[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to B two B revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping software executives stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing in their industry. Let's get into the show.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi. Welcome to B two B revenue acceleration. My name is Aurelien Metier, and I'm here today with two individuals today, not one, but two. Chris Duggett, CRO at Aquia, and Ron Cook, who is managing director at Memory Blue for business to government, or B 2G organization within the business. So two individuals that have been spending a fair amount of time with Chris, I think you've been a client a couple of times, maybe not directly, but through some of the people working for you and Ron. We're actually sitting next to each other when I'm based in Washington, so very close to you. I wanted to bring Ron on the call today because Ron's aspiration is to become a CRO in the future. And with someone who has got the achievements of similar achievement as Chris, I think is it's good to have you on the conversation round, and I'm sure you guys will bounce from each other so very much looking forward to the conversation today. But before we get going, how are you doing today, Chris?
[00:01:08] Speaker C: I'm doing well, Aurelian, how are you?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: I am good, very good, thank you. And the topic is, of the conversation today could not be more actual for us, because we will speak about successful integration post acquisition. And I think, Chris, you've had a lot of experience in the domain with public organization, private organization. But before we get started, Chris, would you mind giving us a little bit of background to yourself and Acquia, the company that you represent?
[00:01:35] Speaker C: Sure. Absolutely. So I'm chief revenue officer at Acquia, and that's a role that I've been doing, although with different titles for a number of different companies, over, geez, I don't know, maybe the last 15 years or something along those lines. Acquia is a digital experience platform company. So our job, our role with the services and technology that we provide allow organizations of all types to create all forms of digital experiences. So it could be websites, could be any form of media, but we help people to craft experiences that are personalized and relevant, and there's a lot more to it, but leave it there.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Really good. So, Chris, can you start by sharing your general experience with company acquisition? And the common challenge is that companies are facing when they get acquired or post acquisition.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Sure. Well, it's funny that the things that are in common are that no two acquisitions are the same.
So it's kind of ironic. That's one of the commonalities. And there are usually surprises with any acquisition, sometimes good, sometimes bad. I think from acquisition to acquisition, it's really a question of what's the magnitude of those positive and negative surprises. How does it affect what your plans were when you looked at acquiring that organization or that technology or that piece of the company? Because, of course, not all acquisitions are just buying an entire company. Sometimes you do carve outs or you do technology acquisitions as well. I think that the thing that I would say is there's no formula that you can universally apply to do integrations. You might have common objectives with a series of acquisitions that you do, how you do them, and, I mean, you might. Common objectives would be increasing revenue, expanding market share, improving profitability, things like that. But how you accomplish those is going to vary a lot depending on the specifics of what you're acquiring and, and how the businesses can or can fit together and what the challenges are with trying to integrate. You can come at it with similar objectives, but once you're in the throes of that, you really need to tailor it to the organization that you're acquiring and what those capabilities are. So it's an ironic question because those are the similarities.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so. I guess if you get, if you get acquired by a big PE firm, they may want to actually strip down the company and potentially spit it out in pieces. If you are two private organization getting together, which was basically operatics and memory blue getting together, we actually want to get together to bundle up and offer better coverage for our clients and a better service. And those directly from the boards may vary from one organization to another. I want to speak to you. So in my case, for me, it was very important.
While there was a liquidity event with operatics and a merger with memory was very important for me to stay on. And I want to touch on that because I think you've been staying on in some of organization. I don't know if you've been staying on with all of them, but there is a mindset almost of, you know, all right, got acquired or we merging, that's the end of the race. Need to move on, need to go back to a small business, etc. Etc. So I just wanted to touch on that and get your thoughts on that mindset. And have you seen that mindset evolving for yourself through acquisition? So I'd like to have a little bit of a generic feedback from you on what's happening there and what you've heard from the market. But also your personal circumstances in the situations.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Sure. Sure. Well, I think it's natural that in general, people think of it as the end of a journey, because for investors, that it often, not always, but it often is a lot of times, an investor, there are various types of investors, but they'll invest in a company. And when that company gets acquired by some other organization, that's an opportunity for them to get liquidity and get a return on their investment. Sometimes they have a carried interest in the future business in the form of equity. So it's not always the end of the journey. But I think that's why a lot of people think about it as being a sort of a finite event. And as you said, sometimes it's the conclusion of a journey or a chapter for them. But for those of us in the business, I think about it very differently. And to your point, my thinking has evolved with more experience. And the reason for that is usually when you're doing acquisitions, you're doing it, as I mentioned, for a variety of different objectives, growing market share, expanding profitability or revenue, etcetera. But usually the acquirer has a future in mind that is expansive. And a lot of companies you see don't just do one acquisition, but they'll do a series of acquisitions to build, for example, a broader, more complete technology portfolio, as an example, that offers, what I've learned is that offers a lot of opportunity for the people in the business, opportunities to learn new technologies, obviously, but also to grow from a career perspective, to take on additional responsibilities or bigger teams or different roles.
