Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 3The Diamond of Opportunity

Sun gushes through an open window and pools on Susie Krueger's orange desk and lampshades. Susie loves orange; she says it puts her in a good mood. A quiet breeze spills in, rustling the leaves on her Spanish ivy.

Susie is a director at PIE and an accomplished facilitator. One of her projects is wrangling Am Law 100 chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) for her client, Thomson Reuters, the nearly $6B information services company headquartered in Toronto. She says:

I'm focused. For 10 years we've been delivering great value to the Thomson Reuters team, helping them create substantive relationships with their most-likely buyers. We know they're happy, because they renew our contract every year and tell us how much they love working with PIE.

Susie has been able to grow the relationship little by little, but she's keenly aware that PIE hasn't yet been able to open the floodgates to the full breadth of potential work with them. She continues,

There is so much more we could be doing to help other parts of Thomson Reuters. We've managed to put them in a place where they are talking to CFOs and CIOs of the largest law firms – their exact target. They know our work. They know we do a great job for them.

But when she says, “they know our work,” she understands all too well that this universe of people who know the value PIE delivers is much smaller than it could or should be. “We've added a few projects and expanded ...