Growth | Maximizing the ROI on Your M&A

Learn how to maximize ROI on your mergers and acquisitions with proven strategies. Explore expert insights on due diligence, integration planning, and value creation to ensure long-term success and profitability in your M&A endeavors.

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Okay, folks, I am really excited for today's episode of the SCORR cast. It is actually a replay from a LinkedIn live that SCORR marketing hosted in 2023 with a stellar panel outside of just myself. We have Roger Boutin, who is over at Fortrea. We have Alyssa Kent, who is the VP of Digital Strategy at SCORR Marketing. And then we have Randall Hein, and the discussion today is about maximizing the ROI on your merger and acquisition. And the team here is extremely experienced in this process. We walk through the key elements of ensuring once you have that merger and acquisition, how do we capitalize on it moving forward, what are some of the pitfalls that teams fall into with all of the chaos that happens in an M and A and really, how can we ensure the best use of the dollars in the time in the immediate three months before the during you know that three months during the acquisition, and then the three to six months post acquisition, where we're trying to make a splash in the market? Randall, Roger and Alyssa are fantastic. You are going to enjoy this episode. Alright, Roger, Alyssa, Randall, are we ready to have we ready to have some fun this afternoon? We're ready? Yes, awesome. Well, we, we've got about 15 people right now. I expect more to be joining throughout the the rest of the session. And for everybody who's watching right now and wondering, Will this be recorded, this will be, it will actually be live on our LinkedIn for the rest of the day, and then tomorrow, the rest of the week, next week, you'll be able to go back and you'll be able to watch this recording. So we really encourage a, asking your questions, because you'll be able to not only get the answer today, but B, you'll be able to go back next week and engage with this content again. And so if you're only able to come for the first 1520 minutes, still feel free to put in your questions and then make sure you follow up and watch the rest of it, because I think it is going to be a really entertaining, engaging and value driven session. With that being said, let's go ahead and get started. So thank you everyone for attending today and joining us for SCORR marketing's second ever LinkedIn live and the first in a two part series on M and A's. And today we're going to really focus on two topics right team. We're going to focus on the importance of Communications and Strategic integration with your M and A, and then really even a level, bit deeper, we're going to focus on maximizing your ROI within your M and A. And so right after this, I'm going to go through some introductions to our lovely group of panelists that we have here, and then we're going to give each of the panelists an opportunity to hit us with an opening statement as it pertains to m and A's. And then we're going to go through we're going to highlight some of the common objections, pitfalls and problem areas that we see companies go through when they're going through their own M, a we're also going to solve some of those issues by providing some solutions that we're going to walk through and give you action items that you can implement at your organization today or for your next M, a however, the best part about this event is it's not just me talking the entire time. It's not only that, but it's also not just us lecturing you for the next hour, we're going to spend time answering your questions. So I actually have the LinkedIn live pulled up on the right side of my screen here, where I will be reading your questions and asking them to Randall and Alyssa and Roger, and they'll be answering them. This can be generic, high level questions. It can also be specific questions about an experience that you've gone through, or that you might go through. So please feel free engage with those questions, and we certainly will answer them throughout this time. Now for the introductions, my name is Alec McChesney. I'm the Director of Business Development here at SCORR Marketing, and my job today is really to act as a guide through this event, and, more importantly, not talk very much and let the focus be on Randall, Roger and Alyssa and so up first, we've got Alyssa. Kent. Alyssa is the Vice President of Strategy at SCORR Marketing, where she serves as an executive on key client accounts and also leads the digital marketing department, inclusive of marketing automation, organic and paid media, social media and ROI reporting. Prior to alyssa's role at SCORR, Alyssa had led several Marketing and Communications internal departments in both the medical device and life science industries. Her expertise includes leadership and managing comprehensive strategic marketing and communication plans, mergers and acquisitions, marketing automation, branding, public relations. Applications, digital and social media and event management. Alyssa has vast experience managing integrated communication plans and brand rollouts for mergers and acquisitions, having gone through five acquisitions in the past five years herself, Alyssa has sat on both sides of an M and A and has a unique standpoint of what is needed from both an acquiring company and from the acquired company perspective, Alyssa, we're happy to have you here. Of course, up next, we've got Roger Boutin, along with being SCORR VP of communication, Roger leads our dedicated M and A team delivering strategy and execution for companies going through the M and A process while at pra Health Sciences. He led the marketing component of numerous acquisitions ranging from regionally focused transactions in the US, Europe, China, Japan, Russia and India, as well as a global acquisition that nearly doubled the size the company. And in the past year alone, Roger has worked on a dozen M A transactions for SCORR clients, helping them maximize the ROI and optimize integration. And last but not least, we are so thrilled to have Randall Hein join us today. Randall is the founder and president of Heinsight LLC, where he provides advisory and consulting services to the investment community and early mid life, early and mid market life science companies. Previously, he was the president of advara Consulting and Chief Development Officer at advara, which provides Institutional Review Board, institutional bio safety committee, research technology solutions and global regulatory compliance consulting services. Here Randall was responsible for leading M and A and corporate integrations, as well as strategic and organizational development, in conjunction with the Board of Directors Gen star capital and executive leadership. He was also responsible for the global consulting services organization, providing gxb, QA, regulatory compliance and human research protection services. Prior to advara, Randall was the senior vice president of clinical research, clinical research services at pra where he oversaw research operations, including clinical scientific medical and data services. Randall has significant experience in clinical research development, phase one through Phase four, clinical trials, clinical research technology, patient recruitment and engagement and emerging research trends. Randall has served as the lead executive on target, identification, diligence and integration activities, supporting nearly a dozen completed M and A transactions exceeding 600 million in total enterprise value. And we're happy to say that Randall is a member of SCORR strategic advisory board