Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 5The Challenge of Complex Organizations

A combination of organizational and individual barriers within our own firms makes farming difficult. The sheer complexity of people, skills, relationships, and networks within an organization often creates roadblocks that limit our ability to seamlessly capture and act on opportunities for growth. In this chapter, we dig into the internal barriers that may stymie efforts to grow within a client before you even get out of the office door.

We Do That?

In large organizations, practice leads may not know each other or their respective expertise. In an age of online organization charts, this seems like it can hardly be true. With a couple of keystrokes, you should be able to identify the exact right expert in your firm to help a client with a problem they face. And yet the rapid pace of change within organizations today makes this task deceptively hard. Mergers and acquisitions upset existing organizational structures and people frequently switch roles, divisions, or even companies. It's hard to keep up with everything your company does and the people who have the expertise you need.

Chris Mirro, senior vice president, responsible for sales and business development for MAXIMUS's health and human services practice in the United States, has seen this challenge firsthand. He says, “I think the biggest challenge in cross-selling is that people inside organizations quite often are experts in their own domain and not necessarily experts ...