Adapting Your GTM Process to Make the Most of Acquisitions
WRITTEN BY Colin Kemp, FLUVIO CONSULTANT
“I need you to clear next week…and you cannot tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
Had it been earlier in my career, those words from my boss would’ve left me worried. In this case, comments over the past week in previous leadership meetings gave me hints of what was up: we were doing a sizable acquisition. Fortunately, I’ve supported about a dozen acquisitions of various sizes, over more than 20-years in product marketing.
For both new and experienced product marketers, developing the instincts and skills to manage acquisitions depends upon the vicissitudes of your company’s acquisition strategy – and the ebb and flow of the M&A market.
M&A deals dipped 22% in H1 2024 compared to the previous year, but industry watchers are seeing investors eager to deploy capital left on the sidelines during the pandemic. Everyone’s favorite adjective, generative AI is fueling rapid transformation of could bring with it a significant acquisitions surge that PMM leaders should be ready for.
So in this article I wanted to share some of the typical challenges you may face and offer tips to help you use components of a repeatable go-to-market (GTM) process to manage the approaching tsunami, while helping your company realize the value of the acquisition – so you can literally get what you paid for.
CHALLENGE 1: EVERYTHING’S SECRET, EVERYTHING’S URGENT
Always secretive, sometimes dramatic, and often transformative, acquisitions are a product marketer’s rite of passage. They’re also an ever-present threat, with the potential to upend the well-crafted GTM strategies you have right now. Your first order of business is to get your footing and start gathering information.
Grab the reins
As strategic deals, acquisitions typically require the creation of a core team of senior leaders and perhaps some outside specialists. By the time the deal is imminent and you get the call, you’ll likely be one of the few non-executives in the room.
This is the first and most pivotal challenge you’ll face – especially if you’re early in your career.
Rest assured, that core team will need your tactical focus as much as your strategic mind. While PMMs should always carefully protect their roles as strategists, your natural skill in orchestrating cross-functional deliverables – and your tendency to just get stuff done – is one of the reasons why PMMs thrive in this situation.
In your PMM role, the cross-functional relationships and broad understanding of the business have established your credibility and will grease the skids of this new, urgent project.
The core team will need you, so grab the reins by:
Leading strategy – but delegate (if you can). Like a typical product launch, your first strategic opportunity is to “start with why” – helping drive the acquisition strategy to this next phase. If possible, delegate the day-to-day project management to a member of the core team, but it’ll likely fall on you given the requirements of pre-acquisition secrecy. Also, this will be your chance to flesh out the practical goals of the acquisition as product launch – all the GTM questions we’ll get to below – which likely have not yet been fully contemplated.
Facilitating relationships. In the early stages of an acquisition, PMMs are in a unique position to add significant value simply by working across functions and with the newly acquired team(s). As an expert at cross-functional facilitation and influence, you’ll be an invaluable guide to the acquired company’s team – helping everyone connect the dots, providing initial access to information and initial training. As an added bonus, in this facilitation you’ll get valuable insights into the value the acquisition offers and where the GTM Strategy will need to focus.
Reinforcing the culture. PMMs hold a unique position as ambassadors, cultural translators and connectors during acquisitions. Helping acquired business teams understand your company’s ‘way’ will provide support and encourage assimilation. As the incumbent advocate for the existing solution, you can project confidence and excitement about everything the acquisition unlocks for the combined organization.
CHALLENGE 2: THE ANNOUNCEMENT HAS TO BE MADE
From the moment you learn about the acquisition, the clock will be ticking. On the one hand, a new organization with a new set of products demands a careful assessment and validation of their GTM and a thoughtful strategy for how it assimilates into your broader portfolio – across multiple dimensions.
On the other hand, you’re probably not going to have time.
The news has to break, internal teams need to begin working together, and revenue streams need to be protected. It’s inevitable and understandable. Both companies want the value of the deal known, demanding a cascade of communication requirements and decision-making.
Assuming your company has already created and tested a repeatable GTM methodology, you’ll need to think of your acquisition launch in at least two parts, ensuring delivery of the short, medium and long-term goals of your acquisition strategy.
Your first GTM: assessment, validation & triage
In the first of these two GTMs, each component of your standard process acts as an opportunity to assess the acquired company’s portfolio, validate their GTM artifacts, and prioritize resources for a short-term delivery.
The scope of your initial GTM depends on your acquisition strategy’s priorities. A small stand-alone line of business operationally separate from the parent company will require little more than a press release and light internal communication. An acquisition of any size that’s intended to fully assimilate on day 1 of announcement, obviously, demands far more strategy and deliberation.
When placed against the backdrop of your acquisition strategy and goals, you can use your GTM process as an assessment, validation and triage checklist to clearly identify and prioritize initiatives for both GTMs.
In conducting your assessment, validation and triage, focus on identifying the minimum requirements and any dependencies that would keep you from launching the acquisition. The section below offers triage questions and their intended outcomes for the overall acquisition plus each GTM phase.
Triage Questions for GTM 1
GTM Phase: General / Operational
Triage Questions
Are the overall acquisition business goals clearly defined?
Do we know the acquisition launch/announcement goals?
What is the target announcement date?
Will the acquisition continue standalone or will it be integrated? What’s the integration strategy?
Intended Outcomes
Stakeholder alignment.
GTM 1 Execution plan & goals,
Input for Positioning & Messaging decisions.
GTM Phase: Research
Triage Questions
Market Research, Sizing & Competitive Intelligence. What new market opportunities does the acquisition create and how might that influence the initial GTM 1 messaging? If the acquired company was a competitor, what’s the impact to our current messaging and value proposition?
Ideal Customer Profile and Persona Development: Are the acquired-business’s markets and personas complementary? Does the acquisition grow the ICP and/or the overall target?
Intended Outcomes
Inform communication to pre-handle market- or customer- questions.
Identify high priority messaging changes needed for the initial announcement.
Identify research questions, even if they’re not possible for GTM 1.
GTM Phase: Messaging & Positioning
Triage Questions
Positioning: Are the artifacts of positioning for the acquired company showing any obvious inconsistencies?
Messaging: Is there consensus on both the acquisition narrative (why we did it) and the product messaging (why it’s valuable for customers – either standalone or integrated)?
Intended Outcomes
Explore and reconcile of acquired business and parent portfolios.
Validate the value impact of the acquisition in simple messaging and address contradictions or naming conflicts.
GTM Phase: GTM Planning
Triage Questions
Beta Program Installation and Roadmap Tiering: What’s the tier of the acquired portfolio (irrespective of any integration considerations)? What is the integration roadmap (align to GTM 2 and beyond)?
Pricing: Will we continue current pricing, packaging and billing of the acquired portfolio on day 1 of the announcement?
What market or customer confusion might the acquisition create and how can we mitigate it?
Product Sunsetting: Is there known overlap materially affecting products in the portfolio? If yes, is it necessary to announce a sunset strategy and communication plan for customers?
Intended Outcomes
Establish the scope of the acquisition in the same terms used for GTM, helping with resource planning.
Quickly find operational constraints that might impact the launch date
Identify and begin planning for product sunsets in future GTMs.
Manage customer expectations in cases of product overlap.
GTM Phase: GTM Execution
Triage Questions
Sales Enablement & Collateral: What is the internal messaging to sales on acquired business sales targets, commissioning, and training? What’s the call-to-action for sales on day 1?
Communications: Is customer, prospect & marketing communications ready to support the messaging strategy?
Intended Outcomes
Maintain or increase sales velocity throughout GTM 1.
Ensure the right teams are ready to sell on day 1, aligned with the GTM 1 goals.
Identify needs for GTM 2 sales enablement, aligned with integration strategy.
GTM Phase: Learning & Refinement
Triage Questions
Roadmap vision & prioritization: Are there any known product planning conflicts that would affect GTM 1?
Adoption analysis, product validation, upsell strategy, voice of customer (VoC), win/loss analysis: What artifacts are available for each of these activities in the acquired business and what is the plan for integrating Product teams and software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes into the parent organization?
Intended Outcomes
Identify existing acquired business roadmap alignment issues that will impact GTM 1 planning.
Initial assessment of acquired company’s SDLC and product operations, helping initial planning of GTM 2.
CHALLENGE 3: DELIVERING ON THE ACQUISITION’S FULL VALUE
Once the initial launch is complete, including communications and essential operational or product integrations, your acquisition will start looking more like a traditional GTM. Ideally, the following will be true in your organization post-GTM 1:
The initial excitement of the acquisition will fuel more engaged customer conversations.
A more developed integration strategy – and story – will inform the second GTM’s positioning & messaging strategy.
Teams will have started to work together or come together
Knowledge transfer across teams will be on the rise.
For completely standalone acquisitions, this is where the story ends. For those blending into a wider product, solution or platform – here’s where the acquisition’s full value is realized.
Using your second GTM to fully launch a combined solution
For the second, and any subsequent GTMs, you now have the time and perspective to highlight aggregate value of the integrated new solution. At this point, Product Management & Engineering will have a better understanding of the technical challenges less known early in the acquisition phase. Sales will have better insight into customer demand. Operational teams will have the benefit of joint meetings as the organization comes together.
This is the real heavy lift of GTM for acquisitions – re-introducing not just one product or solution but repositioning your existing solution to incorporate newly acquired value.
I’ll avoid rehashing every initiative of the traditional GTM process, but here are a few areas to focus on in this strategic stage:
Customer research. When tackling the launch of a new, integrated offering, it’s easy to get lost in the multitude of projects and forget the customer. Dedicate more time than you think you have to speaking with customers about the new, combined offering, validating your messaging’s resonance and your assumptions about the problems the combined solution will solve.
Documented product strategy. Product strategies suffer shelf rot. Be a collaborator with your product teams and facilitate the revision of existing solution-level product strategies to accommodate the acquired portfolio. Pay special attention to any new revenue expectations commensurate with the new acquisition’s purchase.
New buyers. One acquisition I supported was a loyalty rewards solution that would be embedded within an existing, established platform. The challenge, which we addressed early on, was that the marriage added a completely new buyer – and the two were unaccustomed to working together.
Focus as early as possible on validating the buyer personas of the combined solution and test whether the buying process has materially changed.Updated Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Another miss I’ve seen is forgetting to update the ICP of the integrated solution, resulting in a raft of bad assumptions that tends to accumulate in frustrating pitches and ineffective campaign targeting. Re-check the data – you may find a wider pool of buyers full of new insights.
CHALLENGE 4: GETTING THE CALL IN THE FIRST PLACE
The final challenge I’ll leave you with is ensuring you and your team are included in the process in the first place.
All of the value PMMs bring to acquisitions is wasted if your executive teams don’t think of you when a deal is in the works.
By revising & stress testing your GTM process in anticipation of acquisitions, as discussed here, you can raise your visibility. Regularly engaging with your product management leadership about their build, buy, align strategies will increase your influence and continue to earn you a seat at the table.