Mark sat across from me, his coffee untouched.
He wasn’t accustomed to failure as a senior program manager with 15 years of experience and a wall full of certifications. I could feel his frustration as he described what happened.
“The customer smiled during our final review! Said we’d done fantastic work.”
“In fact, their exact words were, ‘couldn’t have asked for better execution.’ Yet we lost to a competitor who’d never worked with this agency?”
Mark’s experience isn’t unique.
Every day, highly competent PMs delivering stellar results are shocked to discover that technical excellence and on-time delivery aren’t enough to win the recompete.
THE CHALLENGE
The Intel Gap Costing You Contracts
In government contracting, winning isn’t just about execution, it’s about intelligence. And not just any intelligence, but the kind that never appears in RFPs or official communications.
The brutal truth is this: Your customer intelligence quality is directly proportional to your customer relationship quality.
And most program managers dramatically overestimate how strong their relationships are.
Consider these realities:
- A polite, cordial customer isn’t necessarily a trusting one.
- Meeting every deliverable doesn’t mean you understand their unstated priorities.
- Following PMBOK to the letter doesn’t reveal what’s frustrating your customer.
While you’re busy ensuring compliance with contractual requirements, your competitor is having coffee with your customer, learning about the budget pressures that will reshape next year’s requirements.
In fact, they’re vetting potential solutions with them long before you even get a chance to see the requirements. That’s a critical advantage that makes all the difference.
This overestimation of customer relationship quality is a very common problem.
We’ve lost count of how often we’ve received calls this year from shocked and disappointed executives who were completely blindsided by losing a recompete due to their program manager’s personality or lack of performance.
In most cases, they failed to recognize this because:
- The program manager was convinced the customer loved them,
- Leadership assumed they had a strong friendship with the customer, or
- Leadership assumed no complaints about the PM meant all was fine.
These assumptions can put recompetes at very high risk.
But here’s the good news: you can take preventative measures to protect your recompetes.
I learned so much that could be applied to all facets of relationships including with my government customer. Really enlightening and I highly recommend it for anyone in any role.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The Program Manager’s Role
You can leverage your PM’s access to protect your recompetes by building trust with the customer and getting new intel.
Your PM typically has incredible access and knowledge of the customer’s challenges and future needs.
But often they can be so focused on execution they miss larger opportunities to serve the customer.
Many PMs feel if they try to expand their current programs or discuss new opportunities with the customer, they may be perceived as “salespeople” and jeopardize their current relationships.
This is often due to a lack of BD and people skills training, which would allow them to be more skilled and comfortable having these types of conversations with customers.
I was a bit blindsided by this course in the best way possible. As a highly technical person, it put me out of my comfort zone and made me reevaluate all my relationships and interactions. You are guaranteed in the end to see things in a new light.”
Often the difference between winning or losing a recompete is how a PM leverages their customer access, relationship quality, and communication skills to outthink, outsmart, and outmaneuver those who seek to replace them without getting caught in a race to the lowest price.
To fully leverage their position, PMs must embrace their pivotal role in business development and get new, actionable intel from stakeholders.
To do this, leadership needs to reframe their perception of business development so they understand they are serving the customer by solving additional challenges and provide them the necessary BD and people skills needed to create Winning Relationships™ without resorting to sleazy sales tactics.
With training and support, PMs can overcome common obstacles in the role and maximize their impact as playmakers driving revenue growth. And by tracking your Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ), you can prevent unexpected losses by monitoring the health of your federal relationships.
