Survive the Acquisition

[0:00] I would say that there probably hasn't been a mistake I haven't made in navigating the changes of acquisitions and growing sales teams, but there's also a lot of stuff that I've done right. And I would hope that someone listening to that would hear some sage advice on how to navigate that change of acquisitions and leading people with trust and with heart and just having honest conversations with people about their career path and what you and they can bring to the organization.

[0:29] Music.

[0:33] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue. Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your funnels consistently, reliably full. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I'm really excited to have David Farrell as my guest. David has over 24 years of sales experience as both an individual contributor and as a sales leader.

[1:07] David has sold to companies from one employee to 125,000 employees, mainly in the human resources technology space. David, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom. Yeah, thanks, Hamish. Appreciate you having me. It's kind of a broad spectrum of what I've done. It's hard to consolidate into just a couple of senses. So I thought thought you did great by the way. Thanks for that.

[1:34] Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And I have now given the audience, you know, that 30,000 or maybe 50,000 foot view of you and your career. Tell us your story. Tell us where you started and how you got to where you are today. name? Yeah. So as my wife likes to say, I went through college the easy way. I was a communications major and I wanted to be in media, in entertainment, in radio. I quickly found out that that didn't really pay for the college debt that I graduated with and ended up moving to Chicago and taking a sales job because my dad, my father had been in sales all his life and we led a pretty decent decent lifestyle as a result of that. And I caught on with a company that had a really great training program and sold to small businesses, one employee to 50 employees that just needed to pay themselves and pay the federal government their taxes and their due, sometimes pay employees and just make sure that payroll and HR was not a thing that they were worried about. Did really well there for a few years, got promoted, took over a team that was really underperforming. And I think that's where I really honed my leadership skills. That team was, I think, 167th in the nation when I took it over. And by the time, you know, two, three years into it, we were 16th, 17th in the nation. Really excited about what I was able to do there. Went up market, started working with larger market businesses.

[2:58] I think I was rookie of the year for the organization in that regard. And then started going up market again as a leader. I took on a chief sales officer role, went through an acquisition, went through another acquisition. And here I am today. I'm a leader for three different divisions at my current organization, a leader of leaders, I should say. And we're servicing a bunch of different markets, one of which is Canada. Just really excited to talk a little bit about maybe my experience and how it would help individual contributors or leaders just navigate the changes of acquisitions and surviving the a corporate uh corporate rent fantastic and and what a very cool story and and by the way resonate i i did a communications degree when i my first uh program and yeah it doesn't pay as well as you might think it does when you're when you first get in there uh so this was something that i was really curious about when we first met and you were sharing your story with me it was you've lived, through a lot of acquisitions in a sales leadership role and for the sales leaders listening that is something that most of them are gonna go through in their careers now maybe they're their acquirer maybe they're being acquired and.

[4:13] I know from talking to people who've been through that experience, it's got a lot of emotion attached and you still have to keep performing, right? You can't just put the company on pause and then when the acquisition happens, you can restart again. So let's maybe back up to the starting point. So when the rumors of an acquisition start, and there's always rumors.

[4:33] How as a sales leader, how do you maintain focus and how do you keep your team focused? when it's just a rumor? There's smoke, but no fire. I was a chief sales officer and on our executive board when I went through my first acquisition. And so I knew well before, actually, I knew before I took the role that the goal of the company was to get sales to a certain level and execute through a transaction. And so I knew, I was one of the first people to know what was happening. And I knew my marching orders, my marching orders, like any sales leader, is to get as much as you can out of out of what you forgot and to grow and have a replicable process this is attractive for a buyer you know a buyer is gonna want to buy a process a program they're gonna want to buy revenue that's coming in the door and so as a top-line sales leader I just kept our team focused on how do we create a process how do we create a pipeline how do we create a program so that if and when we had a transaction, that the buyer would be excited for what they're getting. They're getting a ready-made sales team. They're getting sales professionals that are executing at a high level. They're buying that pipeline.

[5:53] And so I think that that was one way that I got prepared was I just made sure that we had a sales playbook, a process, a program in place so that there was job security there, that I knew what we were bringing to the table.

