Cross Selling or Cross Purposes?

Reprint: R0407B

Software maker TopTek has acquired a consulting and systems-integration firm, mainly to profit from the software sales that are a natural by-product of consulting engagements. But in many ways the two companies worked better when they were separate.

Before the acquisition, the consulting firm’s sales were made by the same people who delivered services to clients. TopTek’s sales, by contrast, were handled by the company’s professional salespeople, all of them highly skilled at selling product. Now the consultants and the salespeople are trying to work together, but they’re making a hash of it.

For instance, the CIO of a TopTek customer—a retailer—is complaining that consultants from the acquired firm are driving him nuts. They’ve got his boss’s ear, and they’re selling additional projects left and right, stimulating demand for a pace of change that the CIO says the retailer can’t handle.

The consultants in newly constituted TopTek aren’t happy either. They get no commissions on products they sell, because commissions for all sales to an account—forever—go to the salesperson who snagged it in the first place.

The sales force has its own gripes. The consultants aren’t much help in winning new business, according to Ron Murphy, TopTek’s sales VP. “Most of them couldn’t sell sunscreen at a nudist colony,” he says.

What will it take for cross selling to succeed at TopTek? Commenting on this fictional case study are Ram Charan, an author and adviser to CEOs; Caroline A. Kovac, the general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences; Jerome A. Colletti, an author and consultant; and Federico Turegano, the managing director of SG Corporate and Investment Banking, an arm of Société Générale Group.