And so I think it's a really good opportunity for people in the business to do the next leg of the journey. And of course, they have the benefit of knowing whichever, whether they were the acquirer or the acquiree, they have a lot of value to bring to the table because they've been in the business. They know the business, they know the technology, they know how it operates. And at the time that you're doing integrations of companies, it's a critical time for that knowledge to be applied, to try to help achieve whatever the objectives are. And so the way I look at it is for people in the business, again, regardless of which side of the transaction you're on, whether you're being acquired or you're doing the acquiring, it's a great opportunity. Whether you're an individual contributor or you're a manager or a leader in the company, it's a great opportunity to have growth and to try new things potentially to further your career in new directions that you haven't done before, building off of that strength and that knowledge that you have about your organization.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: It does make a tremendous amount of sense, I think, for me, the way I look at it, Chris, is that and the way I've been communicating to people through acquisition, because we've done it a couple of times. We had a company called Optima that got acquired by a company called Rainmaker in 2010. Then we started operatics. Operatics merging and getting together with Memory Blue. So we've seen the movie before.
I think the value proposition for my team has always been very similar to just you described, which is, look, there is not a lot of people that actually stay on and are successful in integrating, because it's complex, because it's a chunk of culture, because you won't like it. It's going to be more difficult than it was before. The way we used to work may be challenged. The way you are thinking may be challenged, and you've got to accept it. So you've got to be very humble in the way you are working and give it time and. And be ready to adapt in a way. And I think no matter what you do in the future of your career, these are skills that are very important in your resume to have. If you've been part of an acquisition, you stayed on, you managed to strive through the acquisition, make the acquisition successful, and potentially got promotion along the way, and developed yourself as a better individual within the new structure. I believe that you are probably part of a very small percentage of the population that's probably very interested or interesting for peace. VC's maybe more peace in that sense, thinking, well, we have issues with people clashing culture doing this, doing that. Should we bring someone that actually has seen the movie before? Because that's the problem when you've not seen the movie before, it's very difficult to adapt, and we've seen it with memory. Bueno paradigm. We literally do the same thing. The joke that I used to use was we make baguettes. You know, I'm french, I'm going to use baguette, and those guys make CIA bata. So technically, it's still bread. The way to make it is different. The way it tastes is slightly different, but you can still make a sandwich, you know, you can still make a toast about it. It's still bread. It's just a different shape, slight different taste, but slight different method of cooking. But you know what? I always think that my bread is better than the other bread. Let's make a chia baguette.
How can we take the best of Maya baguette and the best of your ciabatta. Right. The best process so we can make it quicker, tastier, and sell more of them. And that's really the secret. That secret sauce can be difficult because. Yeah, I mean, it's like anything change is difficult. And particularly when you touch things like culture processes and things that people have been doing for years the same way, it becomes a little bit more difficult to get to change. But like you, I've always encouraged people to stay. I think it's good to stay. I think it's good to go through the pain because it's painful, but going through the pain will develop a muscle, and I think that muscle will help those individuals to place themselves higher than others in their future job prospects and conversation, or whatever they want to do in the future. I think this is an experience you need to get, and if you are good at it, you are, as I mentioned, part of a very small percentage of the population that actually can do it and has done it successfully. So, yeah, I'm definitely with you on that one. Ron, I know that you had some question about getting the sales team together. So do you want to ask some of your question about, you know, how do you merge two sales culture together?
[00:11:02] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, the main thing for me, living through career wise, living through this acquisition. Right. The entire theme has always been, like you said, ray, how do we get the best parts of you, the best parts of us, and combine them? See, in the beginning, I was sitting there thinking, okay, so we're going to slap an elephant on them, and now their memory blue. And that's not the case. Right. I've been learning so much through the process, and one of the things that I have, you know, that kind of hit me like a brick wall in terms of lessons, is that you might only know everything about your organization and the way you do things, but that can blind you to becoming sharper, better. And, you know, I guess my questions are more centered around, you know, the prerequisites for identifying the opportunity for an acquisition. What are some of those things where outside of just, we do the similar things? Is there a measurement of culture? Is there a measurement of, obviously, the finances and the numbers? But what goes into even creating the possibility or the dream of an acquisition between two organizations?
[00:12:01] Speaker C: It's a great point because it's, you know, as both of you just mentioned, change is hard people. Human beings don't like change. You get used to an established way of doing things, and why should I do it? Differently. My baguette is perfect. Why should I try to make ciabatta? Everybody loves a baguette. And culture is one of those things that we know it when we see it and we feel it. But it's not as easy to measure as so many other things in sales. You know, we can measure our lead volume or our pipeline or our bookings or our conversion rates or zillions of metrics that we use in sales and marketing. When it comes to culture, it's something that you feel that's really important, that you're aware of, but it's difficult to measure. You can, of course, do surveys of people of, you know, how do they feel about the acquisition or how do they feel about the company or their job, etcetera. Ultimately, transitioning culture is something that is done at all levels by leaders. And by leaders, I don't necessarily mean that the title of the person, you can have a team of, for example, a team of sdrs, and there are going to be people within that group that have natural leadership capabilities or attributes. And I think one of the really important things around culture and the transition of and combining of organizations is to identify those people who are thinking about things, as the saying goes, as the glass being half full, not half empty, they see and helping them to see the opportunities that exist for them and others, but who have that natural enthusiasm and natural leadership attribute or capability. Because what you need to move culture and to merge cultures is. And you touched on this, Ron, it's looking. Well, you both mentioned it. It's looking for what are the things that we can use from the other that can help us to do things better, to be more successful? And what opportunities are there to do something new? And some people get excited by the do something new chebagat. To go create a chebagat, I think was what you said earlier.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yes, I'm thinking there is a concept. Yeah. You know, I was, I was going to get a coffee in a place called pancreatitia, and they created the Croquis, which is the croissant cookie. Right.
I'm trying to be good, you know, because it's summertime, so I'm trying to not get on too many calories inside my body. But I've looked at that thing twice and he was looking back at me, and I think I will have a croquis at some points. But, yeah, we've got to start mixing the baguette to the cebat on the right.
[00:14:36] Speaker C: Well, and so there are going to be some people who are excited about creating something new, and so you find them. And if they can attract other people within the organization to go do that, that's to create the Chebagat. That's great. But then there are going to be other people in the organization that are just like, well, I like making baguette and I'm really good at it, and I want to continue to capitalize on it, and that's okay, too. And so I think, Ron, to your point about culture and merging things, I think you have to look for those natural leaders. You have to understand that some people are going to be excited and some people aren't. But you've got to try to promote that glass half full or give the people who have a glass half full attitude the opportunity to take things on during, because there are always jobs that need to be done. As you're doing integrations, you always need to pull people from the organization, say, hey, can you help out with this project or this communication or this initiative?
