Making GTM Successful

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I'm Kisan Patel and you're listening to M and A Science, where we talk with deal professionals and learn valuable lessons from their experience. This podcast focuses on stories, strategies and what actually happened during M and A deals. Welcome to M and A Science Live, where leading M and A practitioners share lessons learned from their experience. If you're interested in keeping up with the latest From Mascience, visit mascience.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Every Monday we share highlights from our interviews and publications so you can continuously improve your M and A skills for free. Again, that's mascience.com I'm your host Kisam Patel, CEO and founder of M&A Science. Joining me today is Pragya Kashinath, Director of M and A at Cognizant. Pragya is a seasoned corporate M and A leader with a passion to build stronger businesses. Throughout her career she's performed roles that have helped her build a strong commercial mindset and a thorough understanding of key business drivers. In her current role, she builds actionable M and A strategies and work towards realizing tangible business outcomes. Today we're going to talk about what to do to make go to Market a success.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to we kick off.

With the overview of your experience.

I think is in a fast paced tech world, M and A plays a critical role in getting access to capabilities and enabling faster time to market. And in that context, actually my daily job involves evaluating suitable companies that we'd like to add to our portfolio of capabilities that Cognizant already has. Once I evaluate these companies, I actually support due diligence from a business and commercial standpoint. Think through the kind of synergies that we can get from these companies and then once the transaction is over, I we also own and deliver on the market integration plan for the target organization. Now before I got into M and A actually I spent a significant amount of time in customer facing sales and account management roles. And I think that firsthand knowledge of understanding customer behavior, customer expectations and how we support our customers through their digital transformation journeys is what helps me identify the right targets for our business and help integrate them successfully.

It's interesting because you run the whole gamut. You start off with getting involved early, evaluating opportunities, running through diligence and then executing on capturing the value of the company. What are the Corp dev folks do?

So the corp dev folks are transaction based. So I actually am part of the business. So while my title says M and A, I am the only M and A person who's not part of Corp dev. I am part of the business. I have always been. And the idea is for me to actually work with co op dev to make the transaction successful from a business standpoint, which is where I kind of get involved across the board and which is what I think makes my role pretty different from most M and A roles which are either focused pre transaction or post transaction.

That makes a lot of sense. Let's get into it. How do you approach developing a go to market strategy and how do you frame it to make it successful?

Yeah, so I think go to market strategy easy is a think that starts at the very beginning when we are actually evaluating target organizations. Because we have to think about what is the value that a particular target will bring to our organization. And once we understand that value and have a picture of what the combined value of both the organizations can be, we have to start working towards the ways and means of bringing the value together in a meaningful way for the customer. And the best way is to actually identify a couple of customers at the very beginning, the moment we close the transaction. Identifying a couple of pilot accounts where we think we can easily demonstrate the value of the two companies together. Once we identify those accounts, we collaborate between. There is a collaboration exercise that happens between the sales teams to see how will we go about it, how do we want to realize the vision that we had at time of the transaction. And then we work through the pilot accounts, make that successful and then build from there.

What you're describing is post close. This is before you're actually doing a deal where you have a hypothesis of our companies are going to combine together and create value.

So you start with the hypothesis and then once you close you actually pick up on that hypothesis. Think about which are the customers which would be low hanging fruits to be able to try and deliver on that hypothesis. So we try and pick something that we think will work. So that's like we do Joint sales workshops between the acquiring company and the target. We do detailed workshops where we think about which are the customers that we can go behind initially having the identify pilots. And then we try and work through a customized approach for a couple of key clients to see how we deliver on that hypothesis.

Yeah, this is interesting. Once you get that validated, then it's, hey, how do we scale this approach out?

Yeah, so the first part is you have to make sure that the hypothesis is true. And there are obviously learnings along the way. The first couple of accounts that you pick, you learn from it, you reiterate, you try and fine tune the approach, and then once you fine tune that approach, then we have to look at broader sales enablement, expanding across the customer landscape, both our customers and the target customers. Typically the approach would be a bit different for both types of customers. So we then look at expanding and scaling that approach.

Okay, so let's try this. Can we walk through the steps of building a go to market plan?

