Measuring the Effectiveness of Your BRM Capability…When You Don’t Have a Formal BRM Capability

Photo by Russ Hendricks

Though my organization does not officially implement the Business Relationship Management process or BRM capability, BRM is really my role. As a ‘stealth BRM,’ in lieu of established metrics, I look more closely for qualitative measurements of business partner satisfaction. Some of the ‘tells’ are:

• Genuine smiles when I meet with them
• More frequent engagements initiated by the business partner
• Introductions to more staff members within their department
• More calls about services we haven’t yet discussed

This last ‘measurement’ particularly shows me that trust is increasing. Even though I don’t have official metrics, the frequency of our interactions can be counted, and when I see that interactions with a business partner are occurring further and further apart, I know it is time to reach out.

If scheduling a brief in-person meeting isn’t practical, reaching out either by phone or email (preferably the former) can suffice as long as you remember that ‘value add’ feature of the BRM role. When meeting in-person, after asking a simple opening question to see what is new, I listen. As a communications professor at the University of Washington tells his students, “Don’t strive to be interesting, be interested.” This means really listening.

In addition to my business partners’ direct answers, the metaphors or repeated phrases they use can also tell me how things are going for them. At the end of the day, quiz yourself on your listening skills—which conversations do you remember the most clearly and why?

Another metric that can help you check yourself include asking yourself the following questions:

• Are your colleagues referring business partners to you?
• Are your business partners referring other potential business partners to you?
• How wide is your network?
• How many contacts did you make this week? Did this involve reconnecting with current business partners and/or new ones?

If the answers to the questions are positive, trust is clearly increasing, and more importantly, influence is too.