And so you find those people and you pull them in and they're going to be what everybody else sees and responds to. If you do that, you can create a very genuine, natural, sort of positive groundswell. And by the way, if you don't, then you know, who gets the airtime. It's the naysayers who are like, I don't like change. I don't believe in this, or whatever, who are going to get the airtime. So for me, that's been one of the success factors that I've seen work in companies when it comes to cultures, is trying to find the combination of enthusiasm and natural leadership and to involve those folks in whatever is going on.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I just want to bounce on that a little bit. And we created a senior leadership team here where we bring all the managing directors of people who are the same level of run. So Ronnie's managing. We've got two managing directors, actually, we've got three now in Washington because this is our quarter and a huge office. But then we've got another six offices across the US. They all have a managing director. We've got three managing directors in Europe, one managing director in APAC. So these people are managing their own business. They've got their own p and L. They've got resources, they've got clients, and, you know, they run their own business. Then we've got the end of delivery in the US. We've got the CEO, we've got finance, we've got marketing, we've got sales. And we created that group where every week for 1 hour people get together, and the first few sessions were really about values and what are non negotiables, what are teamship? Do we really mean radical candor? And what does a radical candor actually mean? How do we make sure that our colleagues feel respected by us? So we establish all those rules where, you know, we want to have a code for the team. We all agree that we want to be a high performing team. But prior to getting that group together, we had a little bit of us versus them on both side. And I was guilty of it. I think everybody was guilty of it. And it's kind of removing the US versus them for we, and we are all moving together. And I think that has been a breath of fresh air, because people are able to speak about things that frustrate them. You know, the frustration are not bottling up. If you are acquiring us, for example, Chris, and Ron and I are ex colleague, and we've been working together for eight years. And I've got a problem with you, Chris. There's two things I can do. I can come and speak to you about it and try to solve it and have radical candor and see what happened, or I could go to run and just tear the issue a little bit and make it a little bit bigger and gangrene the problem, because, you know, and that's what we're trying to break. We're trying to break that sort of. Well, if we've got something to be discussed because we don't like it or we don't think it's fine, let's discuss it as a group, let's make a decision. Let's not expose each other. And if we make mistakes, less of post mortem, but less of post mortem, without pointing the finger. Right. And I think that's critical now. It's all lovely when you've got people who've got the right attitudes to our change. And, you know, we've been. We've been pretty much a year in, so I think most of the people that didn't like the fact that the two company got together are kind of gone now. Right. But I would like to drill a little bit more into cells, okay. Because we know that cells is a world where people have a little bit more ego. It's probably a world where you would have a CRO that would probably do well through a merger and acquisition because they're likely to get stock options. There may be a few people in the team underneath the CRO that may also do well in the potential merger and acquisition in the back of my mind, I can't stop thinking about Wiz and the 23 billion. You know, a few, like a 0.1% stock option in Wiz would look like for those people. But anyway, so you've got all those things to take into consideration. You've got. You've got an element of ego. You've got. Which I think is stronger in sales than in some other function. You've got an element of potential cash outs or liquidity events. You've got an element of two sales culture clashing. But yet this is probably one of the most important entity to integrate, because I don't know anyone that brings two companies together to actually stop selling. You know, in fact, it should be the opposite. So I would like to drill a little bit down into sales and maybe speak about some of the experience that you've had on both sides of the fence from someone who lived it, what you've seen, what you've seen working, not working. And how do you get this sales culture together to strive and actually go and, you know, one plus one equals three, basically, from a sales perspective.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: Yeah, because that's all. You're right. All companies are looking to take how much they were selling in one company and how much they were selling another company, put those two together and amplify it. They're not just looking to do the same, or, for that matter, less. And yet, when you go through emerging two companies and integrating go to market functions, you will inevitably have some degree of disruption. So one of the first things that, you know, everybody needs to be clear and I. And honest about going in is there may be a little bit of a dip in some areas while we're learning. We're transitioning to new systems, or we're getting the data squared away, or we're learning the new technology or whatever it is, there are always variables in there that cause a little bit of turbulence in that picture. That's the first thing that you need to recognize. To your point about ego and the way people will approach it, I think it depends quite a bit on what you're combining. If you're. In other words, if you're combining two very distinct and different things. You know, if this is, to use your analogy, if you're making croissant and I'm grilling steaks, that might be a really great, really good combination. But those are two very different processes. You know, baking and grilling are completely different in terms of how they get the finished product and what they're selling, for that matter. And so if you have very adjacent technologies that are a similar level of complexity to explain and to