as well. Randall, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. And it's always great to get these recorded so I can share them with my mom. I appreciate it. That's That's exactly right. I love it. Well. With that being said, as a reminder, go ahead and start filling in with some questions about M A that you have want to get started with this. This, these opening statements. And I think it's really important to just acknowledge that we understand that in today's day and age, growth is at the forefront for health science companies. And M and A's represent a wonderful opportunity for that. It will position you as a company moving forward, diversifying your products, your services, and even your long term prospects for your business, these opportunities give you access to capital services, employee talent and much more. And the value that you can receive from these can be exponential, but there's also a risk at play when going through a merger and acquisition. Randall, I'm going to toss it to you for your opening statement, great. Thank you, and thank you to SCORR for inviting me to the conversation today. So one of the things I'm sure we'll talk about a lot this afternoon is really around the significant investment in time and capital that it takes to do an integration or to do an acquisition. You know, I would say that it typically takes at least six months to even find a target. Ideally, have those conversations, go through financial diligence, go through structural and organizational diligence, set your objectives, but that's just the first part. Then you have to integrate the companies, which is what we're going to talk about today. That easily takes another six to 12 months. So all in here, you're talking about a year, year and a half easy to complete this process. And one of the things that sometimes loses focus, there's so much intensity on the actual deal getting closed, and on the diligence that you overlook what happens after that, and that even longer period of time, six months to a year, to actually do the integration. So we're going to talk about today what some of those pitfalls might be. Some of the strategies might be to address some of those challenges. I've also noticed that there's also a lot of focus early on, on market communication, but that is also just one part of a. What you're talking about with your customers or or with the market, you have to also effectively engage your customers and keep them informed, make sure that they know what's happening every step of the way, and as or more importantly, you have to keep your team informed. And it's not obviously just dumping a press release, it's it's a full plan and communication that you have to put in place in order to make these things successful. And speaking of a plan that does take a well thought out plan, I think, to do a successful integration, and that usually takes a dedicated leader who is managing that, but it also takes dedicated operational leads from all the functional areas, from both companies that you're trying to trying to bring together. And as you do that, I think it's important to not only have a diligent plan, but make sure that you acknowledge where you have gaps and figure out how you're going to fill those gaps, and do it early, even before you close the integration. We'll talk about in a bit how much work you really should have done before you even get to the point that you're actually doing your close. So I'll leave it there for now and then look forward to having some conversations move into it about some of the common problems and mistakes and some of the strategies you can use for mitigation. Yeah, I love that. Randall and I jotted a couple of things down. I think there's gonna be a ton of questions based off of your opening statement alone. So I'm excited to dive into those. And before we do that, Roger, let's go to you for your opening statement here. Yeah, thanks, Albert. You know, I think playing off of what Randall talked about is the amount of investment that goes into m a is, what is the impact that it has. And you can, if it when it's done right, you can have. You can exceed your expectations in terms of impact, but if you do it incorrectly, you can really you can really short yourself. So when you think about an acquisition for a lot of companies, this is one of the few truly newsworthy events, and so just handling that lightly, you're missing out on opportunities to get your message, get your company out in front of a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be exposed to it. And so from a, from a the amount of noise or the amount of impact that you have with it, you need to take advantage of that. And you know, the other thing is, Randall talked about, you know, internal folks as well and customers. How you handle the announcement of this, the communication of it signifies to your employees, to the employees of both companies, the acquire and the target. It signifies to your to your customers, signifies to the to the market, how important this is, and so it really is an opportunity to put your best foot forward, but also talk about this new company that will now exist, that you've got two companies that have come together. They're typically complimentary. And so you have an opportunity to talk about how you can better serve your clients, the benefits that you bring to clients because you've joined together. And so I think that's a theme that we'll talk about, is the impact that you can have as you're working through this, and not, as Randall said, not just at stopping at the announcement, but continuing through as you move forward. Yeah, that's great, Roger. Thank you so much. I think one of the key things that we're going to go back to is, you know, all of these pitfalls are also opportunities. So as we're talking about things that could eventually be obstacles, it's also an opportunity to take advantage of within the organization. So appreciate that. I think it's a great segue to Alyssa for your opening statement. Awesome. Thanks, Alec. So I really think marketing communications for m&a transactions is a key factor for maximizing ROI. Um, I really believe in leveraging a merger or acquisition as an opportunity to get in front of your clients with a strong cadence of communications, both internally and externally. Um, like Roger just mentioned, there's a reason the two companies came together, right? So remind your audience of the services and solutions that both companies provide, along with the combined company value prop, use this as an opportunity for lead gen. Get your audience used to seeing these two companies working together. This gains and builds acceptance, both internally and externally, and like Randall mentioned earlier, there's so much emphasis on announcement day communications, but really that's just where it starts. Or I think the real meat and potatoes is, is a communication during the integration, you know, as things start shifting and staying engaged with your clients and employees is key with clear and transparent communication. I think that's the most important. I love it. I love it. Well, this sets the stage for the next what do we got 45 minutes here of fun, and what I want to do is just one more kind of call out and acknowledgement that the goal of this is to be an engaging session with the panelists and so happy to answer those questions. As you guys start dropping them in questions, comments, things like that. But we do have some preceded questions. We've got some topics that we're going to dive into and really, Randall, I think, I think we want to start with you. And one of the things that we've been talking about is some of these pitfalls, some of these areas