The steps are, first of all, understanding the vision. What is the vision that we want to achieve? And this typically ties back to the business case in terms of why did we originally think this transaction makes business sense? So we identify the vision, then we pick the right pilot accounts. Now all of this work happens jointly between the acquiring company and the target together. So we do sales workshops, we pick the right pilot accounts, and then for the first few pilot accounts that we identify, we look at customized value propositions for those pilot accounts. So no two customers are similar, their journeys are different. So we have to create customized value propositions for those pilot accounts. Side part, but very important is we need to make sure that the sales teams on both ends are rightly incentivized. Because at the end of the day, we need to make sure that the people working towards making go to market a success are incentivized in the right way towards making the joint collaboration a success. Once you start off on that journey, once you identify the pilot accounts, once you have an approach around how you want to go about it, as you put that approach into action, you need to have constant communication between the teams in terms of how it's going. Because you have to understand there's limited trust between salespeople of two organizations in the very initial stages. So you've got to build that constant communication into the plan itself. Because otherwise sales is a very individual oriented profession. So people tend to go off on their own. And then constant view of a frequent assessment of where we stand with those pilot accounts, how are we doing what is the customer response been? And then learning and redefining our approach based on feedback that we are getting. So that's how we do it for the first set of accounts. And as we do more and more of those first few accounts, four or five of them, then we have the approach pretty much straight for finalized in terms of what kind of approach works for the type of customers that we have.

Okay, so first step is articulate the vision. Yeah, we're acquiring this business. This is where we see the go to market opportunity. Start shaping what that looks like. As you move through the process, you may pick up some details, but it's not until after you close that you're going to create a pilot. Maybe starting off with some of those light customers that we talked about a little earlier, really define what that value proposition is. Then part of that's going to be making sure the sales team are incentivized and aligned. And then you want to make sure there's good communication with the sales team as well so that you can also measure what success is looking like. And then from there have this feedback loop so you can get the information, be able to iterate until you can really make it work.

Yep.

Can we walk through an example? Like you don't have to name a company name, but can we walk through one?

So one of the companies we'd acquired sometime a couple of years ago was a company in the niche consulting sort of space. And the vision there was in terms of they can bring the niche consulting capability in a certain technology area and we can back that up with a much broader offshore scale capability that we traditionally have as part of our business so they can come in, do the consulting work and that should generate downstream opportunity for us in terms of larger scale programs. It was part of one of the pilot accounts that we picked up during our initial GTM thing because the customer was in that journey in terms of they were moving to cloud, there was opportunity where we thought we can try this approach. So we looked at the customer scenario and as a result of which we picked that customer. The company that we had acquired then went in as a niche consultant, did a bit of work, we did a few months of poor consulting work, helped the customer craft that entire implementation plan for them. And then once that happened, actually customer rolled out an RFP for the broader piece of work. And because our consultants had developed that plan, we were obviously a much better positioned in terms of responding and to the larger opportunity, which we did. And we actually won the entire piece. We wouldn't have Gone anywhere even close to that if we had not gone in with the acquisition first. We deliberately let the acquisition lead that in the beginning of the opportunity because they brought a certain value which the customer needed at that point. And then once that happened, the larger organization took over to respond to the broader piece of work. It was a clear recognition of that vision that we had identified in the beginning of the deal that, you know, these guys can bring the consulting, we have the scale, and we can bring it all together. So it was a concept. When we sold the deal and when we actually started working on it and we saw an opportunity, we were able to build across it and win and deliver on that story that we sold in the beginning of the transaction.

You made that sound too easy. What was the challenges in doing that?

Oh, there were a lot of challenges. First of all, it just. The way we sell is different, right? So two companies, the approach is quite different. So what happens? It's like telling a client part of one of our largest accounts to say, hey, you know what? Let them sell the way they sell. It's hard for people who manage customers to let go of that control. And I get it because I've been in sales myself. I think acknowledgement of the fact that some of our acquired companies have very different ways of selling, there's no right or wrong in terms of an approach. It's just different. And acknowledgement of that difference was, I think, the biggest challenge because our guys wouldn't understand why the consulting company was selling in a particular way. Likewise, the consulting company wouldn't understand why our guys were so price focused because our guys had eye on the larger piece, which had the price negotiations in place. Procurement played a big part, so on and so forth. The biggest challenge in this case was both teams wanted to do right by the customer, but the way they looked at it and actually sometimes who that customer stakeholder was for both parties was different. It took a lot to bring the two teams together. And which just goes back to my point on communication. It sounds simple, but it actually isn't. Because instinctively people in front of the customer want to do right back whoever they see their customer is. It was a big challenge bringing the two teams together. Also just responding to the customer proposal, for example, it's just different teams have different approaches. And initially, right when we start doing these go to market market integrations, we don't even have the common tools. We don't even have the common collaboration platform. We had a lot of technical challenges as well in terms of getting information across, trying to Ensure that the right people are working on the deal as well. It's not easy at all. They're like day to day challenges that we have.

That's so interesting. There's the way of working. But it sounds like the biggest challenge for you essentially was stakeholder alignment.

Yep. And it's funny, right? We're all adults in the room, but sometimes, and I say this a lot, that I feel like I'm a school principal who's just trying to tell all the kids, hey, you know what, you got to play nice with this person. You got to play nice with this person. Let's all come together properly in a nice way. So it's just the way the role is.

