3 Steps on How to Improve your Sales Growth Strategy & Fast-Track your Mergers & Acquisitions (Part 1)
Are you working on a Merger & Acquisition transaction? To assess whether or not this M & A will accomplish your sales strategy and growth plan, you wouldn’t dream of skipping financial due diligence. From deal structure to deal financing to escrows and earn-out, capital equipment, buildings, and infrastructure – everything should be thoroughly investigated. Surprisingly, one critical area is often neglected.
Will you have the right salespeople in the right sales seats to ensure a fast start?
Evaluate your Sales Growth Strategy
Salespeople are not always placed in a role where they can have the most success. It is critical that you perform an analysis of each salesperson and identify the role/roles in your company for which they are best suited.
Here are 3 steps to guide your right-roles-right-seats discovery in your potential merger or acquisition deal.
Ask the Right Questions
Before you make any drastic changes, consider these questions:
- How do I ensure I have the right people in the right seats?
- Who on the existing sales teams can fit into the new sales roles we’ve defined?
- How can I leverage the sales team’s current brilliance to get a fast start in their new roles?
Do a Dig-Deeper Audit
You may not get what you think you’re getting if you merely scratch the surface when analyzing the sales staff responsible for top-line growth. In fact, those scratches may ruin your sales growth plans, so when examining the sales organization of a potential acquisition dig deep and wide.
For example, an assessment that focuses on personality traits will tell you, “Susan gets along very well with people.” That’s great news. However, I recommend a Dig-Deeper Audit (we call it a Sales Audit)that picks up sales specific weaknesses such as, Susan has a high need for approval, so she may have difficulty tackling lies or getting to the truth of a situation.” Bad news. Or worse, “Susan has difficulty talking about money, so she may have difficulty selling value.”
Dig deep with a Sales Audit to uncover the areas that may sabotage and derail the strategic growth plans you’re hoping to achieve with the M & A transaction.
Uncover Sales Competencies
“When you analyze Sales Competencies – your salespeople’s capability for hunting, consultative selling, qualifying, presenting, closing, managing existing accounts, farming, and posturing – you are dealing with primarily skill-based competencies. However, you should go deeper and look inside their Sales DNA – that is the combination of strengths and weaknesses that will either support or sabotage their ability to execute the skills they possess.”
Before finalizing your M&A transaction, you want to know that you are merging a team of proactive salespeople with the right set of Sales DNA to boost your sales growth strategy and become top performers in their new environment.
Does your Merger & Acquisition due diligence include a thorough analysis of the sales teams you’ll be taking on board?
Do you have concrete, actionable data to ensure you’re making the correct decision? Get a fast start yon getting the right people in the right seats. Focusing on this critical area will boost your sales growth strategy and give your new sales teams the best chance to exceed your growth targets.
In an upcoming article, I’ll share more strategic steps that you can take to get the right people in the right seats. Read it here.
Sales Growth Lesson: Get concrete, actionable insights on your sales teams as part of your M&A due diligence to ensure you have the right people in the right seats.
Sales Growth Question: What steps will you be taking to align your Merger & Acquisition due diligence with your sales strategy and growth targets?
© Copyright 2018 Danita Bye
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