where m and A's can fall short. And we're going to focus a little bit more on the problems and pitfalls first, and then we'll work through those, hearing from Randall, Roger and Alyssa, and then we'll jump to some of those solutions and sprinkle a few questions preceded and from the comment section throughout. But with that being said, Randall, I'm going to pass it to you. And I think this is a high level question, and we can bounce around. Is, where do we see m and A's fall short, right out of the gate. Great. Thank you, Alec, I think the number one place that I see challenges are companies not starting early enough. And honestly, this should be a parallel process, not a serial process, from the time that you make the announcement that the time that you get to integration. And that takes a lot of planning and effort. And we can talk about a little bit some things that help make that successful. But by starting early, I mean that you have a plan in place, and you are bringing operational leaders together before you even get to close or announcement with your customers with a full plan. That's probably the number one area where I see a downfall and where it takes so much effort and discipline to get ahead of that once you get into the integrations, a few areas that I see as challenge. Points one is just not keeping your customers informed. You tell them that you've done an acquisition or a merger or made some organizational change, but don't leave them guessing about the service delivery, their point of contact in the company, how contracting is going to work now, pricing might change, changes to service offerings, all those things need to be prospectively communicated to your customers and repeated throughout the process. Similarly, I think another area of downfall is not keeping your staff informed, so you get so myopic sometimes on going through all of the things that have to be done to get over the finish line, that you've had a chance to process all this information, and your team members have it, it's new and unsettling news to them, and there's no such thing, and I'm sure Alyssa will touch on this, there's no such thing as over communicating to your staff, and it's important that you're upfront with them and You're honest. People will see through, yes, very quickly. Does it? Does it take much and be sensitive what's important to them? You know, it's job security, it's a paycheck, but it's also benefits and culture and expectations of the company moving forward and what matters to them. And finally, I think where I see some of the not keeping staff informed fall down is not giving them clear, clear tools you have to provide them the training and FAQs messaging is consistent across the life cycle. Another couple of quick areas that I would highlight. One is not having good escalation pathways. So tagging on the comment of keeping your customers informed, you should have a pathway to have that information flowing back to a dedicated team, even dedicated emails that are out there for escalation points that people can react to quickly, within the same day or within 24 hours. Similarly, with internal teams have that same sort of escalation pathway so you don't allow yourself to get into a problem. Identify it early, before it becomes a bigger problem. And then finally, and it tags on, probably starting early, it's not focusing enough diligently on the tracking of all the goals and objectives for integration. And this one's hard. It's a grunt job to track all of the objectives you may have in an integration process, five or 600 objectives easily across functional units that you're trying to bring together. And it's a massive task to manage those, stay on top of them, and in fact, the communication between the companies is very difficult early on, because you're probably not in the same systems. So how do you even share a spreadsheet or share information between the two different companies. So thinking about that before you get into what you're doing with an integration, and then putting some good, diligent structure around it is very important, and I'll leave it here Lastly, and just say, probably the last area that I see a lot is just the challenge in balancing moving quickly with making good decisions, and probably somewhere along the way, something's going to get screwed up. It inevitably does, but it's a balance. If you know something's going to change for an organization, kind of the big things is tell people up front and the things you don't know, at least communicate to them the pathway or the means by which you reach that decision, so that you can set expectations appropriately as things move forward. Yeah, that's great, Randall, and I think the the be the be fast, but don't hurry. Be quick, but don't hurry, kind of comes to mind there. And one of the, one of the follow up questions, and Alyssa. Roger, feel free to jump in on this as well. But Randall, kind of follow up question based off of that is, you know, you mentioned there could be 500 600 objectives that you're looking at here. How does this change if I'm going through a smaller acquisition, you know, if I'm going through one that doesn't necessarily have that large component, where we feel like it needs to be this massive announcement, massive change. Do we keep the same strategy? Does it change? What does that look like? That's a great question. You know, as a guy who's five foot seven, I can confidently say this is one case where size doesn't matter. You have to still address all of the issues around customer communications. It issues HR issues communication challenges. So in my experience, it's not significantly easier or different from doing a small acquisition or a tuck in that it is from a larger one. All that same discipline and focus in order to make it successful still has to be there. And so my recommendation, and in my experience, follow exactly the same process. Yes, it's time consuming. Maybe you can achieve some of your objectives a little bit easier, a little less complicated, but I wouldn't vary from the discipline of a structure. And I would add to that Randall that sometimes it's even more important, because if you've got a small tuck in that has a lot of experts, and they're say 20 people, and 15 of them leave most of your investment has just walked out the door. And so I agree, there's, I agree that it's largely the same steps that you go through, but it can, it can sometimes be even more important if it's a smaller acquisition. And I think, Alyssa, I want to give you a chance here. I felt like I cut you off there. What are your you have any thoughts on this before we jump to the next little segment here? No, I was just going to bring up, you know, I think another huge risk in any integration is poor and inconsistent messaging. You know, I think it leads to confusion around why the deal happened and what to expect moving forward. Um, both internally and externally, right? So on the employee side, it can lead to job insecurities, performance issues, growth potential and really just not knowing where to turn. Um, you know, when you don't take the time to train your own teams, whether it be management teams or account teams, they have a hard time explaining the changes, and they don't have the answers the employee or client may be looking for. So really, just taking the time to develop those things, um, for the internal aspect of things. But then you know, on the client side, you know where that leads to brain confusion and uncertainty in the company, which is the last thing you want, right? So you know, the clients can ask, do the services or solutions provided, do they still exist? Is My Account Manager, so my contact all of those little