While the growth model is well-established by the mergers and acquisition (M&A) stage, maintaining growth during an acquisitive season can become challenging for a number of reasons.
Leadership must align diverse goals, integrate teams and blend corporate cultures — all while working to keep the revenue engine humming. The margin for error is razor-thin, and sales teams are typically on the frontlines, tasked with delivering results amid the turbulence.
Your job at M&A is to check your processes, standards, selling tools and culture against the new expanded organization — and assimilate the separate organizations into one. Your focus is not on building things from scratch but rather surgically blending new people and teams while leveraging new capabilities and solutions. More or less, at M&A, it is time to rethink and repackage your go-to-market approach to unleash revenue performance. Here is how to do it well.
1. SET THE FOUNDATIONS TO ASSIMILATE TEAMS
Organizations reach the M&A growth stage on proven common engines. At M&A stage, leaders must examine these systems, tools, and processes and decide which will move the combined entity forward in a more-complex environment.
- Redefine the combined value proposition: Merged or acquired companies do not disappear into the new. They bring new differentiation, new capabilities, new opportunities to win an unfair share™ of the market. The real trick is finding commonalities and hidden value that exists between the lines. Understand and spell-out this new value early and align all your sales, marketing and solution teams around it.
- Connect everyone to a new “common”: Common data sets, a common CRM system, a common sales process and methodology, common ideal client profiles (ICPs) — when your united teams assimilate to a new normal, cultural and management changes are made more easily because everyone is already speaking the same language.
- Launch change management efforts from day one: Leadership and management set the culture of a combined organization, and they must take responsibility for assimilating teams early and often. With workshops led by a neutral third party like Mereo that can challenge both sides and help both sets of stakeholders overcome pushback and discomfort, the new organization will achieve stronger leadership from the start that sets them up to win.
2. SCALE WITH THE RIGHT ENABLED WORKFORCE
The M&A growth stage is about scaling with new resources. New teams are added to the mix that need onboarding and alignment. New solutions and capabilities present themselves as growth opportunities — but they also demand the same value proposition work and training treatment you provided with your legacy solutions.
What does a combined portfolio look like? How do the combined sales teams sell these new offerings in a repeatable, consistent way?
From the outside, you want buyers to see one united front. And that takes a lot of work on the inside.
- Leverage sales plays to capitalize on cross-sales: What does Company A have that can be sold to Company B’s buyers — and vice-a-versa? Companies that approach this with specific plays rather than generic “synergies” discover better opportunities to Seek to Serve™ their new combined market.
- Find the operational efficiencies: One webinar will now generate leads for what was once two companies. One seller can call on an account instead of multiple overlapping salespeople. With M&As, it is necessary to streamline programs and staffing to avoid duplicating efforts.
- Understand cultural differences and adjust: From sales posturing to compensation cadence and how wins are celebrated varies widely between organizations. While cultural elements may seem like a minor part of M&As, they can become big points of friction for professionals. Set expectations and behaviors for the new organization in a thoughtful way to better bring teams together and get everyone on-board to do their best for the new organization.
- Enablement and reinforcement are key: Leadership can establish new processes and tools and expectations all they want. But nothing will stick without enabling the professionals with the joint ICP and joint value messaging and joint sales kits and united sales processes. Your teams will need exercises and role-plays more than ever before. They will need effective coaching, too, to continue reinforcing the new.
3. WORK WITH M&A-SPECIFIC MANAGEMENT TEAMS
Season management teams are often brought in specifically for M&As — and to prepare for the exit stage — on a shortened horizon. Investors are more hands-on and scrutinizing as they have invested a lot of money. Sometimes these top-level dynamics can lead to functional micromanagement without the right structures and approaches in place.
Be prepared to have a polished go-to-market plan, buyer pipeline and revenue metrics to share with all involved parties. You will also need to be able to demonstrate that the revenue engine is scalable and repeatable, rather than dependent on a founder or key member.
UNCOVER YOUR COMBINED VALUE WITH LESS FRICTION
Both companies — rightfully — have a lot of pride. Pride in what has been built thus far. Pride in their people. Pride in culture. Yet, pride can hinder the discovery of a new shared value and can hinder — and in many cases, even block — effective assimilation. Interested in learning how our experts can help in your M&A? Let’s talk.
To align your team with a winning culture of Seek to Serve, Not to Sell®, download our exclusive guide here. With this approach, your teams can find more meaning internally while delivering maximum value to your buyers.