Business relationship managers often find themselves in a challenging position when asked to quantify the value of their contributions. Unlike roles that tie directly to revenue or clear-cut metrics, a business relationship manager’s value centers on relationship-building, collaboration, and strategic convergence—qualities that don’t always translate easily into numbers. This difficulty leaves business relationship managers at a disadvantage, as they struggle to validate their importance in a world driven by ROI-focused decision-making.
The Pressure to Prove Value: A Common Struggle for BRM
Executives frequently scrutinize activities through the lens of financial returns, which can lead to skepticism about the business relationship manager role. When results are hard to quantify, business relationship management (BRM) efforts risk being categorized as “nice to have” rather than “must-have.” This misunderstanding breeds frustration, self-doubt, and the need for business relationship managers to repeatedly justify their role. Forced to highlight only quantifiable outcomes, business relationship managers may feel trapped, unable to showcase the full scope of their contributions.
Finding a Solution: The BRM Leadership Dashboard
A robust BRM dashboard addresses these challenges by offering a structured, visual representation of the qualitative and quantitative value BRM brings. This dashboard doesn’t just provide metrics; it tells the story of how BRM impacts organizational culture, fosters innovation, and drives long-term results.
- Innovation and Value Creation: A dashboard that captures a business relationship manager’s role in generating new ideas and strategic opportunities helps bridge the gap, showing how BRM-driven initiatives contribute to growth.
- Partnership Health: Tracking the health of partnerships offers insight into relationship quality, trust levels, and collaborative effectiveness—all essential components that business relationship managers bring to the table.
- Engagement Levels and Behavioral Change: The dashboard tracks engagement depth, cultural shifts, and strategic convergence, underscoring BRM’s influence on organizational adaptability and alignment with core goals.
- Strategic Convergence: When BRM efforts directly support strategic objectives, it clarifies how BRM aligns with broader organizational goals, dispelling executive doubts and reinforcing BRM’s importance.
Empowering Business Relationship Managers and Bridging Organizational Gaps
By building and refining a BRM dashboard, BRM leaders can ease feelings of frustration and build confidence in their role. Executives gain visibility into BRM contributions, fostering greater understanding, trust, and ultimately, support for BRM initiatives. This dashboard becomes a shared language between business relationship managers and executives, translating intangible contributions into a comprehensive view of value.
Explore more insights and download the full article on building an impactful BRM leadership dashboard here.
Leadership Education, Training, Courses, Coaching and Consulting
Lead the Pack Consulting specializes in business relationship management (BRM) leadership development. Our years of experience in Leadership Management Education, Training, Courses, Coaching and Consulting help us support business relationship management teams and provide them with the leadership skills needed to overcome their challenges. We have provided leadership coaching to business relationship managers, leaders, and teams in a variety of organizations and industries. Since 2013, we have been a registered provider of business relationship management certification workshops and coaching.
Our coaches, Elka Schrijver and Peter Lijnse, have both won the prestigious Arnie Award from the Business Relationship Management (BRM) Institute for their work to embody, enhance, and promote business relationship management knowledge throughout the global BRM community. They have been actively involved in the BRM Institute since it was founded in 2013 and have been contributing authors for several components of the BRM Body of Knowledge and certification courses. They are currently writing a series of practical, user-friendly books about mastering business relationship management leadership skills.
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