things like, how does my day to day Scope of Work change if these elements aren't clearly laid out and people don't know what to expect, you really run the risk of your clients going to a competitor, or your employees leaving the company to find something more stable. You know, I think with poor messaging, there also comes in consistent messaging, which is another, you know, huge risk with so without an extremely ironed out integrated communications plan that Randall was talking about earlier, companies run the risk of, you know, different account teams saying different things, right? So in some places, clients will have contacts at both companies. They may get information from one account manager that's really conflicting to what the other one's saying, and then not putting you know, the time to train your own teams on how they should communicate the changes. So when you don't develop the proper communication case and timing between leadership to management teams to employees, you really open up the possibilities of people making their own assumptions. And that's where the rumor mill starts, which I'm sure everybody knows that's ever been in any company. That's you know, it's what happens so um, and then another big thing is just making sure your messaging is consistent across all platforms, like company websites, company intranets, internal, external, FAQs, social media pages, press releases, BV presentations, sell sheets, you name it. You need to develop one message platform between the two companies, and then, you know, build all your materials from there. Yeah, I love it, Roger, it felt like it felt like you were kind of chomping at the bit there to add anything here. Do you want to? Do you want to follow up on that? Well, I think it goes into, you know, the two year, you know, I have two areas that I, that I thought of, and the first one kind of comes right on, very similar to Alyssa. It's around specifically having incongruent brands. And so Randall had talked about earlier this planning, starting a lot early, a lot, very early in the process. And I think it's really important for companies to think about, once the acquisition is done, are you going to have a house of brands? Are you going to be a branded house? And so if you're going to have, you know, a house of brands, then it's fine. You can set that aside, and you can talk about that brand as it exists today, but if you're going to roll them under your existing brand, you need to be thinking about that early. You need to be communicating that. And you know, I would say, personally and at SCORR, we're big fans of ripping off the band aid. And that doesn't always mean on the day of the announcement. You need some transition time, but very quickly, moving to that and making it very clear that you're going to that brand, because I will tell you, and I will I'll fight people on this brands have value, and I'm going to drop a link in the in the chat here, when I'm done talking about the importance of brand value that they bring to companies. And brands can also be a very unifying thing. And Randall, you probably remember this back from the PRA days. We had just almost doubled in size through an acquisition and then rebranded, and that new brand really helped unify the company, both internally and externally. We became known externally by that brand, and people within the company really rallied around that brand. And so it's really, really important that you get that right. And then the second thing is, we sort of hit around this as well as being transparent with your employees. Don't call it a merger if it's not a merger, because all you do is either confuse them or have them doubting everything else. You say, don't try to protect the target company's feelings and say, Well, we're going to call it a merger even though we've acquired them. Say what it is. We'll talk later about sort of nuances and messaging, and that's fine, but be transparent. And Randall touched on some of these. You know, down the road, be transparent with your employees. Tell them what you can tell them when you can't tell them or you don't have the answer, let them know that, because they will, they'll be sensitive to it. You know, people are concerned about what's my job? Is my pay gonna change all of that? So it's really important that you do that as well. Yeah, that's great, Roger. And I think we actually have a little bit of a follow up question here that I think fits in from from the LinkedIn comments. And it kind of goes to the thought that I've been having as as Randall and Alyssa, you guys mentioned this earlier, is, you know, this is a lonely place to be, potentially, as an employee, you whether you're a part of the acquiring company or the acquired if you're not sure, you know what's happening, even if you're on the the company that was doing the acquisition, you might not know, is this going to replace me? What? What is my role look like? And so the question that we have here from Drake is, you know, is there a Preferred delivery of these internal messages? Drake does ask a little bit about the external but I'm interested, really, to start internally, especially it being, how do we do it? And we continue to do it internally? Is it just once? Is it a town hall? Is it internet? What does that look like? And in your experiences, maybe, where have you seen this be really successful, and then, and then, potentially, some, some, some examples of maybe how you saw it not go as well as well. Would be great. I can, I can jump in on this one. You probably have more to add up for me. But I think, you know, I've seen it done a lot of different ways, right? But I think the for me personally, because I've been part of both having, having, you know, whether it's done in a town hall setting or it's done in the manager setting, or it's done in email, you know, it's really, there's really no right answer, but I think as long as you're using all of the different channels and doing it all consistently, and providing the employees updates on a regular basis, like Roger was just saying, even if you don't have an update, Tell them you don't have an update, because if you don't communicate for a long period of time, people are going to start making up their own communications and start rumors. So that's my answer. I don't know. Randall, if you have anything to add on to that, I think you're you're absolutely right. Alyssa, it's tapping all those different channels. And maybe I can give a few examples of tools that I've used in the past or my teams have used in the past, but there's no right answer, because every culture is a little bit different, but some of the things Make sure you've got a deck right out of the gate that's ready to go, that you're presenting to employees immediately after or in conjunction with the announcement. It, and if at all possible, if you're an acquirer or you're the other company, have your senior leader or leaders on site giving that presentation. Because they're those folks are going to be very nervous all the the points that Roger made about salaries and pay and do I have a job? What's going to happen? And having that physical presence there and being able to field questions answer as best you can, the ones you don't know the answer. To say so is really important. I think the other thing is regular town halls. So as you're making progress to the integration, let people know what's happening. Let them know the challenges. Let them know where you're having successes. Again, set the expectations, because in the void of an expectation, people fill in their own lines, and usually those are not positive conclusions and lack of information. The other one is communicate very frequently. So