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: