Everything we do is a core component of M&A and Exits. Our framework, methodologies, advisory, practice area expertise, and decades of experience support our clients to assess, answer, and prepare for the following:

• Determine whether the growth engine is scalabile and ready for integrating an acquisition.

• Develop a strategic acquisition strategy aligned with vision, brand focus, capital, all other growth engine components in current state and future state.

• Assessment of acquisition target’s growth engine

• Evaluate the lift of post-acquisition integration of both growth engines, teams, etc.

• Develop plan for growth engine integration

  • CRM

  • Data

  • Marketing

  • Sales Team structure

  • Sales Team compensation alignment

  • Client base segmentation and path-forward coverage/expansion approach

  • Marketing strategy, change management, communication plan and process

• Develop carve out strategy and growth engine carve out plan

• Carve out plan execution

• Exit Readiness

Aligned solutions:

1. Growth Engine Assessment leveraging our GVX Score methodology.

2. Acquisition readiness

3. M&A | Divestiture strategy development

4. Carve out strategy development i

5. Post-acquisition integration support

6. Exit Planning

Developing strong brand value is a critical step in building sustainable growth and creating value. Divesting business units, services, etc. that aren’t aligned to core strengths of your value prop. and clear message of the brand is just as important as building and acquiring offerings that compliment and strengthen the brand.

GVX supports our clients with Carve Out advisory in several ways:

1. Assessment of growth engine components, including positioning, serves as context for assessing a potential carve out.

2. Financial modeling to help assess the financial impact of a potential carve out

3. Org. structure . Growth Team impact post carve out.

4. Back office lift required to facilitate the carve out for technology, data, agreements, digital assets, client-base impact and transition plan, team member impact in terms of bandwidth and incentive compensation for business development team.

Being prepared for acquisition-based growth is obviously a crucial step in the growth journey, and yet a step often rushed over.

GVX helps our clients prepare for acquisitive growth by assessing the growth engine for scalability strength. Leveraging our GVX Score methodology, we review all components of the growth engine. Our objective is to assure that the infrastructure is in place and prepared to continue with strong organic growth with little or no impact while acquisitive growth is integrated into the organization. Some of the primary considerations are as follows:

• CRM & Martech stack stability, efficiency, effectiveness, and agile scalability for expansion.

• Marketing and business development teams bandwidth and expertise.

• Leadership expertise, vision, alignment, and strength in serving as a change agent to reinforce internal and external messaging and organizational transformation through this phase of growth.

• Data normalization, ETL, and integration needs. This area is often overlooked in terms of importance and complexity, yet can be proactively resolved with significant ROI. The acquisition investment thesis often assumes cross selling, up selling, client expansion, and synergy. Proactively providing efficient and effective data access to the full growth team is critical for timely execution of the above.

• Process alignment and post-acquisition future state training and execution is critical for numerous daily team-driven tasks like marketing content, sales enablement, proposal content, proposal development and review process, agreement development, review, signature, and management process, pricing and margin management, post-sell handoff to delivery and client success/experience.

• Growth-focused Finance and Accounting for modeling future state impact on working capital, pricing, margin, compensation alignment, Capex and Opex budgets, as well as near-term and long-term efficiency gain potential from consolidation efforts.

Building a playbook for all of the above pays dividends in reducing time wasted chasing down answers, forms, missed steps in the process, frustration to the internal sales team, opportunity cost, client experience, and leadership time, visibility, accountability, and decision-support needed to drive successful post-acquisition results that accomplish the acquisition objectives.

Acquisition Target

We also support our clients prior to the acquisition close and transition dates to assess all of the above for the organization being acquired. The more of this that can be done during due diligence the better, in effort to begin establishing an understanding of the approach to take, the level of lift, and an associated project plan and timeline.

We’ve lived the above done effectively and have supported clients recovering from the lack of proactive planning. We look forward to exploring your acquisition plans and how we can best partner to help capture value quickly with good planning and proactive execution.