in most of the integrations I've been involved with, we're talking about weekly pushes of information that are going to staff, and it might not be a lot, it might just be a paragraph or two that comes out in an all staff email, but remind people what's happening, and remind them to celebrate your successes, what's been done, and point out the success stories and the integration teams that show collaboration and show that you're reaching your goals as things are moving forward, and then finally, as part of the integration teams that are coming together, it's also important that the managers within that company or within that site are also sharing how the integration is going on a regular basis. It's not all kind of a corporate down discussion. It's an active discussion from active managers, from people I'm working with on a daily basis that show that show that the whole organization is engaged in moving things forward. So just a few things, just off top of my head that we've done in the past. And I this one thing I would add in two quick examples is one, agree with all those things and be consistent. Make sure that your messaging is consistent in what everybody has Randall. You mentioned a deck, you know that people are singing off the same song sheet. And two examples, one at a larger company, the CEO, I had a song where the CEO met with everybody at director level or above, had meetings, went around to the different offices and met with them. And then another one, this was a SCORR client where the CEO met with every single employee in groups of 10 or less, and had 10 or less because obviously you have 50 people, a lot of people won't say anything. You get 10 or less, people are more likely to talk. And so those aren't all necessarily feasible in every situation, but I think they're great examples of using all these other tools, but then being in the same room and speaking to people face to face makes a big difference. One of the one of the follow up questions that that we have based off of this is, how early is too early to start talking to your employees if you're the if you're doing the acquisition, so you you obviously have the legality of it, but what's too early, and how often should we be having those conversations? So that, or is it, do we want to have it come out? You know, once it's officially announced, what does that process look like? And I can take a stab at that. That can be tricky, because the information circles are concentric. And, you know you can't announce something until it's it's actually happened to a wider audience. But in my experience, that circle is very tight until you're certain a deal is going to happen, and you know the date, and you know the closing you're preparing for those that next level disclosure, but usually that's your senior managers in an organization, and that is close to the time of announcement, maybe that's a week at most prior where you're sharing that information with them. You're giving them some FAQs, you're explaining why this is happening. You're giving some giving them some context to it, so they have a chance to settle in. And you're also providing them with some training so that as this announcement goes live to the rest of the staff and to the world. They're ready to share that message to Rogers point in a consistent way. So I would say those senior managers are pulled in, and that's defined kind of by your organization. What that looks like, you know, a few days to a week before they're brought into loop, they have some training and some knowledge about it, and then all your materials are prepared, and then that goes to staff, generally concurrent in my experience with the announcement, because you don't want the world to know before you have the chance to make your splash. So it is a bit of a timing dance. But in generally speaking, that's kind of the order in my experience that I've I've seen follow. Yeah, I agree with Randall. I think in some cases, you know, sometimes, like people from sales or BD are brought in just a couple days before, just in, you know, to focus on how they're going to talk to key parents about it, right? So, you know, there's you. Developing a communication for letting your key clients know is key too. So that's a great point, if I could just add on to that. I think I mentioned that's a point that can fall down early in kind of my opening remarks. And I think that's a place you can't be over disciplined about. I think Roger and Alyssa, you both mentioned that, you know, it's not only just contacting those customers, but clients within those customers stratified. Who's going to contact them? How are you going to track and report that information back? Who hasn't been contacted? You may want to stratify and immediately, prospectively set up calls with your key customers in conjunction with the announcement, or even shortly before, in some cases, if they're a key client, and then roll it out to the rest of the clients in a very kind of methodical manner. It's great point. Yeah, go ahead, Roger, yeah. Only thing I'd add there, Alec, is, if you've got public companies involved, you have to announce intent, and so then that's a that's a whole different strategy, because it's out there, and then you have to think about how much, how you're going to talk about it, and there's limits to how much you can actually talk about it. So that's a whole another ball of wax. Yeah. No, I love that. That's a great point, Roger. And I think as we we're going to transition here into some of the solutions, some of those keys that that we could bring to the table to maximize the ROI for the M and A, but I do have one, one final question here, kind of on the pitfalls, and it's it goes back to the communication, but mainly looking at the external communication here. I know Alyssa and Randall, you've said this, and Roger, in our in our one on ones, we talk about this all the time. Is you can never over communicate from an internal perspective. We want to communicate frequently. Is there a limit of how much is too much from an external perspective? You know, sometimes we get those questions of, hey, we don't want to bother our current clients. We don't want to continue to talk to them about this press release is enough. We don't want to do those. We don't want to do this piece. What's the thoughts here? And maybe size matters, but this one, maybe it doesn't. Maybe number of clients, but I'm interested in your guys thoughts on is too much external communication to your clients a possibility? I mean, personally, I don't think so. They're probably, if you have five emails, they're probably going to pick up one of those. You know what I mean. So I don't think you can plan to communicate in these things. And I would say to your earlier point, Alyssa, use all your channels, all your modes. So, you know, you can overuse a channel, I think. So you know, if you constantly do the same methodology to communicate with your customers. Eventually they become a little numb or immune to that pathway. But if you're shaking it up and doing it through a combination of social media, through a combination of emails, through a combination of direct outreach, through a combination of marketing, then I think you can have a balanced approach. And you can't, to your point, Alyssa, do too much. Yeah. And I think, in addition to mixing up your channels, which I think is really important, is, is what's the message? If you come out whether, no matter how many channels with the same message, a has acquired B, A has acquired B, that's all you're ever saying. Then, yeah, it probably is too much. But you've How can you creatively nuance that message to say, of course, initially, that's the announcement, but then it's, Hey, because of this combination, we now have the ability to do this. We now have the capability we can now serve this region. So it's it's getting the synergies that are there because of the acquisition, and making sure that you continue to put those out there over time. And I think the other big thing that we've seen a lot of success with, and I think it goes back to who is doing the messaging. Is it only coming from the brand channel? Is it only coming from the brand LinkedIn, brand email, rather than it coming from executives, coming from both parties, coming from managers and even the sales reps, BD reps. There's just so many different ways that that message can get out on the airwaves that again, you won't say, Oh, it's just coming from them over and over again, so that you can really be a little bit more nuanced with that as well. And another thing people forget these days is pick up the phone, yeah, call your clients. I love it. Roger, anything else there? I felt like, yeah, no, you off there. I was going to say, as you're announcing, you know, you're, we're posting these things on social media. Is leadership from both companies, because they have a whole network on LinkedIn, typically, that may not be following either one of the companies, and so you you've got the ability to reach a larger audience. And again, you're showing your the employees. You're showing your customers that leadership of both companies are excited about this. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, we have a little over 20 minutes left here. Um. Has been a great session. So far, with the first 40 minutes, we've got a couple questions rolling in, and looks like we've got a little over 3035, people here. So I'm going to make sure that one more call out on on questions being allowed here. We're happy to answer them. But I do want to segue a little bit into the keys and so Randall, we're kind of going to go the same structure where we'll bounce around. But want to start with you. You know, you talked a lot about establishing a strategy with a direction and a plan, and how that can be really fruitful and maximizing your ROI. So I want to start with you really just on that topic, and then we'll bounce around. Sounds great. So I mentioned a few times kind of getting a team together, and maybe I'll just build a little bit on kind of what I mean by that. So in my experience, the most successful integrations I've been a part of, you're bringing together those senior leaders probably about a week before close. You're sitting in a room, you're getting to know one another, you're working through key messaging, but what you're also doing is assigning to those key leaders clear responsibilities and deadlines for objectives, at least early on that they believe that the organization believes needs to be met. It's also a fantastic time where you're going to identify a whole bunch of problems you haven't thought about are going to come out in that meeting, and it gives you a little bit of time to put in place some mitigation strategies and proactive communication before you make that hurdle where I've seen things fall down early on with these teams is going one way or the other, where you have an integration leader, but not a designated team with clear responsibilities, or you have teams with a bunch of responsibilities and nobody that leads them. And so I think it really is a combination of those two things coming together in order to make things successful. We talked a lot about communication, and I'll just maybe give a few examples of some tools or pieces that I've used in the past on integrations and honestly, even the documents themselves. Sometimes you might have 1520, different documents ready to go in conjunction with the press release. What I mean by that? We've talked about some but internal training materials ready to go for everybody, in conjunction with and post acquisition FAQs facts, not only for your customers that go to them, but a concurrent internal FAQ that is appropriate for business development, appropriate for project managers. And everybody's speaking off the same kind of playbook or hymnal, customer communication that will that will go out. We talked about the BD communication plan and the delineation of who's reaching out. And to alyssa's point earlier, I think it's critical that you're calling your key customers on the phone. You make that attempt, and you reach them live and answer their questions as best as possible. I mentioned before the escalation plans. Know that they're and establish a pathway when there's something that can't be answered or there's a concern that comes up, squash it quick from both employee perspective and customer perspective. Don't forget about your vendors. If you're a large organization, you probably have a bunch of people that are providing services to you, and they're they may be freaking out as they hear this that they may be losing some of their business or contracts may change, keep them in the loop. And then finally, don't forget those communication pieces to your to your teams, those weekly updates, the town halls, and one other one, if you're part of a company that has, you know, structured board and obviously you're going to need some board updates and and managing that information and the kind of expectations, I think the other thing here is to recognize where your gaps are. There's a lot that has to be done, and know what you're good at, and know where your gaps are, and just just be honest about it. And you might not have the internal staff, for example, that can handle all that communication or put all those decks together. You know, it's okay to work with an outside resource to address those issues. And you may think, Well, yeah, that's going to cost some money. Well, it's going to pale in comparison. In comparison to the money that you're going to spend for a failed integration. So, you know, rely on an external company to help you with those things where you might not have all the skills or capabilities. And then finally, Roger mentioned some of this as well. Celebrate your successes. You know, mix up your messages, and as you have things that get accomplished, share that with the world and share that with your teams. And lastly, I would say, you know, brands do have value. And one of the other areas that I think can be overlooked as you're working through all this integration effort and all the challenges and all the things that come up, you are also at a time that is opportune, probably one of the best times in your organization's development or history to get your value propositions out there to your customer base and build on that during the first six months or a year of your integration. And often that's tough to do internally. In with everything you've got going on, but it's a great platform. Probably never been in a better position to to speak to a lot of your successes and a lot of your new services and capabilities. Don't forget about that, that that's that's fantastic right now, I think it kick starts exactly where we want to go for the remainder of this session. Quick Add right here is, you know, a little spot on SCORR, because we are an outside firm that can come in and help, and that's something that Roger leads up as part of that M and a team and really is able to come in and and fill in those gaps and assist with all of this. So I appreciate kind of putting that out there. And then Roger, I feel like there was a couple of things in there that that lead into your next segment with the messaging and the documents. So we'll jump over to you. Yeah, excuse me, yes. So I think Alyssa mentioned it earlier, sort of the downfalls of having having