M&A Blind Spots: Integrate Fast and Align on Uplift (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Relying too much on human effort to scale sales like that's not real, right? That's the antithesis of scaling. We didn't combine the organizations Fast enough. It's a cautionary tale to anyone that is caught up in the romance and excitement of M&A It's all vision at the time, but that's almost antithetical with like what's the value that we're trying to achieve, right? What kind of uplift is it? Is it an increase in acquisition? Is it a decrease in retention? Is it an increase in cross-sell? All right, like is it an ARPU play? What is it? How many of those levers have to be pulled at the same time in order for you to hit that number? AI is just the automation of existing workflows and thought processes And so there's no shortcut like go actually learn the underlying workflows and processes And if I knew the answer to that question perfectly, I would be I'd be on the talk circuit. I'd be writing books about it Hey Everybody it's Sam Jacobs.

[00:01:04] Speaker 2: Welcome to revenue blind spots powered by otter AI. I hope you know revenue blind spots at this point It's a podcast exploring the pivotal moments in the careers of top revenue leaders And we dive deep into the blind spots that have shaped leadership strategy and growth from top go-to-market executives Uncovering lessons that can help the next generation of revenue leaders today on the show We're excited to bring you Ashley Grech Ashley is a good friend of mine and also the chief revenue officer at zero where she leads global go-to-market functions including sales operations regional MDS customer experience partnerships and revenue ops prior to joining zero in 2023 She held senior leadership roles in FinTech and payments including global head of sales at Square chief operating officer at recharge She holds an MBA and a BS in international studies both from the University of Chicago She's a resident of the Bay Area Ashley. Welcome to revenue blind spots.

[00:01:58] Speaker 1: Thank you so much Sam.

[00:01:59] Speaker 2: It's great to see you again We're excited to have you so, you know the drill about the show now before we get there You are the zero zero tell us in a few words What is zero do for those that don't know out there in the world zero is a leading cloud accounting software platform and it it is it includes payroll payments invoicing so it's the full suite on how to Start run and grow your business. We have two primary sets of customers SMBs themselves and their accountants and bookkeepers So SMBs and their advisors and we're in every country you can think of but with our largest largest contingents in Australia New Zealand North America and EMEA Let's dive in to this topic and obviously you've had a long and illustrious career And so there's probably been a lot of wins and obviously some blind spots So when you think about the framing of this show There was a time in your career or multiple times and experiences where you felt like you had a blind spot in your approach to Revenue leadership GTM strategy or operational execution. What was the blind spot? What are we talking about?

[00:03:04] Speaker 1: That that comes to mind when I frame it like that when you came to me about this show I was like I have dozens of things to talk about and I think you look every single role I've had has had blind spots and hopefully different ones like I try not to repeat the same ones and that can be like not hiring senior enough leaders or not changing leaders out fast enough or you know relying too much on human effort to Scale sales like that's not real right? That's the antithesis of scaling Not thinking about dependencies from product that are necessary to grow But I think the one that is freshest in my mind right now because it is a repeat Like I hope that these baseball cards don't repeat. But the truth is this one has come up a couple of times where? Post M&A so leading up to during and after Like what are the mistakes that have been made there that really hindered? The immediate value of the deal and I think for me that one seeing it now a few times It has to be that we didn't combine the organizations Fast enough zero is public.

[00:04:17] Speaker 2: So this was a public announcement that the big deal I think most recently that you did was this acquisition of Melio payments for I think 2 billion But there have been others there have been other M&A deals that you've been a part of both at zero and probably at square in Other places. So what is the the precursor leading up to the deal? And how do you think about integration? And what do you propose to the founders and the board of that the company that you're going to acquire and then how does that? Play out. That's a great question.

[00:04:43] Speaker 1: I want to be clear that this conversation is not about Melio It's really about the multiple M&A opportunities that I've seen right? It's not Melio specifically and any one of these deals have all been great deals But it's required a lot more sort of intervention and effort that I think we think When going into a deal and it's a cautionary tale to anyone that is caught up in the romance and excitement of M&A you know, there's like a dating dance that happens before you go into the the transaction itself and Just perhaps not squinting hard enough at like what is the actual what are the things that actually have to change? In order to make this successful as quickly as possible. So all of them have been successes, but Not nearly fast enough, right and by the way when I say not nearly fast enough. It's not like They're not failures. They're just lessons learned But um, you know during during the dance There is like it is like dating like you're trying to sell each other on the vision of what's possible together As you should you should build a joint vision and with that comes obviously a sort of a joint financial plan But it's all theory it's all vision at the time and I think where we have over indexed as the acquirer is Really wanting to preserve as much as possible the autonomy of the acquired party You know saying things like you'll have your own team. You'll run this team It'll just run separately and like that sounds great But that's almost antithetical with like what is the what's the value that we're trying to reveal? Right exactly even though the model itself is is largely there are shared financial targets and You know, even if you put conservatism in it, you really have to figure out and look at together. What does the uplift? Represent what kind of uplift is it? Is it an increase in acquisition? Is it a decrease in retention? Is it an increase in cross-sell? All right, like is it an ARPU play? What is it how many of those levers have to be pulled at the same time in order for you to hit that number? And so I think if I were to like classify it as two blind spots historically one is perhaps not being as explicit With the go-to-market teams on like what's the classification of the type of uplift? We're looking for in the model and then how do you reorient every everyone and every team around those new goals? And then also not being fast enough to integrate the teams.

