Exec Summary

• M&As can be a messy, turbulent time
• RevOps is critical for a smooth transition
• How should RevOps plan and execute integration?
• Get your own editable copy of the cheat sheet here

Bring Ops into Due Diligence

• Don’t lose sight of the details
• Have Ops answer GTM questions early on
• This may affect your integration approach

Get the Process Down

• Your processes and systems may change
• Get these ironed out ASAP

Dissect the Tech Stack

• Evaluate both company tech stacks
• Determine what will be integrated
• Lots of things to consider here

Put the Customer First

• Consider how the customer will be affected
• Make a plan for GTM as well as existing biz

Avoid the “Messy Middle”

• It’s a delicate balance of time investment
• What do you spend time on before the deal is closed?
• How do you integrate as fast as possible?

Mergers and acquisitions are famous for taking a toll on our businesses. They’re time intensive, impact every single team, and may shift our culture by colliding 2 worlds at speed.

Like any massive change being rolled out in our business, the operational focus on strategy and execution are key to its success. Which means RevOps can make or break your merger and acquisition.

Here are our tips for how RevOps can ensure the smoothest integration possible.

(We created a cheat sheet for your RevOps team to follow and fill in during M&A. Get it here!)

Begin With the End in Mind 

I have often been surprised by the lack of “planning” that happens in the diligence process.

Many executives driving the due diligence are focused on big picture vision, financials, and getting the deal done. M&A results in more revenue, customers, products and GTM teams. Without careful planning in RevOps, you quickly have a very confusing GTM engine with even more confused customers.

There are key questions that need to be answered:

• How will we go to market?
• Which products will stay and go?
• How do the products compliment each other?
• Will we operate as one integrated team or 2 business units?

By attempting to answer these questions very early on, you can create an integration plan that achieves your end goal.

This may ultimately change the approach on how quickly you dive into technical integration, re-orgs, and more.

Get the Process Down

The devil is in the details, as they say. The RevOps team will not let you get too far ahead without some of these big considerations.

• What is the co-selling process on day 1?
• How do we combine the sales forecasts?
• What complementary technologies do we have?
• What is the segmentation plan for the database?
• How do we get cross-training completed quickly?
• How soon will we move sales to 1 new comp plan?
• How will we route leads from one team to another?
• How do we capture demand from the press activity?
• Where do we have overlap or redundancy in the tech stack?

Too many companies dive into data and systems integration without mapping out the processes first. You have two completely different companies that operate in completely different ways.

Dissect the Tech Stack

That said, it is important to document, cross-reference, and evaluate all of the tech being used in each area of the revenue tech stack by the different teams. Some areas of example include:

• CRM
• Telephony
• Sales Automation
• Marketing automation
• Customer Management
• Document Generation
• Support/Ticketing
• Data Enrichment
• eSignature

Once all of the finer points are ironed out on what the metrics and processes are for the combined teams, you’ll need to determine which platforms will be integrated (if any).

Consider things such as:

• Any future growth
• Redundancies and efficiencies
• Features/functionality not used
• Resource cost to configure changes
• Pricing and volume-based discounting

Put the Customer First

Why do anything at all? We want to create customer value.

The most important thing we can do is keep the customer top of mind and at the center of every decision and action. Some of the key questions to ask about customers are also the same things we need to consider for go-to-market.

Questions like:

• How does this acquisition increase customer value?
• Which customers do we share across both businesses?
• When a lead comes in, how do we qualify for each product?
• What’s the strategy to unify the platforms the customers use?
• What’s the rule of engagement for customers interested in a cross-sell or upsell?

Avoid the “Messy Middle” 

By working with RevOps to identify some of the really important plans up front, you will save MONTHS of being in the “messy middle”.

The messy middle is the transition period where the deal is done, but nothing is changing. It’s a delicate balance to invest the right amount of time before a deal closes, compared to minimizing the messy middle, without over-investing time in a deal that might not happen.

Depending on the size of the business, integration can take months or even years.

With that said, here are a few things to consider doing right away:

• Make plans to introduce teams across companies in the first week
• Get all of the newly acquired employees their new email addresses
• Get all of the combined employee base into the same chat platform
• Provide guidance on how employees can expect changes to be rolled out
• Develop a solid FAQ document that gives them timelines on what to expect
• Develop a customer FAQ that is available immediately upon announcement

Don’t Try to Rush It

Trust your RevOps resources and do it right, don’t do it rushed. It never works out well when exec leadership gets to set the timeline.

In Closing…

Most customers and team members will accept a longer integration plan as long as the strategy is clearly laid out for them to see. Doing the important decision-work up front, avoiding messy clashes of technology, and facilitating an immediate introduction to the people they need to know is a great way to ease anxiety and enable employees to carry out a well-executed integration.

Click here to get your own editable copy of our Mergers and Acquisitions Cheat Sheet for RevOps!

Need help planning and/or executing the operational details of your next merger? Contact us and let’s chat about it.