[6:08] Now, depending on who's buying you, They might not need you. That was one of the interesting parts is I would come home every once in a while. My wife would say, well, how was that? How was the call today? I said, well, it was great. But if they buy us, I'm out of a job. They don't need a chief sales officer. They've got one in place.

[6:24] But my people are safe. My people are going to be well taken care of. In a future acquisition that I was a part of, I wasn't as high up on the food chain. and when we went through the acquisition, it became a spot where I knew what I could bring to the table for that organization. And it was a decision of, well, do you want to go out and find something new? Or is this acquirer an exciting opportunity where you can make the money that you want to make, have the lifestyle that you, the work-life balance, and can you bring something to the table that's of value to them? And so I think if you, as an individual contributor or a sales leader, when those rumors start happening, I think there's a lot of security in your results, in your reputation and the things that you're doing. And I would feel better about my position at the future company if I knew that I had results and that I had a good reputation. And that was something that someone would want to hire off of the street in either way. Totally. And it's like that cliche about it's not how you enter a company, It's how you leave the company that most people end up remembering. Fair? Yeah.

[7:36] So actually, I'm curious, before I get to the next part of this, in that second case where you were maybe a little lower down the hierarchy and you had this opportunity to potentially join the acquirer, what did you ultimately decide? Yeah, I stuck with the acquirer because they gave me the opportunity to do things that fit my skill set and they needed that in the organization. So, I think in some cases, if you're getting purchased by someone that's a lot larger, you sometimes go from being a big fish in a little pond to a small fish in a big pond. And sometimes that's not attractive to people. And that was something I had to consider. I went from being the number one sales leader to a third-line sales leader.

[8:24] But actually, they gave me more responsibility. I added Canada as part of what I was doing. I grew my team. I grew my indirect and direct headcount. And so while I didn't have the same fancy title, I was able to help them build part of the organization that wasn't previously built, expand into another country. And that gave me the satisfaction. That gave me the sort of confidence that I was in a good place and I was being challenged and I was being valued. If it came to that the job offer at the new company was a frontline leader with very little responsibility and not that great of an opportunity to grow, I probably wouldn't have stuck around. So I think it's important that when those things start to happen for you as a leader, you sit back and say, what's the niche? What do I bring to the table? Does that match what they're looking for in a new leader? And can I be challenged and appreciated and valued and I've been fortunate that I found that here. Very cool. And I'm curious.

[9:28] David, when you shared earlier about in the first context, you were the chief sales officer. You also had a position on the board. But you went into that role knowing that the ultimate goal of this organization was to have someone, you, level up the sales team so that it could be acquired. And I actually had this conversation with a leader recently who wasn't told that until they actually accepted the offer. Yeah. Um, so, and, and they were a little on, they were a little put out by it because they weren't actually looking for something like that. They were looking for something a little bit more stable and long-term. So for sales leaders who are listening to this and they come across one of those offers or someone calls them up and says, Hey, would you be open to an opportunity? What are some of those really key green and red flags that you would recommend they look for to either say, I want to do this or run for the hills? Yeah. I mean, I think you nailed it with your example, just transparency and honesty.

[10:28] I was really fortunate that the CEO that hired me, I had known him for a long time and he and I knew sort of what each other were capable of. And putting that team together was really exciting for me. He told me from the get go, we're going to transact. I need you to come in here. And it could be as soon as a year and it could be a three or four year. It was it was three for us. And I just had to think to myself, OK, okay, how am I going to explain this to my next employer? If we go through a transaction and they don't want me, which is their purview, then I'm going to have to explain why a year later I'm back out on the street trying to find a new job. And for me, it was that he was giving me, they were giving me the opportunity to report to the board, be on the executive board, to completely build something that hadn't been built before. And it was really, truly a brass ring type opportunity. And if I was a year later interviewing with somebody and they didn't see that opportunity and feel the same way, like, wow, I would have taken the same role, then I'm probably interviewing with the wrong company. So I think first and foremost, if an opportunity is coming your way and you know that a transaction is headed out, think about what does that next interview look like if they don't want me and I'm on the street and I'm looking for another role.