inconsistent messaging. And you know, you mentioned, I lead the M and a team here, and I talk to clients, and we have a whole suite of services that we can provide. And I've been asked before, you know, what is the most important? And I don't hesitate for a second, it's the messaging always, because you can execute everything flawlessly, but if your messaging is off, you've just wasted a lot of time and money and potentially caused yourself some harm. And so I think first and foremost is getting the messaging right. And I think the messaging should start with, what are the benefits to our clients, to our employees? And so, you know, I one of the ways. And there, there are other ways to do it, but one of the ways that we approach it is two ways. Is one, we like, we we like a sort of one sheet, cheat sheet, Executive Summary of, what are the key benefits? What are the key benefits of this transaction, what were some of the key rationale, and what will be the benefits to our clients, to our employees, as these two companies become one, and then we follow that with a Benefits Summary, which is essentially filling out the proof points underneath those key benefits, so that we know if we've said, okay, one of the benefits is this, this process that used to take three months, we can now complete in three days. Well, one is that, does that really add value for clients? And two you say you can do this, show us, tell us how make it believable that we can actually do that. And so that's really important. And once those documents are created, Randall mentioned, you know, you have all these other documents that get created that becomes your repository of where you can draw from, not always word for word, but sometimes it has to be word for word, where you can draw from, so that as you create all of your other messaging, it does the other thing that's important is that it becomes consistent across the board, and that it's cohesive, that it all works together. It's covering everything that you need to cover, but it's doing it in a way that as you as you look at a social media post, as you read the press release, as you read an FAQ, the same ideas are coming across in the same tone. And then the last little thing I'll add about messaging is you need to be aware of who your audiences are. I said earlier, don't call it a merger if it's not emergent, but at the same time, understand that as you communicate to employees at a target company, for example, or to their customers, you have to understand where they're coming from. And so the example I often give is, if we've just bought a company, we'll say we've acquired so and so that same announcement from the target company might be something like we are now a part of this other company. We're not saying it's not an acquisition. It's a little thing like that. It's tone. It's how you talk about it that shows that you're sensitive to the situation and the people in those situations. Yeah, I love that. And you kind of, you piggybacked off the question that we received in the LinkedIn comments, which was, you know, how do you determine the audiences as we're working through that messaging grid? And so I think that fits perfectly with that question. Is, you're creating a messaging grid for all of those audience this isn't just a one all be all. It's based off of who you're going to talk to, right? Absolutely, one of the things that I want to jump back to real quick, and then we'll go to Alyssa for for the final piece there is, is what Randall you mentioned about the investment of putting this together, right, whether it's the time or it's the money that you might have to spend externally, you know, an outside partner. And I find it really interesting that companies are so willing to spend x amount of dollars to acquire a company and be involved in this type of investment, but then this communication, this messaging, and all of the work that we've been talking about for the last 49 minutes is almost looked at as a spend and an expense, rather than as an. Investment in the people and in the brand that we're, that we're, you know, building. Now, there's not really a question here. It's just something that I that I wrote down when I heard you say that right now, I'm interested in your thoughts and everybody's thoughts on, you know, is that just a mindset shift that we have to go through? Why does that maybe happen? And have you, have you had to overcome that in the past? That's a great question. I think it is a mind shift that you have to be diligent about and proactive about trying to change. I think part of it is, frankly, there's so much focus on the close of the deal and the finances around it. And if you think about the people who are around the table having those discussions, you're talking about private equity, or you're talking about investors, you're talking about people who focus on money, and you're not necessarily have people around the table who are focusing on things like culture and and I would argue that it's not just the money that you know you pay for the acquisition, for the merger, that you messing around or messing up a cultural integration could be Just as disastrous as messing up a financial one. So part of it is to be proactive. And I think part of it's incumbent on, you know, the managers in an organization, you know, to raise these questions earlier and to have some diligence in putting together a plan and putting it forward. In my experience, if you put together something that's not a blank check, if you put together something that's very thoughtful. Why I'm asking for it. Here's the tools that I need. Here's why it's going to help us be successful. That when it's put in context, normally, I would see those things being approved, but it's probably not going to come from a genesis of the financial people around the table making that decision. It's going to come from a genesis of the people who are actually running the organization that have to put that forward. Yeah, that's great insight there. Thank you so much, Randall, Roger, I feel like you have a little answer on that too. Well. I think what plays into that is what Randall, Randall talked about before, about who you can tell when, and so, you know, I've been in house where, you know, you get a call or an email from somebody and it's like, oh, so we're announcing this acquisition next Tuesday, right? A little heads up would have been more helpful. And so I think it's changing that mindset internally that you've got to, you know, this planning much further that this is part of the plan, and the idea that this is part of the plan that actually will help with that ROI of the acquisition in the long run. Yeah, I love that. Well, Alyssa, we're going to throw it to you. I know we've got a little bit more coming here and the next edition of our LinkedIn live where we talk about, you know, more of the integration and the branding and things like that. But I know you wanted to talk a little bit about how we can communicate effectively across all of the channels and do that consistently. So I'll toss it to you, yeah, and I know we've touched on it briefly before, but I think it's a huge, huge key. You know, after Roger briefly talked about the messaging grid and the messaging platform, you know, you develop that right? And then you take that messaging there and you split it to all the different channels. So you need to develop an integrated communications plan that covers communication across all the platforms, whether it's web, graphics, internal documents, social media, email, one on one, conversations, etc. Um, be prepared to create, I'm just going to name things off right here. Create a brand transition graphic that's this