That's a good way to put it. That kind of sums up a lot of the integration work. I'd like to talk a little bit about what is the day to day tactical aspect of a go to market look like.

It's a lot of problem solving. There are a lot of playbooks and working models and everything else that we define even pre, close or soon after close. But every day there is a scenario that you are having to deal with. I'll give you an example. We have situations where both companies have contracts with the same customer. So every time there's a common deal, then you're thinking whose paper to put it on, whose rates are better, what does the customer say, so on and so forth. And there are legal considerations that you have to look. So there are problem solving around that. There is issues around finance that you have to think about around whose rate card, what is the message we are sending to the customer, how do we price a particular deal, so on and so forth. Then there is the pure operational aspect because we haven't really integrated the systems process of people as yet. There is this more fundamental challenge around, okay, our company resources in their customer accounts, their resources in our accounts. And there's always something that's all over the place with cross company staffing and all of that. So day to day, I think there is a lot of operational issues and problem solving that I get into. And that could really range from anything customer oriented all the way to tax finance operations depending on the way my day starts.

You're adding on because we start with stakeholder alignment ways of working. Now we're getting into problem solving, the sort of evolving operationally as well as companies. What are some of the lessons learned to overcome those challenges?

I think the lesson learned is to anticipate uncertainty first. One of the things that we struggle with in a lot of integrations is that we want to build a plan and say the integration will follow this plan. But go to market is actually different. It's very agile. And the market is not going to wait for 18 to 24 months for us to start showing value in the business. That they're not going to wait for us to finish our full blown corporate integration to start showing value. At the end of the day, go to market is the first thing that kicks off even before we have an integration plan in place. So learning to anticipate uncertainty is the most important things will change. Being able to customize the approach, you do have a vision at a high level, but at the end of the day, every customer's journey is different. So you have to be able to customize the way we are doing. Go to market for each of those customers and you want to scale to the extent that you can. But at the same time, every customer needs to feel that it's their problem that we are solving. That we don't want to just be our services business. You're not just that this is the product I have and I'm going to sell it out. It is a services business. So solutions have to be customized. And just when you think you know the job, something comes in, hits you and smacks you in the face and you have to try it and go back to the beginning and try again. I think anticipating uncertainty in my mind is the biggest thing.

I like that, anticipating uncertainty. And there sounds like there's an element of being agile that comes into the play. And I don't know if you've have some other thoughts around that.

Yeah, I think absolutely right. Everything in this field, being in the tech field and around go to market, everything is agile. The industry is evolving so fast, by the time we get our heads around the particular acquisition, suddenly there's something new in the market that we're thinking about in terms of building capability or adding on to our acquisition. The offlet we are doing a lot of tuck in acquisitions as well in terms of acquiring companies under a company that we've already acquired day to day. Go to market is agile, right? Because like I said, there is a customized approach. You have to keep re refining the plan and the approach based on the experience that you have. So that feedback loop that I talked about, I think that has to be very agile. You have to keep thinking about on a weekly basis where do we stand with our top accounts, what have we learned over the week, refine the approach, how do we make changes where needed. And so that it has to be an agile thing. We cannot hold it to a big blown waterfall GTM integration plan because customers won't align to your plan. Customer needs are evolving faster than your big blown integration plan. Right. So you have to have an agile approach towards solving the client problem.

There any lessons learned around that? How do you. Because I feel a lot of companies I talk to, they struggle with this. Particularly they struggled where we're just close this deal. Let's figure out what the go to market plan is in terms of. Hey, let's figure it out and build this plan and try doing it. Then it sounds like you got a very responsive approach that you're already starting to shape this earlier and you're iterating on it and then you continue, continue doing it. How do you do that? How would you walk a company that maybe doesn't do it that way to start adopting that highly adaptive approach again?

That's where my role comes into play. Having somebody from the business who's involved from the beginning of the transaction, not post closed, you've got to be able to understand the target's business from even before they became part of you. During the course of the journey, people who understand the business are able to then assess through the course of the transaction itself what value they can bring and what are the challenges that we can foresee in terms of the way they sell. Because we already know our organization that learns. For me, I use my pre transaction time as a way to capture learnings from the way they sell, the way they do things and then possibly identify potential challenges that I will see during integration. You know what, they're very different here from us. So this is going to be something that I have to watch for. Or this is where we think there might be a clash or this is where customers might have a problem. And I think first of all for companies that are not doing it that way, you have to have somebody from the business who runs across the transaction because that helps keep the team honest around what the real value is. The other thing is, because I own synergy and I deliver on synergy, I also don't over promise. I keep it very honest to the ground in terms of the kind of numbers that we are putting in. I make sure that the synergy numbers that are there are something I can stand up and deliver on as a salesperson in the integration. Having somebody accountable for the overall life cycle, it helps some have some more skin in the game first of all. Secondly, I think use that pre transaction time as effectively as you can to Evaluate the nuances around the challenges that you're likely to face in go to Market. We can't really do customer level conversations till post growth. But nothing prevents you from doing cultural assessment of sales teams in terms of your conversation through the transaction. You're thinking about how do they sell, how do they deliver, what are the typical contract sizes, for example, based on their approach is different. So then how does that translate to the way we sell, we deliver and what are the gaps? And so then what's the best approach towards bridging those gaps? I think that's how we have to think about go to market.

Okay, we got a lot of things to unpack now. Before I get into the pre close area and how to prep for it, walk me through who the ideal person is. Because you defined your role and you mentioned you have a background where you were working on the sales side. And I want to profile a little bit who's the ideal person that should really lead this go to Market? Because I liked how you pointed out somebody should have ownership of it and be involved early and carry through and take ownership of delivering on the synergies, but give me the profile glimpse of who that person should be, their key characteristic traits that allowed them to be successful in that role.

So I think first of all, having a business oriented mindset is critical, right? So you've got to be able to understand the pulse of the business that can come through having been in sales or having done a lot of delivery across various customers. It can come from various ways, but having that understanding of the company's core business is very important. And I think people skills are really important. We underestimate the need for having good people skills in such roles because at the end of the day, like you said, stakeholder alignment is so important. Your parent organization needs to know that you have the right interests in mind. At the same time, the target needs to know that you will not go and do something that's against their objectives or that doesn't work for them. So you've got to build trust across a diverse portfolio of people. And in general, given the way the role is, and it touches literally every aspect of integration, anybody who has an understanding of various functional streams, so you don't need to be a tax expert or a finance expert, but at least be able to understand how things would work so that if there is a problem, you're able to unpack it and at least go to the right people to fix it. That understanding of all of the streams that get involved is critical as well.

So we got a few. It's like business acumen, people, communication skills, and a knack around operations.

Knack around operations? Yeah.

Okay. And you find that person, I get you involved in the deal. And I wanted to walk through the initial development of that go to market strategy. Can you walk me through the early part? When exactly do you get involved?

So I pretty much get involved when the information memorandum lands on my desk or sometimes I have an eye on the target and then we check with banks if they might be up for sale or something like that. So I'm involved with. At the very beginning.

Before loi?

Yeah, yeah, before loi, I'm looking at the target the moment somebody in commerce and gets it. So the advantage with that is I look at it from a business standpoint, right. I look at it. Are these services something that we think we want as part of our business? Will they complement what we have? Will they add value to what we have? And then as we go through the transaction in terms of loi, then get into diligence and as part of diligence, thinking about, do they really do what they say they do? Right. Because everybody knows how to sell. Everybody has those fancy presentations. It's about digging into the contracts, looking at. I actually go through their customer contracts and statements of work to understand are they really selling and delivering the way they are? Because sometimes people say they do a lot of things, but at the end of the day, it might just be staffing or it might just be something totally different. So trying to understand and unpack the sales pitch versus actual data, that's a very critical part of my job in terms of understanding that and seeing where the gaps are, if there are, and then what kind of risk that possibly poses for us from a business standpoint. Right. So who their customers are, does that portfolio of customers present a risk for us as well? Right. In terms of the nature of the clients on and so forth.

What's the dynamic like between you and Corp dev staying back in the early part of the deal when they're just originating these opportunities, maybe it's through a bank process, maybe they've come across it or an internal resource. They bring you in.

I'm the voice for the business as far as co op dev is concerned. They're kind of friends. We work together. We work very collaboratively. With CopDev, I am like the voice of the business. I don't get involved in the corporate part of the transaction. I actually look at everything just with the business lens. That helps add value to the transaction in terms of being able to really think through synergies properly, making sure that the business case lines up. And then I work with copdev on all of the of course with the business leadership as well in terms of building the presentation material for our investment committee approval, so on and so forth. So I work very collaboratively hand in hand with CopDev. And yeah, it's a very seamless relationship because I am part of the business and that's very clear.

You're helping develop the business case that they're presenting to the board in terms.

Of the vision that we define then thinking about the synergies and then the logic behind the synergies. So when I am putting a number behind the synergies what is the rationale or the logic behind the synergies? And so obviously co op dev owns the model but I give the input from the business side to the model from a synergies perspective. They still do the other modeling from the standalone numbers, endpoints, so on and.

So forth, overestimating synergies from happening.

