Like Any Great Relationship, It Takes Nurturing

By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group

I coached a pursuit team through eight months to win an engagement large enough that people across the firm were tracking it long before the client even sent out the RFP. I sat in the room the night before the final presentation while they rehearsed the pitch twice, tweaked their slide deck, and ran it again. Somebody ordered pizza nobody ate. Two weeks later the call came through that they had won. The partner leading the team called me with the good news before he called his own boss.

Three months later I had lunch with that same partner. I asked how the engagement was going and he gave me the kind of answer that tells you as much by his body language and tone, as the words he used. Half the team that won the work was now onto other things. Onboarding had been dragging. He had only been to the client's offices twice since the contract was signed, both times for scheduled status meetings. Everything had peaked the day the contract was signed. Then, the great stall began.

The Celebration Ends, the Relationship Doesn't

A marriage does not run on the energy of the wedding day. You plan the wedding for months and then you spend the next forty years learning more about, and growing with the person you married. The couples who treat the wedding as the finish line are the ones sitting in counseling five years later wondering what happened.

A house is the same way the morning after closing. The inspection is done, the papers are signed, and now the roof still needs attention and the pipes still age. Ignore them long enough and you will be dealing with a flood, not a drip.

The pursuit had a finish line, months of preparation building toward one decision and a signature on a contract. The client expected everything to continue at the same pace, with the same urgency and energy. They chose you over your competitors, they told their own boss why your firm was the best choice, and every week that goes by without the urgency they were promised is a week that makes their decision look worse.

That is the real cost of the great stall. Not a single dramatic failure, but a client quietly recalibrating what they think they bought. By the time the account team notices the relationship has cooled, the client has usually already noticed first, and started taking calls from whomever they turned down the first time.

What a Different Team Did in Week One

I watched a different team handle the same moment completely differently. Ten days after signing, the partner called me, not to celebrate, but to talk through a candidate she had identified to manage the entire engagement, Andrew. She had watched him on a smaller account and wanted him on this one as project manager, but with a wider lens than the title suggested. She wanted him watching the relationship, managing deadlines and deliverables, and staying alert to opportunities to improve and grow the engagement.

When Andrew was introduced to the client, his first move was a question directed at the client, asked sincerely and without an agenda attached. "What are you personally being measured on this year?" The client told him, in detail, things that had never once appeared in the statement of work. Andrew wrote it all down, brought it back to his team, and told them this was now their charter. Not the contract, the client's personal plan.

Align Before You Deliver

A year later, that team was still measuring themselves against the client's personal goals, not the contract terms. They had realigned twice already. The client's own company went through a reorganization, and the executive who had sponsored the original engagement picked up two new business units overnight. Andrew's team adjusted their plan within a week of hearing about them, before the client even asked them to.

The partner, Andrew, and the entire team kept meeting new people across the client's organization, long before there was any urgency to do so. None of it was complicated. It was just uncommon, because it required deciding on purpose to keep operating with the urgency that won the engagement instead of assuming the win meant the hard work was done. Two years in, that client expanded the scope twice without a competitive process.

Look at Your Own Accounts

Take a fresh look at your existing engagements. Who is your team, and how are they nurturing the client relationship? Do they know what your client is personally being measured on this year? Did they even think to ask?

If you cannot answer these with confidence, you have found a relationship that is at risk of deteriorating. The good news is the fix is not complicated either. It just requires deciding, on purpose, that the wedding was not the marriage.

Mitchell Schuckman is the Founder and CEO of The Schuckman Group LLC. He is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed by the International Coaching Federation and the author of I'll Tell You a Great Story. theschuckmangroup.com

Note on privacy: Names and identifying details have been changed. The experiences described are drawn from multiple client engagements and do not represent any single individual.