Keys to achieving sales revenue growth through M&A: PwC

Achieving go-to-market (GTM) goals is crucial to being a successful dealmaking organization. That’s especially true in transformational deals, which are rising as long-term trends compel companies to reinvent themselves in order to thrive.

According to PwC’s 2023 M&A Integration Survey, transformational deals account for nearly half of all deals. These deals can create significant value but require complex coordination to help capture incremental revenue growth and synergies.

Five key GTM areas

Successful dealmaking organizations translate the strategy behind a deal into an actionable plan and execute it. Let’s look at five key GTM areas in which companies can increase their chances for value creation.

1. Develop a GTM implementation plan

As ownership of the deal transitions away from corporate development, your team should develop a GTM implementation plan. This chart shows how integration teams should approach turning common deal assumptions into an actionable GTM plan.

Many acquirers form an agile group called a "clean team" to help address these questions. Operating under rules agreed upon by both the buyer’s and seller’s legal departments, this team evaluates sensitive information and fine tunes the value creation plans.

Common revenue growth assumption	Questions to ground the assumption
The acquirer (BuyerCo) has a huge customer base and will be an excellent source of leads for the acquisition (AcquiredCo).	Which customers are a good source and how should we qualify the leads? How should we take in and nurture the leads? How should we measure progress and will we have the data required to determine if we need to pivot?
We can cross-sell existing products to existing customers.	What’s the cross-sell proposition? Have we confirmed that existing customer needs align to the cross-sell proposition? How should we enable sales reps to cross-sell the products that are new to them?
We can cross-train the sales reps to run sales plays (tactics designed to sell specific solutions to specific customers) immediately after the deal closes.	What’s planned, beyond sales training, to enable the sales reps to be successful? Are there any “blockers” (e.g., software systems, incentive structures, etc.) and what is the interim plan that can go-live on Day 1?

2. Orchestrate early deal momentum

Successful M&A integration teams are distinguished by their ability to capitalize on deal momentum. Savvy dealmakers achieve near-term value creation that can help fund the larger transformation going forward. Three components — a win room, sales enablement and an interim operating model — can help boost the chances for near-term GTM value creation.

Win room
Sales enablement
Interim operating model

Win room

A win room is the GTM operations command center, ideally centralized within the revenue operations (RevOps) function to drive progress toward revenue goals. Win rooms prioritize revenue growth by managing opportunities for new business, renewals and cross-sell opportunities.

Example: The integration teams for a Fortune 100 tech company identified priority accounts and near-term opportunities that had a high probability of achieving the deal’s first-year business case. Use cases and pipeline data were used to develop sales plays that were incorporated into rep-level sales plans.

Sales enablement

To accelerate quick wins, equip the sales team with the sales sheet and training that showcases the service and product solution(s) most relevant on Day 1.

Example: A Fortune 500 packaging company wanted to increase revenue through cross-selling, updating the pricing strategy, developing customer action plans and rebranding. The company ran pre-close workshops to identify cross-selling and pricing opportunities between the two companies. Then it prepared an action plan for individual sales reps, and developed a standardized communication letter to enhance customer experience.

Interim operating model

The GTM operating model will likely need to be transitioned to an interim model that enables the people (account alignment, Day 1 incentives), process (rules of engagement, contracts) and system components to sell across channels, products and geographies.

Example: Even serial acquirers need to adjust their interim GTM operating model for specific deals. One large scale technology company recently acquired a mid-sized B2B software company. Both companies understood the GTM operating models did not match and would be difficult to integrate. The acquirer overlooked the B2B software company’s lead nurture techniques and designed a new lead qualification and nurture process that resulted in exceptionally low conversion rates. This avoidable error prevented deal success from occurring within a reasonable time period.

3. Keep an eye on KPIs

Keeping score is an important way to help drive value creation. In most cases, these KPIs should be presented in an executive dashboard that details both revenue growth-related and cost synergy KPIs. Take a look at these common revenue-related KPIs in the chart on the right.

What looks simple can be difficult if teams wait to align on the measurement plan until after the deal closes. Delays can result in business unit owners and finance controllers debating what “counts” toward attaining revenue growth targets. These problems may be magnified when sales incentives and compensation are directly connected to the KPIs. Successful dealmaking organizations help enable the measurement approach that can be both CFO-approved and also manageable for financial controllers. Many companies create cloud-based, visual dashboards to track revenue-related outcomes.

Example: In the case of a large professional services company, revenue-related deal outcomes were not directly tied to sales compensation at the individual level. This decision allowed the company to focus on team-based outcomes and thus design KPI reporting based on team performance. The company designed a team-based KPI measurement approach and reporting dashboards which provided the right level of fidelity for managing deal performance across all of the company’s recent acquisitions.

4. Position the right people in the right roles

Even savvy acquirers can be overwhelmed by integration’s day-to-day demands. It’s important to identify team members who are specifically directing their efforts toward GTM objectives. This structure provides focus on the deal thesis and the revenue related value creation targets.

Sales leaders may not be the right leads for the revenue growth team given that a significant amount of time and cross-functional orchestration are likely to be required. With the emergence of the RevOps function, dealmakers can consider nominating RevOps team members to play these roles. The selected team members will focus on managing the interim GTM processes and supporting efforts to drive revenue.

The investment committee and the corporate development team should work closely with the executive steering committee (SteerCo) to provide accountability for deal outcomes. While the integration management office (IMO) usually runs review meetings with the SteerCo, it is important that revenue growth leaders speak to the revenue-related KPIs.

5. Cultivate a change-oriented mindset

Cultivating a change-oriented mindset in the sales team — from due diligence and planning to post-close execution — is critical. The first rule when integrating the sales functions of two companies still holds true: There should be no disruption to customers. Dealmaking teams with GTM drivers should relentlessly focus on supporting their sales teams.

Action	Outcome
1. Developing incentives and straightforward explanations of new quotas.	Retaining top sales talent Establishing transparency for sellers Helping sales to set clear goals
2. Training sales teams how to articulate the combined value proposition to channel partners and customers. This includes robust sales sheets, workshops and development of learning resources.	Creating certainty for sales team members Reassuring channel partners Eliciting high customer satisfaction
3. Identifying who to sell to and how to interact with potential customers and channels.	Expanding the opportunity pipeline Removing friction between multiple sales teams by setting clear rules of engagement Improving customer experience by only having to interface with one team

Conclusion

As revenue synergies continue to underpin transformational deals, we see successful integration teams distinguish themselves and elevate deal performance by successfully operationalizing business case and GTM value creation levers. Starting early in the deal cycle and deploying clean teams to gather insights are essential to a successful deal. In summary, savvy dealmakers should be able to:

Ensure your integration team establishes a clear understanding of the deal.
Develop a plan to orchestrate early deal momentum.
Establish the capability to monitor and manage revenue-related KPIs.
Get the right people and structure in place to effectively operationalize and own the GTM effort.
Cultivate a change-oriented mindset throughout the deal cycle.