I think it's a two phase thing. One is obviously having the structured way to think about it in terms of looking at their customers, our customers, what we know of the opportunity in many of those customers, so on. So you start to think through a structured way of developing a model and then I'll be lying if I didn't say there is a bit of gut as well. In addition to whatever the model tells you, you have to apply your instinct around what you know of the market and the business to try and adjust the synergy numbers to the right amount. Let's put it that way. It's a bit of both. Yeah, it has to be a structured approach towards logically thinking about it. But at the end of the day I come from a sales background, I do come with an instinct around what is realistically achievable. And you've got to have to apply that experience that you have on whatever the data is saying.

Okay, you're involved helping to validate that synergy assumptions.

Yeah.

When it comes to planning I'm really curious on how that starts shaping together. And we're still pre loi at this point because you're contributing to some of those assumptions. I want to get a sense of like what are some of the key elements you start thinking about when planning your go to market.

So at that point we can't obviously have too many conversations with the target around futuristic synergies. So at that point what I do from a process standpoint is really start to think about how do they sell, what kind of culture do they have in the sales teams? I start to try and interact with as many people as I can, which is hard sometimes. Right. They don't really open up. Essentially I try and assess the cultural aspect of their go to market way of doing things because they already have a go to market strategy and an approach. The idea is not for me to come and build something brand new idea is for me to think about what do we have, what do they have and how do we bring it together in a meaningful way. So for that I understand the way we do things because I've been here forever, but it is a new company. So I spend the pre transaction time studying understanding the target to the extent that I can and what drives them, what motivates them, what keeps them awake at night. You've got to understand the pulse of the target almost the way you spend effort understanding a customer and understanding their customer objectives and priorities. I spend the same time thinking about the target approach, their motivations, their culture, what drives them. And you start to think about how we can bring the two go to market approaches together in a meaningful way. So I kind of start doing that work pre transaction.

What does that look like from the target company's perspective? Do you start preparing them, getting them thinking about what go to market is going to look like post close before loi?

Not before loi, but post loi. We start to talk about it, but again at a very high level in terms of kind of understanding what they think and how they feel about it.

Maybe just high level. And here's some synergies like the example you provided earlier, that this is why this would make sense and foster growth for your company.

Yeah. So at a high level, yes, we do share the vision, make sure that they understand it. They also agree with it because at the end of the day M and a successful and both parties are in it fully. So obviously we do share that vision in terms of hey, you know what? This is what we're thinking, this is how it will come together. What do you think? Does it make sense? And obviously we take their inputs as well in some of that. In terms of. Because they also come in with the perspectives when they are thinking about being acquired. They also think about what they perhaps want as value from a company like ours. We are not an investor, we are a company that has bought another company. So there are employees that they would have certain expectations in terms of what kind of work they'll get to do or what kind of customers they'll get. To interact with while being associated with a company like ours. So we take some of that feedback as part of that while building the vision. So yeah, we do.

They might have ideas of, hey, we want to leverage your platform to access these customers and additional.

In fact, a lot of times my targets come and tell me what I had this opportunity which I left on the table because I don't have the capability to do it, but you guys would have had. So we did a piece of work, some sort of assumer consulting piece of work and then we left so many million dollars worth of implementation revenue on the table because we don't have the scale and we don't have the capability to do it. And you know what, those are clear. So they come and tell us as well of various customer scenarios where they might have left revenue on the table because they're either too small or they don't have the right skill set from an implementation standpoint, or they don't have the right geographic skill that the customer needed and all of that. So they of course absolutely contribute to that vision. It is by no means a one way thought process. It is a collaborative thought process every step of the way.

Do you have an example of synergy model where you had to really step in and dial things back? Always tell me like what factors into that. And I know obviously it's different things and how you look at it and part of the gut check. But do you have an example at times what happens?

Right. As a business we want to push a transaction over to the line. A lot of times you want the transaction to go through. So just because you want to make the model work, there is this tendency of inflating synergies a little bit. Just because you think, I want it so bad, let me just do it kind of thing. That reality check has to come in saying, you know what? Yes, I know we want it so badly, I want it equally. But at the same time we have to really think about how will we deliver on the synergies. Because it's not just a number that's going into some Excel sheet. It's a number that all of us are going to be accountable for the foreseeable future. For the next 36 months. I almost always have to dial back on the synergies because there is a general tendency for teams to load them up a little bit, which is where that two phase thing, right? In terms of I literally go at an account level. I said, these are the list of my customers, these are the list of their customers. This is where they are already spending. This is the customer's overall spend. So realistically speaking, this is all we can target here because they're working with five of our biggest competitors. Even if we were to do a really great job, we are not going to be able to like overnight make it $100 million account. It's not going to work. So I think you have to logically question some of those assumptions. Show a lot more data. I think that helps you when you talk, when I. There is a lot of gut. But then you have to have data as well, otherwise people won't take you at face value. Right. So you show the data, show the list of customers, talk through a lot of that.

