Perfect Performance, Lost Contract: The Hidden Factor Costing You Million

“We delivered every milestone. We hit every metric. Our CPARS were stellar. Yet we just lost a recompete to a competitor. The customer’s explanation? They understood our future needs better.”

This scenario isn’t just costing your firm millions in lost recompetes—it’s the predictable outcome of a critical capability gap that 87% of government contractors fail to address.

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 of certifications.

“The customer smiled during our final review. Said we’d done exemplary work. 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.

Beyond Delivery: The Intelligence 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, and vetting potential solutions with them, long before those requirements are written.

Misaligned Investments: Why Your Training Dollars are Missing The Mark

Your PMs have PMI, Agile, and ITIL certification, but can they read a room? While technical training consumes training budgets, 75% of contractors never invest in the people skills that determine recompete outcomes.

This critical gap leaves your technically excellent team vulnerable to competitors with superior people skills.

Human Intelligence Quotient: The Win Rate Advantage

The most successful organizations recognize that relationship quality is the best leading indicator of winning. So they invest in improving their teams’ Human Intelligence Quotient (HI-Q). These engagement skills focus on building winning relationships that lead to intelligence that your customers won’t explicitly state.

One government contractor implemented relationship intelligence training after losing three consecutive recompetes. Within 18 months, their win rate had improved by over 20%.

Technical excellence gets you to the table. Relationship quality wins the contract.

Beyond Intel: Customer Understanding Wins Deals

Customer intel (requirements, stakeholders, budgets) is table stakes. Customer understanding goes deeper – what they think, what matters to them, and the bigger picture. This intelligence comes from listening, focusing on them, and providing them confidence to share things they aren’t telling anyone else.

Intel is factual. Understanding is contextual and emotional.

The most successful government contracting firms don’t just collect intelligence—they develop deep customer understanding. They know the difference between the stated requirements and the actual needs. They recognize the unwritten priorities and emotional motivations that drive decisions.

This understanding becomes even more critical in today’s GovCon environment, where the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts, massive federal workforce reductions, and agency reorganizations have disrupted established relationships. When your long-standing customer contacts disappear overnight, your ability to quickly build meaningful relationships with new stakeholders determines whether you’ll retain that contract.

The Anti-Sales Method: How Connection Trumps Promotion

Many PMs recoil at the thought of “selling” to their customers. They’ve chosen project management precisely because they prefer execution to promotion. The very word “sales” conjures images of manipulation and pressure tactics.

But effective engagement isn’t about pushing products or services—it’s about developing genuine curiosity about your customer’s world. It’s about listening more than talking. About understanding before proposing. About empathy before action.

This isn’t sales training—it’s human connection training. And it’s the missing piece in most PM development programs.

Three Relationship-Building Questions for Your Next Status Review

Want to immediately elevate your customer engagement? Move beyond project updates with these three powerful questions:

• “Beyond our current project, what’s one organizational challenge that concerns you?” This opens the door to understanding pressures and priorities you’d never discover in formal communications.
• “How are the recent changes in [agency leadership/budget/policy] affecting your team’s long-term objectives?” This shows you’re thinking about their world, not just your deliverables.
• “If you could magically solve one problem in your organization, what would it be?” This reveals aspirations and frustrations that might represent future opportunities to provide value.

The key is asking, then genuinely listening. Don’t immediately jump to solutions or connections to your capabilities. Simply understand. The mere act of being heard creates trust that transactional relationships never achieve.

When you uncover their concerns, ensure your proposals explicitly address them with targeted solutions.

The Three-Layer Relationship Model That Wins Recompetes

Government contracting success requires operating simultaneously at three relationship levels:

• Transactional Excellence (PMBOK territory): Delivering precisely what you promised through disciplined project management
• Strategic Alignment (Beyond the SOW): Demonstrating you understand how your work contributes to their broader mission objectives
• Human Connection (HI-Q): Building the trust that leads to candid conversations where real priorities are revealed

Most PMs excel at the first level and often get to the second, but few nail the third. But it’s that third level – real human connection – where you discover what it takes to keep those contracts.

To scale this approach across your organization, designate relationship champions for each program who prioritize human connection and coach others on engagement techniques. Create relationship dashboards that track both delivery metrics and customer relationship quality indicators. Reward PMs for technical delivery and for gathering and sharing game-changing intel.

The PM’s Career Choice: Technical Manager or Double Threat

As a program manager in government contracting, you stand at a pivotal crossroads. You can:

• Continue focusing exclusively on execution excellence, believing that quality work speaks for itself (it doesn’t)
• Transform yourself into a ‘double threat’ where your people skills match your technical skills

The ‘double threat’ path doesn’t just win recompetes—it makes you irreplaceable to both your customer and your company.

In an era where contract extensions are becoming more common than full recompetes due to workforce constraints, your relationship quality often determines whether your contract gets extended or put out for competitive bid.

Quick Diagnosis: Does Your Team Have the HI-Q Skills Needed to Grow and Retain Contracts?

75% of contractors don’t, and they miss those unspoken customer needs that decide million-dollar awards.

The stark difference between 62% and 84% win rates isn’t technical—it’s relational. Our free HI-Q Assessment reveals whether your team consistently uses the 25 critical engagement practices that prevent being blindsided by competitors who understand the customer better. Take the 5-minute assessment now.

A little HI-Q training can go a long way to ensuring you win your recompetes, identify opportunities for on-contract growth, and improve your program execution.