RESOURCES ⇢ ARTICLE
Your PMs: Manage Spreadsheets, Not Stakeholders, and It’s Costing You Millions
Michael managed a key account for three years. Perfect delivery. Green status reports. Weekly calls that ran like clockwork.
When asked to rate his client relationship, he confidently scored it an 8.5.
Six weeks later, the client issued an RFP.
The feedback? His “8.5 relationship” rated a 5 on their satisfaction survey. The word that stung most: “Transactional.”
In three years, Michael never negotiated scope. Never turned “Can you just add this?” into revenue. He left over $2M in expansion on the table.
The Perception Gap That Kills Revenue
PWC found 90% of executives are confident loyalty is high, but only 42% of clients agree. McKinsey research shows 99% of B2B decision-makers say trust is crucial when choosing a supplier.
Your PMs think trust comes from on-time delivery. It doesn’t.
Trust comes from uncomfortable conversations. From challenging bad ideas. From turning scope creep into strategic growth discussions.
The warning signs are everywhere:
- That PM who “has great relationships”? They’ve never negotiated an upsell.
- The one who “really knows the client”? They can’t articulate the client’s top three business challenges for next year.
- The account that’s “totally secure”? The client just met with your competitor.
What This Really Costs
Companies whose PMs hide behind spreadsheets experience:
- 23% lower renewal rates
- 41% fewer organic upsells
- An average of $2.3M in missed expansion per 100 accounts
The scope creep disaster alone is massive. Your PMs say yes to “small additions” every week. Each one represents an expansion opportunity worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Your PMs are sitting on a goldmine of retention and expansion opportunities. They’re just too busy updating project plans to see it.
Why Your Best PMs Are Your Worst Revenue Generators
Jennifer, a Chief Customer Officer, discovered something shocking: “Our highest-rated PMs for project delivery had the lowest account growth rates. They were so good at managing tasks, they never learned to manage relationships.”
Your PMs avoid growth conversations because they lack the skills. They:
- Cave on scope instead of negotiating value
- Send status reports instead of having deep conversations
- Solve surface problems instead of understanding underlying needs
- Present for 45 minutes instead of listening 70% of the time
After every meeting, your clients ask themselves:
- “Do I feel heard, or just processed?”
- “Did they help ME or just manage their project?”
Most PMs fail these tests because they’re self-focused rather than client-focused.
The 3-Point Audit
Do your PMs have real stakeholder influence? Or are competitors building the relationships your team only assumes they have?
Ask your team:
- The Business IQ Test: Can your PM articulate the client’s top 3 business challenges for the upcoming year, unrelated to your current project scope?
- The Pushback Test: When did your PM last challenge a client request because it wasn’t in the client’s best interest?
- The Crisis Test: Would your client call your PM first during a major business crisis to seek their counsel?
Most PMs score 1 out of 3. That’s not a partnership—that’s a future RFP waiting to happen.
Your Competitors Have Spotted This
While your PMs perfect spreadsheets, competitors are mastering what we call “Emotional Fixing”—the strategic skill of shifting focus from solving technical problems to serving stakeholder emotional needs.
They’re systematically uncovering hidden revenue in your shared accounts.
Your PMs won’t fix this themselves. They’ve been rewarded for task excellence their entire careers. This is a learned skill that requires a new methodology.
The Human Intelligence Gap
In a world drowning in artificial intelligence, Human Intelligence is your only sustainable competitive advantage.
Emotional intelligence isn’t a personality trait. It’s a muscle that grows with use.
Your PMs need to learn to:
- Ask Better Questions: Not “Is everything okay?” but “How is this project affecting your team, and what would make this a success for you personally?”
- Actually Listen: Move past waiting for their turn to talk. Uncover what’s not being said.
- Focus on Them: Forget deliverables. Focus entirely on what the client needs.
- Feel What They Feel: When a client says, “The timeline is tight,” your PM needs to feel the pressure they’re under.
- Go Deeper: Surface conversations get surface relationships. Dig past the obvious.
- Care Enough to Challenge: Trusted PMs push back. “I don’t think that’s the right approach for your long-term objective.”
This isn’t soft skill training. It’s human intelligence training—because follow-on business isn’t won on spreadsheets. It’s won on relationships.
Find Out If Your PMs Are Killing Your Growth
Take this 2-minute quiz for a Customized Risk Report showing if your PMs are:
- Overlooking key intel and growth opportunities
- Lacking skills to differentiate your offering
- Silently killing deals in key meetings
Or book a 15-minute strategy call to discuss your specific situation.
summary
Your PMs are brilliant at managing projects but terrible at managing relationships—and it’s quietly destroying millions in revenue. They think their “great relationships” are solid until clients issue RFPs and rate them “transactional.” The gap isn’t technical competence—it’s human intelligence. While your PMs perfect spreadsheets, they miss the signals hiding $2M+ in expansion: scope requests that should be contract mods, client frustrations that reveal new opportunities, and strategic challenges they never ask about. Your competitors are training their teams to recognize these signals and turn delivery conversations into growth. The question isn’t whether your PMs need these skills—it’s whether you’ll develop them before you lose your next recompete.
FAQ:
How can I tell if my PMs actually have strong client relationships or just think they do?
Ask them three questions: (1) Can they articulate the client’s top 3 business challenges for next year, unrelated to your current project? (2) When did they last challenge a client request because it wasn’t in the client’s best interest? (3) Would the client call them first during a major business crisis for counsel, not just project issues? Most PMs score 1 out of 3. That’s not a partnership—that’s a transactional relationship one RFP away from ending.
What’s actually costing us revenue if our PMs are delivering projects on time and on budget?
Every time a PM says “yes” to scope creep without negotiating value, you lose tens to hundreds of thousands in expansion revenue. Multiply that across your portfolio, and you’re looking at $2.3M in missed revenue per 100 accounts. Your PMs are also failing to spot intelligence hiding in plain sight: clients mentioning budget constraints, frustrations with other vendors, or upcoming strategic challenges. Competitors with trained PMs are capturing that intel and positioning while your team updates project plans.
Won’t teaching PMs to focus on growth make them seem like pushy salespeople and damage relationships?
The opposite. Growth-capable PMs don’t pitch—they ask better questions. Instead of “Is everything okay with the project?” they ask, “How is this project affecting your team?” When a client requests something outside scope, they don’t immediately say yes or pull up a sales deck—they explore what’s driving that need. Trust isn’t built solely on on-time delivery. It’s built through uncomfortable conversations, challenging bad ideas, and caring enough to understand what the client actually needs. That’s not sales—that’s human intelligence.
What separates a PM who can drive growth from one who can’t?
Emotional intelligence, trained curiosity, and opportunity recognition—what we call Hi-Q (Human Intelligence). A growth-capable PM notices when something feels off in a meeting and asks about it. They hear “Can you just add this?” and think “unfunded requirement” rather than “more work.” They listen 70% of the time instead of presenting for 45 minutes. They can articulate why a client is frustrated even when the client hasn’t said it directly. These aren’t personality traits—they’re learnable skills. But your PMs won’t develop them on their own because they’ve been rewarded for task excellence their entire careers.