sell. That's very different than having two technologies which maybe are complementary. I mean, you might like to have a steak sandwich on a croissant. That sounds pretty good to me. But they're completely different things. You know, when you've got that or when you've got a high degree, if you acquire a technology, for example, that has a high degree of complexity and expertise needed to sell it, you can't just slam those two things together and tell the other team, well, you got to start selling this product because they don't. They've got a whole learning curve and expertise they need to develop. So my point is, it varies quite a bit. How you do that varies quite a bit depending on some of these variables around complexity of the product, whether or not they're adjacent, whether you're selling, for example, to the same people in the organization or nothing. Sometimes we'll acquire technology and the acquirer is selling to the IT organization, and the technology we acquire is selling to the marketing organization, for example. And so depending on how far apart or not those are, to me, really dictates how you approach combining those teams. You might run those two teams separately. In other words, tell both of you have got your way of doing things. You know how to grill steak, you know how to bake croissant, keep doing what you're doing. First and foremost, we want to continue to make both of those, have both of those be great products and make great sales. And we're going to take volunteers who are going to figure out how to make the croissant steak sandwich. And you see some companies run two different organizations independently for a couple of years. Maybe in those situations where they're very disparate, sometimes you don't have that luxury. Sometimes you have to. The business plan calls for them to be combined very quickly, or simply, it's something that naturally both teams should be able to sell the other's products pretty easily, and you want to do it much faster. And so I think you have to be very thoughtful about those factors. When you're combining, deciding how to combine the teams, I think you also have to, you can't ignore issues like, does the data fit together? Do our systems, does our, for example, does our CRM system, can we merge the two things together or not? Customers and prospects and everything else in your CRM. Like, you also have to think about operational things, just not how easy or hard it is to sell. You put all those together and you're, of course, trying to balance two things. You're trying to do it as quickly as to the desired amplified, better result as quickly as possible, and at the same time not break anything and have good people leave because they're frustrated that you're putting them in a. In a really difficult position that they can't execute well. It's always a balancing act. Hopefully, that, that answers your question. That's been my experience is you've got to look at those sort of factors when you're combining sales teams, and that will usually lead you to what the right strategy is in terms of combining those organizations and at what pace and in what timeframe.
[00:24:04] Speaker D: That's an incredible perspective, Chris, because it just kind of hit me while you were walking through that, how lucky we, our two organizations are that we essentially sell the same service. Business development or sales development as a service. Right. Even that's like, you know, that comes with a lot of challenges. I couldn't imagine if it was two operational technologies coming together to, you know, and having to learn the other one. At least with us, we were lucky and we got what sdas was. We all do it. But, yeah, even that has its own challenges. But I think that was a great example or explanation of how difficult it can be.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Well, and sometimes, you know, there's a very good reason to combine very disparate technologies or disparate things. Think about some famous acquisition examples that we can point to. Google buying Android or Google buying YouTube. Right? You're combining search and mobile technology or search and video. Those are very different. But advertising, think about them as a combined entity. And could we imagine today, Google not having Android be part and parcel of what they're doing, as an example. So sometimes these are very powerful combinations. You see it all the time in technology where people are building a portfolio of solutions and they're very disparate product or largely disparate products. So sometimes we have to grapple with that. But it is, it increases the challenge and the complexity factor. You know, many fold when you do that.
[00:25:30] Speaker D: So the vision comes in.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think to Ron's point, we had a bit of favorable situation because we probably were like the complementary type. So basically the two things that goes together. So someone who is making chocolate, I'm gonna go on. I mean, I'm gonna be very, very angry. After the podcast, someone was making chocolate and someone making croissant, and all of the sudden, you come up with the pound chocolate, chocolate, the chocolate croissant. But if you think about it, we were strong internationally, less strong in the US. We've been struggling with getting the same level of results as memorable in the US. Memorable in the US from a process perspective, like, you know, unbeatable. You know, I've been looking at them for years, never been able to steal one of their clients. And from a technology perspective, those guys are probably two, three years ahead of us in the way that your CRM system communicates with customers. So again, almost ying and yang of things going together, which I think has been helping. I know that we've been focusing mainly on sales. From an acquisition perspective, I would like to speak about customers as well, because another big, big job is to retain customers and potentially getting customer excited and communicating to them about the merger and what's it for them and the future. And again, I know there is no playbook for that because each situational difference. But I'm keen to understand if you've got any key learning that you could share with us through trial and error of what you've done in the past to engage with customers and get them excited about the new combined organization.
