Case Study: NTT Americas Cross-Sell Program — $1B Pipeline in 22 Months
1. Overview
Role: Director, Americas Cross-Sell Program, NTT Holdings
Scope: 31 operating companies across the Americas
Focus: Ecosystem architecture, GTM design, and cross-sell execution
NTT Holdings operated a complex ecosystem across the Americas: 31 distinct operating companies, each with its own sales organization, service portfolio, and customer relationships. While this structure preserved local autonomy and specialized capabilities, it created fragmentation in how NTT presented itself to large enterprise and public-sector customers. Customers often encountered multiple NTT brands in the same engagement, with no clear understanding of how these entities worked together or what the full ecosystem could deliver.
The Cross-Sell Program was designed to transform this fragmentation into a coherent, unified go-to-market capability. The goal was not to eliminate the operating companies' independence, but to architect a system that enabled them to collaborate effectively—sharing opportunities, combining capabilities, and presenting a single integrated value proposition to customers who needed solutions spanning multiple technology domains.
Over a 22-month period, this unified cross-sell motion generated roughly $1B in pipeline across the Americas region. The program succeeded by treating the ecosystem as a system to be designed: mapping capabilities, aligning incentives, creating clear cross-sell patterns, and enabling field teams to execute collaboratively rather than competitively.
2. Context & Challenge
NTT's operating companies covered a broad range of technology services: network infrastructure, data center operations, security, application development, business process outsourcing, and cloud transformation. While this breadth represented significant strategic value, the organizational structure created several challenges. Sales teams within each operating company typically focused on their own service lines and compensation plans, with limited visibility into what other NTT entities could bring to a deal. Customers evaluating large-scale initiatives—particularly in public sector and enterprise segments—needed integrated solutions that spanned multiple technology domains, but they often received fragmented proposals from different NTT brands competing for the same opportunity.
The core challenge was architectural: there was no unified framework that described the ecosystem's capabilities, no clear playbook for when and how to bring multiple operating companies into a deal, and no incentive structure that rewarded cross-opco collaboration. Sales teams saw other NTT companies as competitors rather than partners, leading to territorial behavior that prevented the ecosystem from realizing its full potential. Leadership recognized that significant value was trapped inside organizational boundaries, but changing this required more than training or messaging—it required redesigning how the ecosystem operated as a system.
The stakes were particularly high in large public-sector and enterprise deals, where customers explicitly sought strategic partners capable of delivering integrated solutions. These customers needed to see NTT as a single entity with coordinated capabilities, not a collection of independent vendors. The Cross-Sell Program needed to solve this at scale: enabling hundreds of sellers across 31 operating companies to identify, introduce, and close opportunities that leveraged the full ecosystem.
3. What I Built
I began by mapping and architecting the ecosystem itself. This involved cataloging services and capabilities across all 31 operating companies, identifying areas of overlap, gaps in the portfolio, and complementary capabilities that could be packaged into larger multi-opco solutions. The output was a unified services matrix that made it clear which company brought what capabilities into a deal, exposed previously "hidden" services to sellers across the ecosystem, and formed the backbone for all cross-sell motions. This matrix was not just documentation—it was a design artifact that revealed how the ecosystem could be structured to deliver integrated value.
With the services matrix as foundation, I designed and rolled out a cross-sell motion that defined when and how to bring additional operating companies into a deal. The motion included clear patterns: when a network infrastructure engagement should pull in security or data center teams, when application development or BPO capabilities should be introduced, and how to structure multi-opco proposals that presented a unified value proposition. These patterns were designed to be field-ready—simple enough for sellers to remember and act on, yet sophisticated enough to handle complex enterprise scenarios.
To operationalize this architecture, I built and delivered cross-sell training for hundreds of sellers across the Americas, running field workshops that used real accounts to show where ecosystem value could be unlocked. I worked directly with field leadership to align on the motion, resolve conflicts between operating companies, and reinforce the new collaborative behaviors. Critically, I partnered with leadership to redesign incentive structures that rewarded cross-opco collaboration and reduced political friction for sharing deals. This incentive alignment was essential—you cannot change organizational behavior without changing the reward system that drives it.
4. Results & Impact
The quantitative impact was substantial: roughly $1B in pipeline generated in the Americas region within 22 months, with a significant increase in multi-opco deals and larger, more complex opportunities. The program enabled NTT to compete more effectively for strategic accounts where customers needed integrated solutions spanning multiple technology domains. This translated into greater share-of-wallet and stickiness in key accounts, as customers came to see NTT as a single strategic partner rather than a collection of point-solution vendors.
The qualitative impact was equally important. Sellers gained a clear mental model for what the NTT ecosystem represented and how to leverage it in customer conversations. Leadership had a framework to guide investment decisions, portfolio rationalization, and go-to-market priorities. Customers experienced NTT as a unified, integrated partner capable of delivering complex solutions that required coordination across multiple service lines.
Two publicly documented examples illustrate how the ecosystem architecture enabled larger wins. The City of Las Vegas Smart City initiative required integrated capabilities across network infrastructure, security, data analytics, and application development—exactly the type of multi-opco solution the cross-sell program was designed to enable. Similarly, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) statewide modernization contract represented a large-scale public-sector engagement where NTT's ability to present a unified, coordinated proposal was essential to securing the win. These deals demonstrated that the ecosystem architecture was not just an internal exercise, but a competitive advantage in the market.
5. Systems & Architecture Lens
This program was fundamentally an exercise in systems design, not just go-to-market strategy. I treated the operating companies as nodes in a network, services as capabilities that could be combined, incentives as feedback loops that shaped behavior, and GTM motions as flows through the system. The challenge was not to manage the ecosystem as a collection of independent entities, but to architect it as an integrated system where collaboration emerged naturally from the structure itself.
The Cross-Sell Program was an early, large-scale example of how I approach revenue and organizations as systems to be designed, not just org charts and quotas to be managed. The same systems lens I applied to NTT's ecosystem—mapping nodes and edges, designing flows, aligning incentives, creating patterns that enable desired behaviors—is now applied to AI architectures, execution fabrics, and memory systems at SmartHaus. The underlying principle is the same: complex systems require architectural thinking, not just tactical execution.
6. How This Shows Up in My Work Now
The patterns from this program show up directly in my consulting and platform work. When I design sales architecture and GTM systems for companies with complex ecosystems—whether that's multiple business units, partner networks, or marketplace structures—I apply the same architectural approach: map the system, design the flows, align the incentives, create field-ready patterns. The goal is always to enable collaboration and integrated value delivery, not just coordination.
I build field-ready playbooks that reflect real organizational behavior, not just strategy slides. The NTT experience taught me that sellers need simple, memorable patterns they can execute in real customer conversations, not complex frameworks that look good in presentations but fail in practice. When I structure multi-entity collaborations—whether that's partner ecosystems, internal business units, or platform marketplaces—I ensure that incentives and architecture work together, not against each other.
Today, when I work on revenue systems and AI systems, I treat both as architectures that must be designed, not defaulted into. The same systems thinking that enabled $1B in cross-sell pipeline at NTT—understanding nodes, edges, flows, and feedback loops—informs how I design AI execution fabrics, memory systems, and cognitive architectures. The discipline is consistent: complex systems require architectural rigor, whether you're designing an ecosystem GTM motion or a math-first AI platform.