gets your audience used to seeing the company logos together, and it leads to quicker adoption, both internally and externally. Create collateral and tools for your teams, especially your BB teams, because you're going to want to get that information in front of your clients ASAP. Develop talking points for client facing teams and arm them with the materials needed with a rollout plan. Deploy emails to your audiences, like we said before. Don't forget your vendors. Um, you can create a landing page on your websites where clients can access information. Um, use this acquisition or merger as a way to leverage different lead gen opportunities as really showing a combined value prop. Post on social media, tag the companies together and playing complimentary posts, one on top of another, update all your social pages with your new messaging. Update your business cards and email signatures. For some reason, every integration or acquisition I've ever been part of, the sales teams always want their business cards like ASAP, and so plan to have those ready. It's those the first things people ask for. So have a plan. Update your paid search campaigns again, use this as a way to go leverage lead gen and then create that communication for internal teams for the first month, have your lead. Leadership Team send out weekly or bi weekly communications. There's obviously what we talked about. There's a ton of uncertainty with Ma's and by over communicating and really ease that feeling for people. Yeah, and last but most important, have conversations, pick up the phone, call your clients, call your employees. There's so much that can be lost in an email or text. See how people are feeling about the changes and reacting to the news. Assess reactions and pivot and adjust as necessary. Be ready to adjust, because it will happen. And the last bit, well, I already said this, but for real. Final. Final, don't forget the follow through. It doesn't stop on announcement day, that's just day one. Now the phone starts. That's integration. Integration is really not fun, but it will be much worse if you don't have a plan in place. Yeah, I love it. So integration can be fun. It just depends on how you look at it. But I think it does segue into the final question that we have here of this process, of it being done right away, or it being something that extends. We've got this question from Howard, really, what's the longest M and A in terms of duration that any of you have been a part of. And is there a standard End Time for an M and A is it six months after announcement? How do you say, Hey, we're done. This is officially done, and we're one company. What are you guys' thoughts on that? That's a great question. Sorry. Go ahead. Randall, in my experience, is a continuum. And I think you can objectively say, and you can set goals that are typically organization goals are done, say, within six months. And if you're going much beyond that, you probably have a fairly significant challenge, organizationally, but culturally, that's a different question. And when people feel like they're integrated and part of an integrated company. In my experience, that can take closer to a year. If you are still working on organizational objectives and operational objectives, in a year, you probably missed the boat. You're behind the curve. So in my experience, about six months to get the practical stuff done and another six months to get the cultural and every everything else addressed, right? I'll go to Alyssa and then to Roger. I think it really depends whether it's, you know, publicly traded or private company. For publicly traded, I mean, I was part of one that took about two years, and then, you know, I've been part of them, that takes about six months. So it really, really depends on so many different factors. Yeah, Roger, I think the answer is until it's done. I mean, it really is until it's done. I mean, I've been there, where it's been, you know, a year later, and you think everything is ticked and tied and in place. And this comes back to more, sort of the cultural things. And then you see this thing pop up, and you're, you go, what is this purple thing doing here? This is not brand, you know. And so you see, I've seen some of the legacy companies, sort of people that didn't want to let go, and they kind of mixing their stuff into into a PowerPoint deck, or whatever it is. And so, yeah, I think, and I think it's, you know, to a certain degree, there's some of the things where you say, Yes, we're done, but at some point you can never really do the touchdown dance and say, We're completely done. And I think part of that is whatever that new brand, or whether it's new or that combined brand, is that you have to keep pushing that forward. And so it's not always focusing back on the acquisitions, but it's focused on focusing on where we are now and where we're going, and keep continuing to hit that. Yeah, I love it. Well, we have two minutes left. I have just pulled up my stopwatch that I have in front of me. I'm going to give each of you 30 seconds, and I will use the microphone to cut you off if you go over your 30 seconds. So we're going to start with Alyssa. We'll go to Roger, and then we'll finish with Randall. Here, 30 seconds each. Final thoughts, final takeaways, things that you would love. The the 40 plus people who are here and everybody's watching this, to take away and Alyssa, your time begins now. Alright, I'm definitely not going to take up the last 30 seconds, but arm yourself with a solid team to get through this. You can do it. It may take a lot of people that you can do this. And then my last piece, my last takeaway is, if you think you're communicating too much, it's still not enough. I love it. And only use 19.2 seconds. So that's fantastic. Roger, your time begins now. I would say, start your planning early. And. Your plan in place, because things will change, and you did have something, a baseline to fall back on so that you can get back on track, establish your messaging, get buy in from all of the leadership, and then make sure that you're taking that messaging and hitting all of your channels, internally, externally, clients, vendors, everybody, and repeating it over the slight nuances, so that you can get the full message out there and continue to to get that out there over time. I love it. 32 seconds. I gave you those two because I was feeling extremely generous. But Randall, let's finish. Let's finish with you exactly right. What are your final thoughts? Randall, be proactive and flexible. It is inevitable that something will not go according to plan, recognize and be sensitive to whatever particular issues are involved with your integration. Most importantly, don't ignore the elephant in the room, and that elephant will change from integration to integration. But if that's benefits, if that's pay, if that's something else, address it. So finally, acknowledge your mistakes and celebrate your success. I love it. I think that is a perfect way to finish part one of our two part series on these LinkedIn lives from SCORR Marketing over M and A Randall. Alyssa, Roger, thank you so much. I feel like this was such a valuable 60 minutes, and I'm excited to see even more comments come in as as people engage with this over the next handful of weeks. And once again, thank you to all three of you for coming, and thank you to the individuals who watched live and submitted questions. Thank you, Alex, thank you. Thank you. Bye. As always, thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORR cast, brought to you by SCORR marketing. We appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful. Don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun.