Many distributors have grown their business via mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the years. This often involves incorporating disparate business processes, tools and teams into one cohesive and seamless unit. That’s easier said than done when you have issues like divergent sales strategies, duplicative customer data in the CRM and multiple marketing platforms with hundreds of conflicting automations and attributions. Moreover, documentation may be at odds or nonexistent. 

Taken together, these obstacles tend to create a stranglehold on future revenue growth. However, distributors can navigate them by directly addressing friction, fostering transparent communication, prioritizing cultural alignment, leveraging technology and nurturing a unified vision for their teams.  

Mergers and acquisitions affect all parts of a distributor’s business, including culture, communication strategy, organizational structure, business processes, training and documentation. In this article, we’re going to focus on each company’s sales and marketing departments pre-acquisition and how to best bring them together into unified teams. My hope is that it can serve as a blueprint to help your distribution company transform into a sales- and marketing-led organization that thrives in a competitive market.

The Case for Sales and Marketing Unification Post-Acquisition 

So why unify after an acquisition? Why not continue to operate the separate business units as independent entities, at least for a time?  

Preserving independence often leads to internal friction that gets more deeply embedded in the organization the longer the situation continues. And with more internal friction come more external consequences.  

According to McKinsey, companies that neglect the painstaking work of an integrated approach in large mergers see the sales growth of the combined company decrease by 7%, up to three years post-acquisition. More than a third of companies fail to achieve their revenue goals following a merger, and almost half call out sales and marketing merger capabilities as the most critical gap in their integration teams.  

Post-Acquisition Issues Affecting Sales and Marketing for Distributors 

Common problems that typically emerge in the sales and marketing functions after an acquisition include:

Disjointed Marketing Strategy and Ineffective Campaign Targeting 

Without a unified view of customer data, marketing efforts may be poorly targeted and sent to incorrect or overlapping audience segments, reducing the effectiveness of campaigns and diminishing ROI. Marketing efforts are more difficult to measure and properly attribute, sometimes resulting in public brand confusion. 

Sales Territory and Account Management Confusion

Post-acquisition, the disparate sales teams may face confusion regarding overlapping or unclear territory assignments and account ownership, leading to conflicts and inefficiencies where reps are pursuing the same opportunities, missing follow-ups or supporting the same customer accounts. 

Inconsistent Customer Data and Missed Sales

Sales and marketing teams may struggle with outdated, incomplete or inconsistent customer information, leading to inefficient campaigns, miscommunications and missed sales opportunities. Different product catalog complexities make upsell and cross-sell opportunities more challenging to track for Account Managers. 

Increased Internal Conflicts Between Sales & Marketing Teams

Lack of clear communication and integrated systems can lead to misunderstandings between teams. They may have different priorities or approaches, leading to friction, internal inefficiencies, and eroded morale. After the merging of different businesses and restructuring of teams, these internal issues can result in excess employee churn and challenges in replacing the tribal knowledge that has drained from the organization. 

By ensuring that data is accurately merged, systems are aligned and teams are properly trained and supported post-acquisition, you can mitigate these problems, foster a smoother transition and avoid a drastic drop in sales and marketing performance. 

Process Frameworks to Guide Integration  

There are many useful frameworks to leverage when it comes to integrating sales and marketing after an acquisition. One framework that works well for distributor businesses is Six Sigma’s DMAIC Process, which is broken into the following steps: 

1. Define the problem and who you’re solving for.
2. Measure the current situation and baseline.
3. Analyze data to identify root causes.
4. Improve the situation by generating, evaluating and optimizing solutions.
5. Control the improvement process with reports, dashboards and weekly measurement habits that ensure teams stay aligned.

This process needs to be applied to each main area in the sales and marketing departments: the business, the brand, the people, the technology and the combined processes. 

The 5 Areas to Address When Integrating Sales and Marketing Teams Post-M&A 

1. Integration of Businesses: Organizational Structure and Branding 

An acquisition necessitates creating a new organizational structure and combined teams via organizational design. Assemble a cross-functional integration team that includes representatives from sales, marketing, operations, IT and other key areas of both companies. From there, determine how the acquired company’s teams will fit into the existing structure and outline any changes to reporting lines or roles. Ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined to avoid overlaps and gaps.   

2. Integration of Brand: External Communication and Rebranding 

After an acquisition, brand confusion is likely to occur among your prospects and customers. A company can choose one of several methods to integrate and reposition the new company. That could mean folding the acquisition into the stronger brand, blending the brands (co-branding) or taking a new approach. The e-commerce website, domain name, social media accounts and other digital properties need to be rebranded, integrated or redirected. The change needs to be addressed as quickly as possible in a press release and company statement about the acquisition. Above all, keep the company’s mission and vision up to date, stay focused on your core values and competitive advantages, address it directly with your customer base and keep messaging consistent. 

3. Integration of People: Internal Communication and Culture 

To ensure alignment and manage expectations, transparently communicate the acquisition and integration plans to both companies’ employees. Align communication methods from the acquired business to the main business and communicate the changes clearly to the teams. Evaluate the cultural differences between the two companies and develop strategies to address them. Organize events and workshops to foster relationships and team-building activities between the teams. Provide access to leadership and stakeholders for the team members to express issues and concerns throughout the process. Communicate unity and cohesion repeatedly to the teams to reduce employee turnover and dissatisfaction through what is often a stressful process. 

4. Integration of Technology: Tech Stack and Data 

Integrating technology systems after an acquisition involves several detailed steps. First, assess the existing systems (such as ERP, CRM and MAP) for both companies in order to determine the scope of the integration and build. Then, perform gap analysis and overlap analysis to determine which system is better suited for the integrated company’s needs.

You should also develop a data plan to address both existing information and future information to be stored. This plan may involve data… 

• Mapping 
• Quality assessment 
• Migration 
• Deduplication 
• Cleansing and integrity 
• Classification 
• Standardization 
• Governance (especially relating to privacy laws such as CCPA and GDPR) 
• Security 

It should also cover regulatory compliance and your approach to managing non-essential data.

With a data plan in place, you need to come up with a systems integration plan to create a unified technology stack for the combined business. This plan should involve integrations, system upgrades, expansions and cancellations. A solid systems integration plan will help you achieve smooth functionality and provide support for combined business outcomes.

Finally, perform a thorough assessment of potential risks, such as downtime, data loss and compatibility issues, and devise a mitigation plan with contingency measures.  

Before rolling out your combined technologies and platforms to your teams, be sure to perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of the new systems.  

5. Integration of Internal Processes: Documentation and Training 

Once your improvements are in place, document the updated processes for smooth operations in sales and marketing. Document all account management processes for the newly-restructured sales team. Document sales handling of major accounts, CRM usage, upselling and cross-selling procedures, the location of collateral and everything else sales teams need to be successful. Document the marketing tech stack, attribution, marketing-to-sales handoff and campaign management. Train staff on new systems and procedures to ensure smooth adoption and monitor training effectiveness over time. 

The Heart of the Challenge 

Remember that humans are at the heart of post-M&A challenges. With that in mind: 

• Get everyone on the same page. 
• Agree on internal structure first. 
• Communicate proactively. 
• Fix systems to reflect a combined approach. 
• Document and train. 
• Measure results weekly. 
• Stay committed to alignment. 

Ultimately, the effort to set the tone and push integration initiatives through must come from the top down. It’s up to leadership to embrace a unified sales and marketing approach after an acquisition — which is the only way to survive and thrive today.