[00:07:09] Speaker 2: And so when you say not fast enough What does that mean in practice? That means that like maybe the deal closes and an XYZ company continues to just do their thing For six months nine months twelve months if you were to accelerate it how what does integration look like like what if you're thinking about? Regardless of the speed when it went great. What is going great mean? Does that mean? Immediately like consolidating the territories into one sales team. Like how do you think about integration when it comes to go-to-market?

[00:07:42] Speaker 1: I think before the deal closes you have to have already had that conversation on like what teams should and can remain separate and what teams Should and can be unified Rather than saying nothing changes. You guys will continue to do the jobs we're doing We're gonna stay like this for six to twelve months Like that's a common talk track you hear that all the time in sort of large acquire M&A It's like you guys school just continue to do what it is you do Sometimes there's like an immediate sort of synergy headcount reduction, but most of the time it's like we'll leave you guys alone For six to twelve months. It's like well You know when you're doing the deal the the most often talked about Timeline is that of tech integration? But what is probably left not yet explored or not like deeply explored is how quickly should those teams be unified? I'm like of going one by one team at a time and thinking about like what which ones need to be Put together.

[00:08:41] Speaker 2: What is best-in-class look like? Is it is it literally going by a team by team? How often is there an integration that doesn't result in shedding of personnel? Like is it is it often that you can combine two teams of a hundred sellers? but they're selling different products and that can become a team of 200 or you looking for Synergies that layer the product capabilities into one team of 125 or something like that Yeah, it's interesting you ask it that way because the answer totally depends on what type of uplift you're looking for So is it and also what type of product acquisition is it right?

[00:09:17] Speaker 1: Is it an add-on is an enhancement of the current product because if it's an enhancement you probably don't need two teams But if it's an if it's an add-on, there's a or like a separate front door even there's a strong argument To keep that separate team right so that they become two front doors and then become can become flywheels for each other Where you start thinking about some, you know quick synergies is like operating functions like marketing Rev ops is not not the craziest thing either.

[00:09:46] Speaker 2: You don't need two separate rev ops teams You certainly don't so in fact, in fact, that's probably a recipe for a disaster if you've got two separate rev ops teams with two separate Dashboards. Yeah, exactly. My one of my questions is about culture. Like how do you think about expertly integrating? You know, you've got this company that's being acquired They're probably defensive you were pitching them and that in the moments leading up to the deal Hey, you're gonna get to do your thing on your own and what you're saying is we got to be careful about that talk track and we've got to sort of be a little bit more reasonable even though we are trying to close the deal and Then we've got to take this company and that's that's totally different that does things differently that has different rituals How do you think about making that work?

[00:10:28] Speaker 1: It is really hard You you keep asking the word like best-in-class Like I don't know what best-in-class looks like but I can tell you what has worked Like I'm still you know, we will all still be learning about what great should and can look like but when it's gone well And this is true whether or not there's M&A like focus relentlessly on the experience of the customer and how exciting it is For the customers because no one is gonna argue with you on that it doesn't matter what the cultural norms are and whether they have like bagel Wednesdays on one company and you know, summer Fridays and another like if you Think only about or really trumpet. What is the benefit for the customer? And like what's the vision of what's the product vision? What's the experience vision? That we're marching towards for this customer base. It's hard to argue with it. So that that tends to unify people pretty quickly So you lead lead pretty heavily with like what's the product vision and then also how does this make life better for the clients?

[00:11:29] Speaker 2: When you think about and I'm thinking about this because I'm thinking about global organizations with offices in different places What's your experience? You know, there's always this question about regionalization versus Functionalization, you know, there's a global sales organization that paired that has extensions into all regions versus You know We bought this company in Belarus they get to stay in Belarus and we'll just have and the GM of Belarus will report up to you know The country manager that me a manager. How do you think about that?