When you say data, do you have any ideas or examples around that account level?

Right. So by then, during diligence, we have account level information. I take customer level and revenue information for both the companies. Our information I already have. And then I take what they have. I put it down and say combined business. This is how big the account is and this is the customer potential that we also know from our other market research that we do as a company and all of that. So it's about bringing all the data that exists together to create a picture that makes sense.

Got it.

So it's their current revenue, our current revenue, their historical, like the relationship, the quality of the relationship. Sometimes it's declining, for example. Right. Could be. Right. It was a very big account. It's declining because the stakeholders changed. And if that's the case, then I cannot be extremely upbeat about potential in that customer. For example, you look at trends in terms of these are customers. Yes, they look big today, but they have been declining. And these are declining because XYZ happened. So then you said these numbers have to get reset. These can't be as high as they are. You go in specifically at a customer level and then look at the pipeline as well. So there's a customer aspect and a pipeline aspect. So what are the prospects they have? What is the kind of pipeline they have in some of the big customers to bring it all together and create a meaningful picture?

Okay. Valuation model gets through a reality check and gets passed to you. Deal gets negotiated, LOI gets signed.

Then what happens after is when we do confirmatory diligence. So that piece anyway pop dev takes care of. But at the end of the day, that's when we start to think about from a business standpoint, what does integration look like?

You're doing work in diligence, where you're looking at customer contracts.

Yeah.

Now is that in parallel. Are you starting to develop an integration plan?

Yeah, at least I start thinking about it because as part of a final business case that goes to investment committee for approval, we have to have a high level view of what the integration model will look like. So we have to put at least the high level vision that I talked about in terms of what the opportunity might be, what the high level vision is, what the approach is going to look like at least at an. We do have a few sites that need to go in as part of the pack. So we do start thinking about it alongside whatever diligence work that's happening. Yes.

You look at your go to market plan and your integration plan is two distinctly different plans.

So go to market is part of the integration plan. Right. So there is an overall integration plan that was driving, which is something that anyway happens. It's not something I actively get involved in. So go to market is what as a stream I would own as part of the overall.

Okay, that's in there. Including the strategy and essential high level alignment components are going to be part of the overall integration plan.

Yeah.

People ask me about go to market templates and things of that sort and that's an awkward thing because I don't think there really is one. It's a unique thing you develop for each business. Can you walk me through what are those key elements that you would want to have in your go to market plan?

It has to be different for each target and for each type of company and even within the company. For me, integration plan in Australia look very different from what it will look like in the US or uk. Right. So there are regional nuances because the way business is done in different regions is different as well. So there is no standard cookie cutter sort of template that you could have from a go to market standpoint. But I think key elements are going back. What is the value now? Value in terms of how do you sell, what do you sell, how do you generate revenue? So understanding of that has to be part of the plan.

Is that your product lines like starting off with outlining the product lines.

Yeah, yeah. So outlining, what is it that we take to market, what is it that they take to market and which are the areas where we can collaborate. So some of them will be completely unlinked and there's not much scope from a synergy standpoint. There's some within those suite of offerings that we take to the market. There'll be few that we identify as. Yes. These are the ones that make sense together and these are what we are going to focus on from a go to market, so that focus around specific areas or offerings that we would think about from a go to market standpoint. Then the customer. So there's an offering lens, there is a customer lens and then there's a delivery lens. Right. So the offering lens is what I said, looking at the capabilities, identifying what we will sell. Then there's a customer lens where we think about these are my customers, these are their customers, these are the common ones. We'll have some common customers as well, which are the ones that we want to identify as the pilot accounts for synergy. So we look at the offerings and then see which of those offerings will work with which of these customers. And we have a view of or a short list so to say of customer map to offering. So once we do that, then you are in a position to start to do the sales workshops. Getting the teams together, talking to each other, thinking about the approach that we want to take to target that particular client.

Walk me through a sales workshop because I feel like a lot of synergy plans include cross train sales teams. Not something that you just put in there, the synergy model and it never gets delivered. You're actually running these sales workshops to align the sales teams.

