The importance of cross-selling within Professional Services firms seems hard to overstate. There is, indeed, an argument that the only reason firms exist is that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. That is, because a firm can bring a wide range of knowledge and experience to a matter, each of the individuals involved becomes more valuable to the client.

We have been working on our cross-selling product “CrossPitch AI”, and one of the ways we visualize collaboration across teams in a firm is through a Cross-Selling Intelligence Map (shown above)

While presenting this diagram, the name of Heidi Gardner kept cropping up. Whilst I was familiar with Heidi’s name, I confess I had not read Smart Collaboration nor Smarter Collaboration. However, I was intrigued, and after reading the first few chapters, I came across the images below.

Not only do they have a striking similarity to our network maps, but the point of these diagrams is to illustrate the strategic importance of a network within an organization. To show why the whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

Reading Heidi’s book, it became clear that she and we were talking about the same thing. We have been creating an AI tool to make it much easier to do what she is advocating.

Have a look at this presentation; I’ve started the video at 11 minutes to get straight to the point, but it's all interesting.