[00:26:54] Speaker C: Sure, sure. Certainly some things that are really good to do and some things that you should avoid doing. One example of things to avoid doing is to announce what you're doing too far in advance sometimes can create a lot of challenges for the customers in the existing organization because, okay, we heard that you're combining these two organizations. We want it now, and maybe it's not possible to give it to them right away as an example. I think another example of things that to avoid is if you're replacing something in your portfolio, you might have a product which is at the, you know, very mature and you want to go with the next version of that product. And what you're acquiring is allowing you to take a big leap from a technology standpoint, for example, then what you have to ask yourself is, what about all the customers who have the legacy mature product that you're going to be sunsetting? You want to avoid messaging that puts them in angst. You mean, I've got the old stuff and I'm locked into this contract. I can't transition to the new stuff yet because then all of a sudden you not only create disruption, but you might actually create a churn where customers decide to go with some other product because they say, well, the company's not going to be investing in that anymore and I'm not going to stay on a legacy product that's no longer getting investment, no longer progressing. So you have to be careful about, be thoughtful about putting yourselves in customers position and thinking about what messaging and communication you're doing and what timeframe. So those are some things to be careful of or to avoid when you're doing this. The flip side is, of course, most of the time when we're doing these acquisitions, it has many benefits to offer. And so I think what you do focus on envisioning, what are your customers trying to accomplish? What are their desired outcomes and objectives? You know, a lot of times our customers have a vision for where they want to go with whatever it is, that service that we provide. I'm here, and I want to be able to accomplish that. And if you start with thinking about enabling them to achieve those objectives or that vision that they have and then map in, okay, how does this acquisition play a role in that? Now you've got a great conversation. Our CEO and I did this recently with a series of executives at some of our largest companies in Europe. We did a big conference in Europe. We did one in London and one in Paris earlier this year. And we went and had meetings outside of the conference with executives of our biggest customers. And we talked about, we asked them what was their vision? What are the big strategic objectives that their company is trying to accomplish? What are the challenges that they're grappling with? And then we talked about, okay, well, we've just made this acquisition, and here's what the roadmap looks like, and here's how that can help you. Here's how I think the journey between what you're looking to accomplish and where we're going match up and can support each other. And that's often, as an example, a very welcome thing, arguably the most influential people at your customers, because they're going to go back into conversations about where they're going and what their strategy is, and say, well, you know, we can take the investment we've made and we can extend it in this way. And we can, you know, here's a path that we can use to get closer to that objective. I think the most important thing to focus on when you're communicating with your customers is putting yourself in their shoes, having those, asking those questions, having those conversations, and, and showing them how, what you've acquired can help them to accomplish what they're seeking, because then they get naturally excited and, and will sort of pull you along on the journey.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Get them excited about the future, but don't do it too soon. If you don't have the capabilities, don't, don't go and speak about things. And when you say too soon again, it may vary, but what sort of time frame are we talking? Do you want to reveal things that you are cooking six months before they come out of the oven, or do you want to do it a year before they come out of it? Do you actually give them some sort of time frame? What was the tactics to balance not doing it too soon, but getting people excited? Because there is, for me, there is a limit of teasing in saying, look, we bring together, this is what we're doing now, but here is the platform that we would like to develop. This is what we are thinking of doing. Do you see that? Would that bring value to you? Because I've done something similar. I went to picked a bunch of cmos, CROs in my network, and when we got together, I think what I called it is kind of doing a sanity checks, like trialing the resonance of the message that I've got in my mind in terms of what we want to build, just to see what their feedback would be. And the feedback that I wanted to get is like, look, okay, this is great, because now you can help me to go from a to b, but in a different way. I can see the future with that. I could, we could start there and then go there. And there is a cycle where the clients see what they could bounce from one service to the other service, from one tech to another tech, but then come back potentially to the one. So because there is cycles in what we do, I was wondering, what's the right sort of time frame between getting people excited and then maybe doing it too early? So they're like, wow about it, but it's not really coming to market.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: Yeah, really. And it's a great question. And I think you hit on a number of different things which can illustrate this one. When you're thinking about doing an acquisition or you're in the throes of diligence around an acquisition, that's a great time to go talk to executives of your customers and ask them for steerage. You're not going to tell them about the acquisition you're doing, obviously, because that's always confidential. But you can ask them about, hey, knowing what you know about what we do, what are your thoughts about whether these types of things would have additional value? How would that help you? What's your recommendation for us as we think about either investing organically or from an acquisition standpoint and expanding the services that we provide you? What would you like to see from us? Because then you're both getting them excited and involved in a decision process, and you're also informing what you're doing from an acquisition standpoint. So contrary to my comment, if you do the right thing in the right way, you can actually do it ahead of having a deal close or even having a deal finalized. But when it comes to the acquisition itself, once you have a deal, I think it can vary quite a bit. I remember years ago we always used to, when I was in companies that in some ways competed with, say, Microsoft, for example, we used to always talk about how Microsoft was really good at reserving market share. We used to say reserving market share for themselves because they would make this announcement and then they might not deliver something for several years. Well, they could afford to do that because they were the 900 pound gorilla in the market and they had customers locked into very large enterprise license agreements that covered all technology for the whole company for, you know, a long period of time, they could afford to do that. And so in some cases, you can go way, way out in advance if you have, if you're in that type of position, if you're a market leader and you're actually working against companies that are, that are trying to infringe on your space and take away your leadership or eat into your market share, but for most of us, we're not working at market leading companies.