What does that look like? So I do two types of sales workshops. So one, I want the broad level where we are creating awareness for each other. That pretty much happens almost at the beginning. Within the first week post close. What we try and do is actually get the target company to present back to our sales people everything that they do. Likewise our guys to present to the target everything that we do just so that we are showing them everything that we have at least at a high level in terms of these are the services. So at least when the target company say talking to a customer and they hear something around this kind of services we have, they're able to connect it back and come back to us. At least if there's sense and office. We do broad sales enablement sessions initially just to make people that's more of awareness that we put it that way. Then we do account specific sessions. So you take up one of our largest clients here, bank, for example. Then we'll get the sales teams on both sides who work on that customer to talk to each other and that becomes more specific to that customer. So where in the customer account are you present? Where are we present? What has been our history? What has been your history? Stakeholder mapping at a customer level and then thinking about how do we go forward with that particular Customer. Those are customer level workshops. And then as you go further into the journey, we start to do more specific enablement workshops on the key offerings that we identified from a synergy standpoint. So that happens at the next phase in terms of these are the ones that we see potential. This is where we did a pilot customer. This worked really well. This is how we did it for that customer. And I think we are now ready to expand this, scale it across our broader portfolio. So that's when we get sales teams for both sides to start to understand the approach that we took for a certain pilot account made it successful. And then we pay that back, including the learning the problems as well, including everything that we learned from that experience. And then so that's the third type of workshop. So one would be the high level view of each other, getting to know each other, kind of the first date kind of scenario, getting to know each other kind of thing. Second is getting specifics around areas or customers that have been identified. So we do detailed deep dives on customer level. And the third is once we start to do this pilot with a certain account and it works, then we try to expand on that and present that back into working discussions and sessions with the broader groups.

Again, does that work? Does that result in capturing revenue synergy?

It does work, but there is a lot of challenges sometimes because the moment you start to present this, everybody gets overexcited and everyone wants to sell. And sometimes I have the reverse challenge. I have the problem of plenty because what happens, everybody wants to sell and the salespeople, they just need a new shiny toy to go and take to market. So in fact I have the reverse problem. Sometimes I have to prioritize and say, you know what, we're not going to look at these. We have to look at these. Only the end of the day we have to acknowledge that our acquisition teams, the sales teams, are not as big as ours would be, that there is only so much time and effort they can put a lot of times trust. We actually have to prevent people from taking up opportunities as well.

Fair enough, but that sounds like a pretty critical components. We talked about getting understanding of the product lines, what we're offering, what the model looks like to delivery, what the common customers are lending that over to these sales workshops for enablement. Any other that go in, that go.

To market plan, this is pretty much it. And there's obviously an operational component to it in terms of how would we make it work. So there is a sales component, but there is a tied back in financial and Operational component as well because most often these will involve people working across companies and stuff. So there's definitely operational aspect of how would you create opportunities in the system, how would you put people across so that typically we work with Cocktail to plug that into the go to market.

Strategy and obviously working out the comm structure and making sure that's aligned as well.

Yeah, so that's from the HR part. So there's a finance, operations, hr. Those aspects are kind of tied in.

What are the biggest challenges you have to deal with executing all this?

A lot of times the corporate functions have a structured way of doing things. That is a plan. They said this is our plan. But sometimes the business just needs something different. And I think pushing through that is a challenge. And to be honest, my biggest challenge today is fighting back Global on why Australia is different. A lot of times I feel like the bigger organization, the integration approach isn't really customized to the nuances that a certain business or a region might have. For example, the issue with multiple common accounts, it might be just an exception for some other region, but for me it is a daily problem because any company that requires it is Australia. There are only four banks and two retailers and two telcos. So for me having common customers and multiple contracts is a very big challenge. But our system doesn't really necessarily support it because it is treated as an exception anywhere else in the world. I think there are challenges, there are nuances that come from a region standpoint that I have to deal with. And like I said, aligning sales incentives sounds easier than it is because different companies have different compensation models and. And it takes a lot to work through that and we're not always very successful with it as well.

Nobody likes their comp structure change at all.

Exactly. There is reluctance and resistance from the people involved. At the same time, the process doesn't necessarily support changes very easily. So you've got to try and keep balancing that.

Yeah, I'm always interested in doing when you do deals, the surprises you encounter because it's such a big variable, whether it's surprises and diligence, surpr integration. I'm curious from the go to market lens if there's been interesting surprises that you've come across. I don't know if you have any examples like that.

Well, there are a lot of surprises. The most recent, I wouldn't say surprise. It was more of a shock. I had two of my acquisitions on either side of a certain deal very recently. Just. We just closed a certain deal. So they've got the RFP before close. So it was really in that space where you couldn't declare it, but we actually found ourselves on opposite sides of the same deal, which is interesting and quite a bit of shock because, Ali, you're like, okay, we are now actively competing with each other. How do we do it? I think there are a lot of different things that come up. They're surprising, challenging as well, I would say, and very interesting.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting how you can pop up on both sides of the deal. Any other lessons learned that you want to share? It's an interesting area you work in. It's one that doesn't get talked about a lot. It's probably one of the most instrumental in really defining if a deal is successful or not. And I'm curious if there's just general or nuanced advice you'd have for other practitioners that are in your role or covering that part of the deal.