Establishing a well-defined buy box helps our clients in several ways including the following:

1. Minimize time spent on wrong-fit opportunities

2. Expedite the decision process

3. Bring credibility and clarity to brokers, lenders, and sellers by communicating a well thought out acquisition thesis that improves every stakeholders success probability and minimizes unfruitful time investments

We gain a deep understanding of future-state brand vision, growth strategy in terms of client and offering mix, growth engine strengths, and gaps to close. Leveraging the above, we partner with clients to help define the buy box focus in effort to develop a strategically-aligned pipeline of acquisition prospects. Our objective is to have a clear target focus based on the below:

• Revenue size

• EBIDTA or SDE target range

• Industry

• Geographic location

• Business model

• Leadership & Team

• Client served

• Cross sell opportunity

• Service Line addition or expansion of existing services

Alignment of above to long-term growth strategy

GVX provides niche expertise in providing post-acquisition growth engine integration. Integrating the growth engine of two organizations is mission critical for several reasons:

1. The acquisition thesis is based on the assumption of synergy resulting from the combining of both organization’s strengths. Realizing the financial and client-base results relies on an efficient, effective, and well executed growth engine integration.

2. Maintaining high employee engagement and retention of top producers within the business development team is critical, as they are the front line with your clients. Well planned and executed growth integration ensures the following:

   • Post transition process, technology, territory, pricing, proposal assets, formats, process, approvals, team collaboration members, agreement prep, approval, and management steps are well defined, explained, trained, working smoothly, with CRM and other data access and intel efficiently available.

   • Compensation plans well defined and explained.

   • Common client history and post-acquisition rules of engagement clear, efficient, effective, and a value add to both the clients and the internal teams. The fastest way to lose moral and top business development talent is to allow client perception that the acquisition is downgrading their experience or hurting the business development professional who has worked hard to develop a strong relationship with the client. Give and take is necessary, yet a well-thought out integration will avoid most issues that commonly take place with acquisitions.

3. Growth stack integration is critical. Most challenges can be avoided with proactive communication and deep understanding of the current processes. All too often, the system the Marketing and Sales team lives by is simplified by an executive decision to move in one direction or another comes at the cost of resolving on the back end while the business development team navigates work arounds until resolved. This is expensive in opportunity cost, morale cost, lost A-Talent at a cost of 1.5X - 2X annual compensation to replace.

4. Marketing . Communication. Change management is critical for internal and external stakeholders. One of the big mistakes often made is communication to clients that isn’t also communicated to business development professionals.

5. Data normalization and integration is imperative as it’s the very fuel the growth engine runs on and the marketing and business development teams rely on.

6. Pipeline management alignment to the future-state right out of the gate is mission critical. Sales stages, forecasting methods, updates, dashboards, and reporting all need to be aligned and communicated as soon as possible for clean post-acquisition accuracy and effectiveness.

GVX understands growth-engine integration well and from every lens. Leadership wants results and visibility, Sales teams need the tools to build their pipe, and the process can be efficient and effective when managed proactively and effectively.

We welcome a conversation to explore further to see if we’re aligned well to partner with you and streamline your next growth engine integration.

GVX developed the X Readiness framework to help our clients prepare for an exit.

We are prepared to partner in one or multiple areas of the exit preparation process in the following primary areas of focus:

• Preparing the historical growth overview and path-forward projections;

  • Year over year growth, three and five year growth trends

  • Growth source, organic verses acquistion

  • By Service line, geography, industry, etc.

  • Pricing, margins, etc.

  • Client mix and diversification

• Growth Stack maturity

• Data . Business Intel Value

• Brand Value overview

• Competitive landscape

• Pipeline stats

• Financials

• Leadership

• Intellectual Property

• GVX Score intel supporting value

• Etc.

Exit transition support

• Traditional Exit with full sell to new buyer

• Owner/Operator transition out of operations while retaining investment position. Our leadership practice supports and prepares for smooth succession planning

• Owner/Operator transitions out of operations and sells equity position to company / internal partners.

GVX is prepared to partner with other transaction services practices or is positioned to bring other strategic partners in as needed as well.

We welcome the opportunity to explore your exit objectives in effort tailor an approach option.