service tiers. By mapping meeting types, standardizing goals, balancing cadence, and automating procedures, MSPs can find efficient ways to close any security gaps without exhausting their resources.

Related topics:

• 12 Essential Strategies to Improve IT Communication
• MSP Sales Outreach: Boost Response Rates with the Right Cadence
• MSP Sales Process Guide: Steps & Examples for 2025
• Understanding IT Strategic Planning