And in those cases, when you're at a company, for example, I mentioned you're replacing something in the portfolio. If you have an old, outdated or missing piece to your portfolio that customers really need, well, that's a great reason to do an acquisition. But as soon as you tell the customer that you're going to plug that hole or you're going to upgrade that product, that becomes part of their mindset in terms of what they own right now and what they're contracted for, and they're like, well, wait a minute, I'm paying for something that I'm not getting what I need. And it can create a lot of tension. If you think about, for example, contracts that if you happen to be in a company that's in a monthly contract cycle, for example, and they say, well, when are you going to deliver that? Well, our roadmap has this coming into the portfolio and being fully integrated in nine months or twelve months, they're going to go, well, that's not good enough. I need to go find another, I got a problem. I got a need. You can sort of wake them up to a problem. So I think if you're in that position, which is most companies, and you're plugging a hole or fixing something that's no longer competitive in the market. That timeframe needs to be much shorter. It needs to be within, say, a quarter or so, versus a Microsoft example where you might tell people a year ahead of time.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because also what you've got to be mindful of in that example, particularly if you're going to bring the capability or you bring that functionality through an acquisition, I mean, you know that not a lot of acquisition actually goes through. So there's lots of things that you may discover. So if you do it too soon, you get too excited, you may promise something that you can't get. And if you start a new cycle with someone else and you get quite tricky. It's not. I appreciate the feedback. It's very useful, by the way, Chris. Ron, do you have any question, I.
[00:35:26] Speaker D: Mean, that, that's very straightforward, just a comment that it sounds like what's always important is the communication with the customer. Right. And then you can always go ask what's on their Christmas list in July, understand the viability of it, and if that's possible. So it sounds like the most important piece of that is discovery without promising. And I think that's a very powerful tool. But it's also, in my opinion, should be part of emotion anyway, with customer success, delivery, whatever you want to call it. So I can see those conversations heating up, too, in the shadow of an acquisition that's coming up.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: That's exactly right. And well said, Ron. You well said. You want to do discovery without making promises. And then when you're in a position to make the promise, ask yourself, how patient are they going to be before you, you go ahead and make that promise.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And like me, because I think we need to be better at that. Done it with some customers, but we've not done it with all customers. And I believe that with all customers, we may not have the executive point of contact to be able for that conversation. So we may be dealing with someone who is working for the person, with reporting to the actual person that knows what they want for Christmas. And that's probably our larger clients. You know, we don't, we may not have that executive touch. So, but I will make a note of that and make sure it's something that we do, because I think this is, this is a fascinating point. Just say, hey, tell us about where you're going. What's your north star, what's your Christmas list? I think this is important. And, and even if we don't respond to them now, it's important for us. Maybe if we go back to them in two months time, three months time from now to say, hey, look, this is what we've been thinking. You remember that conversation? We're thinking about this. We're thinking about that. So it's on it. Keeping track of that will be very important because at the moment, I think what we are doing, we know what most of our clients want, but we'll definitely make a note of that. But thank you so much, Chris, for sharing all those insights with us. That was super useful. If anyone wants to connect with you to discuss about Acquia, to speak about yourself and what you've achieved or, you know, get in touch in general to ask you any question about what we discussed today. What's the best way to get in touch with you, Chris?
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Simple. It's Chris. Chris Dot dogget dash
[email protected]. aquia spelled ac Q u I a.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: There you go. Many thanks once again. It was a great pleasure to have you on the show today, Chris. And thank you, Randall.
[00:37:39] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: My pleasure as well. Thank you both. I appreciate it.
[00:37:42] Speaker D: Great meeting you.
[00:37:44] Speaker C: Likewise.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: You've been listening to b two b revenue acceleration. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.