[00:12:00] Speaker 1: If I knew the answer to that question perfectly, I would be I'd be on the talk circuit. I'd be writing books about it But here's my here's my theory Sam is that there is a cyclicality to it and it's sort of like agent stage Based like if you have a small region Don't over globalize Their operations it will kill them. It would be it would mean death to that region And even in large companies smaller regions sort of generally get to keep more of their autonomy and more full stack as they should And then you have more like jack-of-all-trades roles you have sort of generalist marketing roles as opposed to having like one of each role for example that you would have in a super region like North America or EMEA and So, you know try to protect that in the team. So that would be the exception to like Combining that like notion of trying to combine teams but when you have Fully fledged functions in both companies and they're both like relatively mature meaning like there are Not as many jack-of-all-trades roles And much more specialization. That's when you can start thinking about combining.

[00:13:12] Speaker 2: I have a question just for the future leaders You know you we're in a we're in a world. You are incredibly respected in our ecosystem And if you're giving advice to up-and-comers about how to think about Their career in a world of AI where technology is changing so rapidly and where resilience is so critical What's what advice are you giving to the next generation right now as they think about wanting to emulate you?

[00:13:39] Speaker 1: But probably having fewer clear steps to follow exactly in your footsteps AI is just the automation of existing workflows and thought processes And so there's no shortcut like go actually learn the underlying workflows and processes I think that's the thing that scares me most is like yes, this is a rethinking we don't know what it's gonna look like 10 years from now and we have to suspend how we Expect the world to look but our knowledge of it and our ability to guide and lead through it Like our ability to create entirely new experiences has to be anchored in the current one Otherwise, it's like a mirror image of a mirror image of a mirror image of a once upon a time Process that we all did as BDRs, right? Like it's really dangerous to get too far away from actually knowing what the job is And so I would just say for people that are coming up today like be curious and open-minded Obviously like be sort of opportunity and vision focused be able to spend The anchoring of how things used to or should be but know it know how things used to or should be That's my advice for myself, so hopefully it works for others I Love it.

[00:14:53] Speaker 2: All right last question for you and thank you so much for being our guest on the show But what we like to do in the very last part is just pay it forward a little bit There have been people that have had a big impact on you. There have been books that you've read there have been Podcasts you've listened to there have been board members When you think about either people or ideas that have had a big influence on you and that you think we should know about maybe It's a book that you think we should read or a person you think we should know about What comes to mind?

[00:15:24] Speaker 1: I'll start with the people And there there's people that I go back to I think I've said this to you before I practice like salad mentorship So I think of something that someone does really well and I like go ask them about that specific thing And so some all-time greats when thinking about sort of next companies and structuring The leverage of jobs like one job sort of feeding into the next one It has to be a Michael Cassetta like he is the OG of that in my mind I've had other revenue leaders like Angela Martin who's still at JP Morgan. She's been there for like 25 years 20 years now And she just is so thoughtful as like leading as a Nothing, but herself, but she is poised You know growth oriented so I have I have my salad bar of people that I learn a ton from I also learn a lot from my product leaders. So the chief product officer at zero She's one of my sort of closest confidants, but I also learned a ton about running a business from her And I think she's made me a better go-to-market operator, her name is Dia Jolly and she's a force books Gosh, there there. There's some sort of all-time greats out there. No question but recently I read a book called stolen focus and it talks about how our Environment our diets our habits and practices and then finally our platforms that we choose to spend our time on Degrade our quality of thought it's not just about like taking our attention and like stealing it to social media but it actually like decreases our ability to Be happy and to think clearly and you know for all of us we get paid for the quality of our thoughts So I found that book to be very entertaining Highly recommended and it's a great audio book.

[00:17:15] Speaker 2: So if you want to go out for a walk in nature And listen to stolen focus strongly recommended just one last follow-up question on stolen focus What what is the author recommend to regain our focus? Is it delete social media apps from your phone? Is it listen to more albums and less playlists?

[00:17:34] Speaker 1: Talks a lot about all of the above he talks a lot about how Entertainment is folk is now engineered to be short in nature in order to keep us on Like to keep us going and that trains your brain in the opposite direction so there's obviously like, you know limit you can't possibly eliminate but also like Sleep listen to more music like engage in conversations things like I know that sounds almost obvious, but it will really come together in the book and This gentleman he actually lives it where he goes super extreme and then starts like bringing it all he like pairs it all back He brings it back and he talks about his experience doing that.

[00:18:17] Speaker 2: I love it Actually, if folks are listening they want to reach out to you. Are you open to that? What's a good way for strangers to engage with you?

[00:18:23] Speaker 1: I'm on LinkedIn.

[00:18:24] Speaker 2: Come find me actually thanks so much for being our guest on the show and always appreciate our now multi-year friendship and Thanks for being our guest on revenue blind spots.

[00:18:34] Speaker 1: Thank you, Sam. Happy to be here You