Tom was the Program Manager of his organization’s longest-running program.
Like most PMs, his busy days focused on execution, never feeling the need to bring up anything outside of the current scope of work.
He felt he already had a great relationship with his DOD customers. There were never any communication issues. He quickly resolved operation problems, and they often shared jokes or chatted about sports or plans for the weekend.
Tom’s organization had been the incumbent on this program for over 20 years, and there was little doubt in his mind they would retain it.
Although the recompete RFP contained a few surprises…
Tom remained confident, saying, “Don’t worry, we got this—they love us.”
Tom couldn’t have been more wrong.
The award went to a competitor, and while they celebrated their win…
Tom’s organization was in shock.
They were left contemplating what had gone wrong, panicked about how to fill the revenue gap, and worried about having to lay off some of their longest-serving employees.
Sound familiar?
Tom made the error of assuming casual chats and lack of complaints meant he had great customer intimacy and customer understanding.
Why wouldn’t he? His organization didn’t have a standard definition or any objective ways for him to measure customer intimacy, and he never received any relationship training.
So, Tom made assumptions and shared them with his leadership.
Overly optimistic and suffering from confirmation bias, they were happy to believe him!
An often-quoted Bain & Company statistic shows that 80% of executives believe their teams deliver superior customer experience, but only 8% of customers agree.
This 72% gap isn’t just embarrassing—it’s a significant barrier to success that leaders must overcome.
This problem is so widespread, there is a good chance this silent killer is already in your organization, leaving you to endure the frustration, embarrassment, and anger of explaining to your leadership how a competitor just won your “sure thing.”
Why do people overestimate relationship quality?
The answer often lies in human nature and workplace dynamics.
Let’s explore some of the reasons:
- Reluctance to Engage: Employees rationalize avoiding customer interactions. They focus on the negatives rather than how each engagement is an opportunity to help the customer.
- Fear of Negative Perceptions: Concerns about appearing ‘salesy’ or intrusive can limit meaningful engagement.
- Misreading Casual Engagements: Small talk and jokes are mistaken for customer intimacy.
- Confirmation Bias: People seek evidence confirming their belief that the relationship is strong, ignoring negative signals.
- Misinterpreted Courtesy: Professional politeness is often confused with loyalty or satisfaction.
- Lack of Honest Feedback: Customers’ reluctance to provide negative feedback can create a false sense of security.
- Overvaluing Longevity: Long-term relationships are assumed to be strong, even when they may have weakened.
- Past Success Fallacy: Previous achievements are seen as guarantees of future relationship quality without maintaining active engagement and trust-building.
Understanding these factors is crucial for accurately assessing and improving customer relationships.
This avoidant behavior results in limited intel gathering and increases the likelihood that assumptions will be used instead of validated facts in opportunity or gate reviews.
Losing a recompete can be the difference between celebrating a successful year and laying off teammates. As a leader, it’s crucial to prevent situations like Tom’s from happening in your organization.
Here are some steps you can take:
1. watch for the warning signs
The front-line team often misses the subtle human clues crucial to relationship success.
These invisible weaknesses in your customer relationships are like a cancer that goes undetected until the damage is irreversible.
As a Leader, you are responsible for recognizing over-estimated relationship symptoms as early as possible. These include:
- Limited Engagement: Your Team never engages the customer outside of formal status or review meetings.
- One-Way Communication: Your Team eagerly provides capability briefings, white papers, demos, and solutions but gets little intelligence in return.
- Limited Account Penetration: Relationships are limited to operational contacts or the same customer stakeholders without more strategic customer engagement.
- Same Intel: Your Team asks similar questions and gets the same intelligence as your competitors, offering your proposal team no competitive discriminators.
Often, when you identify these symptoms, you may already be at risk of losing the opportunity.
2. Define Relationship Quality and Measure it
You can’t improve what you can’t measure, and you can’t consistently measure something that is poorly defined.
Most organizations don’t have an agreed definition or way to measure customer relationship quality (CRS), leaving this to individual interpretation, unvalidated assumptions, and misinterpretation.
Our customers use the Hi-Q Customer Relationship Score (CRS) assessment to overcome this challenge. This 6-level scale standardizes definitions and objectively self-assesses an individual’s customer relationship quality.
The Hi-Q CRS Assessment is valuable for validating your team’s quality assumptions. It also provides a way to track relationship quality at individual, account, and opportunity levels.
Think of this assessment as the “canary in the coal mine” providing the warning needed before it’s too late and this silent killer strikes again.
Businesses need to constantly evaluate how they do business with people. [This training] will create a team enabled to build deep embedded partnerships that provide the business long term, sustainable and desirable results across the organization.
I frankly did not know what to expect being a PM and not in a traditional BD role. I learned so much that could be applied to all facets of relationships including with my government customer. Really enlightening and I highly recommend for anyone in any role not just BD.
