DEVELOPING YOUR TEAM'S HUMAN-IQ can transform customer relationships and secure your revenue pipeline.

“WASHINGTON TECHNOLOGY” – By Nick Coppings

“How developing your teams human-IQ can transform customer relationships and secure your revenue pipeline. Organizations with high recompete win rates understand that relationship quality is the best leading indicator of winning.”

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“We lost HOW MUCH?” The chief growth officer’s voice echoed through the boardroom. Another “sure thing” recompete lost. Not due to pricing, performance issues, or even technical shortfalls.

The customer’s feedback was brutally simple: “We felt the winner understood our future needs better.”

This blindspot—investing heavily in technical excellence while neglecting relationship intelligence—costs government contractors hundreds of millions annually. Your team delivers flawlessly on what’s written in the contract, yet competitors who uncover the customer’s unstated needs walk away with your revenue.

TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE: NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT

You’ve built a team of certified program managers who deliver on time and on budget. Your CPARS are stellar, yet you’re still losing recompetes. The reason isn’t your technical capabilities. It’s your limited engagement skills.

While your team focuses on requirements, competitors focus on understanding the customer’s evolving needs.

THE $35M LESSON

A mid-tier defense contractor with five years of flawless delivery lost their $35M DoD recompete to a smaller competitor. Their CPARS ratings? Perfect. Technical solution? Superior. Yet they lost.

The post-award debrief revealed why: while they documented requirements, their competitor embedded with stakeholders, uncovering an unwritten agency priority shift toward integrated digital services—intelligence never hinted at in the solicitation.

“They didn’t just execute our requirements,” the government PM explained pointedly. “They understood where we were going next.”

The aftermath? A $35 million revenue hole that took 12 months to fill, a rushed reorganization, and the need to scale back growth plans for the coming fiscal year.

THE 75% VULNERABILITY: MISALIGNED TRAINING INVESTMENTS

Your PMs have PMI, Agile, and ITIL certification, but can they read a room? While technical training consumes 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

Organizations with high recompete win rates understand 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.

TURN CHECK-INS INTO INTEL GOLD MINES

Transform routine meetings with these types of questions:

• What new challenges is your team facing this month?

• In the last few weeks, have any changes come up in [mention something relevant like who’s on the team, how things are done, short-term goals] or that we need to pay attention to?”

Don’t jump to solve the new problem, just listen. When customers feel heard, they share what they tell no one else. Follow up with:

• Why is this issue becoming more important now?

• How might this affect your mission objectives?

• What’s leadership’s perspective on this?

By asking these simple questions, listening to the answers, and then going deeper with additional questions, while not rushing to provide a solution, your team can turn regular project meetings into opportunities to gather critical customer intel that could potentially win your next recompetes.

THE THREE LEVELS THAT LEAD TO WINS

Winning a recompete requires:

1. Deliver what was Contracted

2. Connecting to Their Goals: Show you care about them achieving their mission.

3. Human Intelligence Quotient: Creating real connections that help you understand what they need but haven’t written down.

Most firms are okay at the first, sometimes get to the second, but not many nail the third. But it’s that third level – real human connection – where you discover what it takes to keep those contracts.

5-MINUTE FIX: PROTECT YOUR PIPELINE

Does your team have the HI-Q skills to fully understand your customers?  

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.

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.