Goldman Sachs has a new plan to make more money while everyone else is getting crushed

Goldman Sachs is focusing on a new opportunity for its giant sales and trading business.

Its securities cohead, Pablo Salame, recently met with Deutsche Bank analyst Matt O'Connor, and said that one long-term goal is to sell more products to existing clients.

Now, banks embark on these kinds of cross-selling initiatives all the time. They always want to do as much business with their best clients as possible.

But it seems that Goldman's push is a little bit more strategic. It comes as rival banks pull out or cut back in certain trading-business lines amid rough market conditions.

Here is the excerpt from O'Connor's note (emphasis added):

GS believes its client franchise is strong and that by maintaining a globally diverse set of trading businesses there should be increased opportunity to cross sell over time. GS views this as one of the biggest benefits of peer retrenchment. GS thinks it operates with less boundaries across products (ie in less of a silo) than some peers and as a result does a good job providing advice across these products.

The firm in February promoted Jim Esposito to chief strategy officer of the securities division and tasked him with growing the client franchise.

In a note announcing that appointment, Salame and securities coheads Isabelle Ealet and Ashok Varadhan said that the industry was "undergoing extraordinary change" and that many of Goldman's competitors were retrenching from businesses and regions.

"As a result, we see significant opportunity to work more deeply and expansively with an even larger set of clients," the note said.

"The ability to deliver the full range of products and services we offer to our clients is more valuable today than any other time that we can recall," the note added.

It looks like it's an important task.