COMMENTARY: Why the quality of your customer relationship matters

As a growth officer, you strive for consistent, predictable organic growth. But that’s hard to achieve when you keep losing bids you were sure you’d win. The missing key performance indicator on your dashboard is customer relationship quality, and it ensures you’ll never lose a contract again because of overestimated relationship quality.

What is Customer Relationship Quality or QRQ?

CRQ isn’t about casual conversation or how often you chat about their customer's favorite sports team. It’s how deeply your team is engaged and how much the customer values you as a partner. High CRQ ensures your team stops guessing or making assumptions because they have the customer’s answer.

Why Sure Things Fail

Mary, a seasoned growth officer, was blindsided when her team lost a recompete, which they considered a sure thing. The customer liked Mary’s team, but the winner understood their emerging needs better. Without CRQ, Mary’s team overestimated their relationship, mistaking ‘being liked’ for trust.

3 Signs Your CRQ is Weak

Teams often mistake casual chit-chat for good relationship quality. Being liked isn’t the same as being trusted; trust comes from connecting, understanding, and providing value. Have you recently experienced any of the following?

1.          Proposals lack clear differentiators because you didn’t understand the competition and customer’s needs well enough to know what set your solution apart.

2.          Surprise losses to competitors: everything appeared great until suddenly it didn’t.

3.          Unnoticed changes in acquisition strategies until it was too late.

All of these likely resulted in a loss for you. So, you know firsthand the pain of removing millions in forecast revenue.

Why Traditional KPIs Are Failing You

Traditional key performance indicators (like win rates) are lagging indicators. CRQ is different. It’s a leading indicator that tells you whether you’re doing the right things to impact future wins. This is why the best-performing companies focus on CRQ as a leading indicator—and it works. The Deltek 2023 Clarity Report showed that top organizations achieved:

•            87% win rates on new opportunities

•            80% on recompetes

Their secret? They don't just check off meetings on a contact plan. They measure CRQ and treat it like an asset.

What High CRQ Looks Like

When high CRQ exists, there is no need for assumptions. Your team will:

•            Uncover customer needs and priorities long before the RFP drops.

•            Identify all the stakeholders, not just the obvious ones.

•            Continuously refine and vet solutions based on customer input.

•            Build trust that leads to repeat wins and strategic expansions.

How to Build Winning Relationships with CRQ

Without a CRQ metric, Mary did not know where her team stood with their customers. She partnered with Hi-Q Group to address this and integrated CRQ into the processes and culture.

Here’s the framework we used (you can too):

1.          Define CRQ: Establish clear criteria for defining CRQ. For example, a great relationship is one where your team understands the customer’s top strategic objectives, funding constraints, emerging needs, and stakeholder priorities. In a negative relationship, your team is limited to surface-level discussions, lacks stakeholder engagement, or misunderstands evolving needs.

2.          Measure CRQ: Use a standardized assessment tool. The tool should estimate relationship quality, making it easy to quantify something that is often considered intangible.

3.          Integrate CRQ into Processes: Embed CRQ into account reviews, pipeline meetings, gate decisions, and capture strategies. When pursuing an account or opportunity, use CRQ metrics to identify gaps and assign those with the best CRQ to help.

4.          Train Your Team: Empower all customer-facing team members with the skills to engage customers, develop relationships, gather intelligence, and share it internally.

CRQ: Your Competitive Advantage

High CRQ ensures you never have to guess where you stand with a customer. Instead of waiting for disappointing debriefs, you’ll have the tools to continually assess your relationship and intelligence quality. This is how you outmaneuver competitors and ensure sustainable organic growth.

Measure What Matters

Winning goes beyond friendly chats and surface-level intelligence. CRQ is a differentiator and growth accelerator… it’s also the missing KPI on most dashboards. If you are tired of losing contracts and playing guessing games, it’s time to shift the focus.

Ask yourself:

•            Do we understand our customers' priorities and emerging needs?

•            Are we measuring the real strength of our customer relationships?

•            Do we know that good relationships go far beyond a friendly chat?

•            Are we engaging with all key stakeholders or just the ones we are comfortable with?

Stop guessing and start winning. Add CRQ to your dashboard. Define it. Measure it. Act on it. When you know your customer better than anyone else, you don’t just compete—you win.

As Senior Partner at Hi-Q Group, Nic Coppings brings over 20 years of experience in the Government market, helping organizations secure billions in contract wins. Our training programs transform customer engagement, equipping your whole customer-facing team with the skills to build Winning Relationships® that drive growth. Ready to stop guessing and start winning? Learn how the Hi-Q CRQ Assessment can transform your team. Schedule a time to chat here.