[11:46] Role? Is this experience one that somebody else is excited about? And is my resume something that someone would say, hey, we need this person in the door. Are you better off a year from now, three years from now? So that's a green light for me. A red light, if I showed up and they said, hey, just so you know, we're probably going to have a transaction in a little bit, I would absolutely understand what my role was and try to make the best of it. And with that, again, that next sort of interview in mind. There really isn't that much of a guarantee of employment anyway. If you're not performing.

[12:21] They tend to not keep us around. If you are performing, you tend to reap the rewards of that with job security, promotions, and compensation and recognition.

[12:30] So I always feel like my job is constantly on the line and not in a bad way that my employer is threatening me or somebody's looking over my shoulder, but just that sales is a profession where you've got to prove it day in and day out. So I think a red flag would be if they weren't transparent with me. I think another green flag is, Is it attainable? Is what they're asking you to do something that you can actually accomplish? So I've been in organizations where maybe they want to grow by 25%, but they're not willing to add new headcounts. Is that even possible to do? And really taking a little bit of a microscope into their TAM, into their products, into their people and their process and really understanding the business on the front end. Again, if they're transparent to say, hey, we'll commit to hiring you for more people and for more people is going to bring us that additional $5 million. And you just got to find the right people and train them the right way and get them going. going, I would look for how invested is that organization in making an investment into that growth? Because some growth is synergies, which is a really nice way of saying cutting headcount and paying attention to EBITDA. So you may be asked to do more with less or more with the same. And so I would really want to find out in either regard, hey, if these are my marching orders and and you want me to grow by 50, 100%.

[14:00] What tools and resources from a technology standpoint and a people power standpoint are you gonna give me to be able to get there? Or am I just gonna have to make.

[14:08] Do with, with what I've got? Um, either answer could be green or red, right? Fair enough. And, uh, great insights for the leaders listening because yeah, transparency, right. Can, cause that comes down to trust because if you weren't transparent with me, I, I can't necessarily trust you. And, uh, I, you've probably had similar conversations with people in your network about, you know, the, the, Hey, we'll do this for you if this happens. And on the back end, it was like, ah, well, actually we're not going to do that. And then again, there's that that lack of transparency and lack of trust. Thank you for sharing those insights with us, David. Yeah, no problem. Now we're in the acquisition, right? So, okay, so now there's not only smoke, there's fire, right? We're doing this.

[14:48] And I'd be curious to understand your experience both from that acquirer and that acquired side.

[14:56] Because, again, both are emotional. And as a sales leader, how do you keep your team on pace? Because I heard you earlier about how we want to exit, that's how we get remembered and we have targets and all that. However, there's still a lot of uncertainty and we're still human, so we still get caught up in what ifs and all that. So in that middle of that transaction, when things are still uncertain, how do you keep going day to day? Yeah. Yeah, I think it depends on, let's say that people knew about it. Right, because that's the big ask. If people know about it, your sales team knows about it.

[15:38] I don't fault people for making the best decisions for themselves. And there's a fight or flight risk that you have when stuff like this happens. Absolutely. When people are worried about losing their jobs, they mitigate that risk by getting their resume together, getting their LinkedIn spiffed up, and talking to recruiters, accepting phone calls. And that definitely happens when there's smoke around acquisitions is people will start to look around because they're worried that they're not going to be hired by their acquiring organization.

[16:11] There's not necessarily a promise of employment either at the new organization, whether you're doing well or poorly. I think you've just got to have some heart-to-heart conversations with the leaders reporting to you or the teams reporting to you and just be, again, if I'm asking for transparency as someone getting hired or sticking through the acquisition, I would want to give that back to my people and say, hey, the best job security we have in sales is our ability to have a solid pipeline, to have some results and some established deals closing. And if you've got that, why wouldn't they want to keep you? Why wouldn't they want to hire you and bring you on? That makes the most sense to me. There could be a situation where they don't. And I understand that if you start looking around, I wouldn't fault you for that. and from what I know of today, the plan is this. And it's hard to do that, but I think if people are really concerned about it and you really want to keep them, then you owe them that transparency. If you really know that the plan is to let people go and that's part of the acquisition and you know that, depending on what you're allowed to say, you may just say, hey.