I think, again, the biggest lesson learned is it's not a one size fits all scenario, right? With go to market, you have to be open. You have to have an open mind. Things will change. You can define a vision, you can define a plan. You can do everything as per the checklist or whatever. You can build a checklist and follow the checklist. But at the end of the day, you have to have an open mind because this is what is touching the customer. You have to be prepared to deal with any change that comes in as a result of a customer change or the way you anticipated something to go in a certain way just goes different. I think that acceptance that things will be different is perhaps the most critical thing. And I guess that's where people make mistakes. And the other is you have to have an approach where you take pilots, deliver on the pilots, and then try and do a big bang. Because if you try and do a big bang, go to market integration on day one, you will fail. You will most definitely fail because there are just too many people talking to too many others and without a thought, process or structure around it. A lot of times, and we've tried this, and it's. It's from personal experience that I say this. Sometimes some integrations you just over achieve on go to market in the initial months, and most of the time you fail. You have to be slow and steady with the approach as well. You have to identify pilots, make it right, and then expand.

You have to validate your go to.

Market, you have to validate it. And there is. You have to validate it with personal experience. You have to validate it with on the ground, hands on experience, you can't do a theoretical validation of it. It has to be a practical validation.

You're getting feedback from the sales team, but are you also getting feedback from the customer related market? What does that look like? How do you funnel that feedback from the customer to know the go to.

Market'S successful, the customer feedback it, we take it. We actually periodically check for customer feedback and see what is the message that they're getting. There's one thing we are telling something and we're doing something that assuming they will receive it that way. But sometimes the customer still sees you as different entities. For example, so a customer recently came back and said, you know what? Very good story. But we still think we have to deal with three different companies. And then, you know, you have to take that feedback loop positively back and say, what can we do differently in terms of the way we are engaging with the customer? The messaging on our collaterals, for example, all of that, you would take that feedback, take it back and say at least for the next customer, let's improve that messaging so that we don't get the same feedback. It is a very iterative and customer feedback I think is a very critical role because at the end of the day you're validating it based on actual practical customer experience. You have to take that feedback and keep doing a feedback loop.

Is that the conclusion or interview to make go to market successful? Listen to your customer.

Listen to your customer, but I think also listen to the people on the ground. Because at the end of the day we have to understand that the salespeople on the ground, they know what they're doing. There may be different approaches, but at the same time they've both been successful in that space. So the idea is to really listen to them, accept what they are highlighting as potential challenges and really step by step work through. I think there's a lot of listening that I do as part of my job in terms of really capturing the essence of what people are trying to say and then seeing how we can meaningfully bring the different pieces together to make sense of the customer. And then of course listen to the customer and take that back and reiterate.

Yeah, Jal, what's the craziest thing you've seen in M and A?

I don't know. Every day is crazy. I would think it's not crazy, but I think there are a lot of trust issues. I feel like a lot of my time goes into resolving trust issues, which I feel like sometimes is you agreed to be acquired you know, just trust and we bought you, we should also trust you. But the thing is it somehow doesn't work the way my brain thinks it should work. I think there's a lot of everybody trying to protect their turf, kind of an attitude in the initial phases especially. And go to market is initial. Right. It's the very beginning. So everybody's protective of their customers, their opportunities. They're not sharing as much as we'd like them to share. So the trust part is what I particularly find a bit crazy because I think that naturally you should be a little more trusting than you are on both sides. That's something. And obviously there are other. There's a lot of emotion involved. Right. The acquired companies feel overwhelmed. The parent company thinks, oh, they have just been difficult for the heck of being difficult trying to balance everybody's emotions and priorities. I think it's a bit crazy, but I enjoy it.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's getting married, then figuring out how you're going to trigger.

That's what I say. It's like either being a divorce lawyer or school teachers.

This was a great conversation. I enjoyed learning about go to market from you and thank you very much for your time today.

Absolutely. Thank you so, so much for your time. Kisam, thank you for the opportunity, this amazing talking to you. Thanks a lot.

My pleasure. And here's to the deal. Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M and A with our podcast. Please subscribe for more content and conversations with industry leaders. If you like our podcast podcast, please support us by leaving a five star review and sharing it. I enjoy hearing feedback and connecting with our listeners. You can reach me by my email. It's Kisan K I s o n dealroom.net M&A Science is sponsored by Dealroom, a project management solution for mergers and acquisitions. Additional educational content is available on Deal Room's blog@dealroom.net blog. Thank you again for listening to M and A Science. See you next time. Views and opinions expressed on M and A Science reflect only those individuals and do not reflect the views of any company or entity mentioned or affiliated with any individual. This podcast is purely educational and is not intended to serve as a basis for any investment or financial decisions.