[17:28] If I were you, I would be shoring up any sort of weaknesses I have and making sure my resume is up. I've told people, hey, you've done nothing but right by me. You've been a solid performer. If for some reason they decided not to keep you, I'm in your corner. I'm a reference for you. I'll make calls for you. I'll activate my network.

[17:46] And I hope you would do the same for me. But acquisitions fall through too. I mean that's the other one organization where we were going to buy a company. So we left Friday at five o'clock thinking we're buying XYZ company. And on Monday, we're getting all of these salespeople and sales leaders and they're going to report to us and it's going to be great. And on Monday we showed up and it was like, nope, it fell through on Sunday. Something came through in the last minute due diligence that nobody was expecting. And so, you know, that entire sales organization could have been geared up, ready to be acquired. We were going to keep them.

[18:23] And then it didn't happen. And so there might have been some people that left a little prematurely. But again, I think you've got to protect yourself. You've got to protect your family and your income. If you feel like you're vulnerable, I don't fault people for looking around. But I just try to day-to-day, week-to-week, be as transparent as I can with them. In some cases, you absolutely cannot do that. And you've got to keep it quiet. it. And, you know, that's unfortunately the downside to being a leader is that while it's really fun to get people to hire people and change their lives and bring them in and help them succeed. Occasionally you also have to tell them that their ride is over and it's time for them to find something else. So you really got to stick with whatever your corporate organization is dictating to you. But I think there's that human element of being as transparent as you can and understanding that their best option may be to get the resume together and look for another role, but to maybe check with me before you take something because I might have new information that would change that outcome.

[19:24] True. And like you just identified in transactions, things change all the time and they can go sideways 17 different times a day in 17 different ways. And things do change. Right. And you might not be allowed to share anything today and tomorrow you might be allowed to share something, which is more than nothing. Right. So as a sales leader, how do you advocate for your team? Like if you're being acquired, what sort of conversations do you have with the

[19:56] acquirer about their plans and about potentially keeping members of your team? Because I love this human element that you brought in. We work with human beings and we need them to feel supported. So how do you go about having that conversation with the acquirer about what their plans are? I don't think it's that different than when you would talk to your, you know, your sales leader or the person above you about your team. Anyway, we're constantly evaluating people in their performance and, and you owe your employer the transparency of this person is worth keeping. You know, I know the numbers might not be where they need to be, but I see them. I see what they're doing. I, we're in constant conversation. conversation, I understand how they're running their sales team or if they're an individual contributor, how they're running their business. I've seen it.

[20:50] They're worth keeping. You absolutely have to advocate for the right people, sometimes even when the numbers don't necessarily require that. In an acquisition, I think it's fair to ask the acquirer, hey, what are your plans? If you're going to invest more in us and hire more? Are we going to split this team and regionalize people into your already existing teams? And if they were to ask me, hey, who stays and who goes? I tend to think of that as if I were starting a brand new company today, knowing everything that I know about my people today, who deserves to be here and who doesn't? And I have been through that discussion and had to make those decisions before. And there may be some people that have performed, but are maybe not exactly the people that you would keep if you were to start over again. There have been people that have underperformed that deserve the benefit of the doubt. And you just share that with the acquiring company and say, hey, if this were me and this were my company, these are the five that I would absolutely keep. I would start if I was starting David Farrell Inc. Today and I needed five people. These are the five. But if you've got somebody in another location and I've got a question mark in that same location, I could see you going with your person instead of mine. Absolutely makes sense because you don't need necessarily.

[22:16] I think they call that redundancy or something. Yeah. Some business cliché. Okay, so now we're going through these rapids of an acquisition, right? So we've started at the beginning.

[22:24] There's smoke, no fire. Now there's smoke and fire. Okay, now we're on the other side. Yeah. And we're post-acquisition. And so as a sales leader, post-acquisition, and you've been in both, you know, you've been in that role where you went with the acquiring company. What are some of those things that we need to be thinking about as sales leaders post-acquisition to make sure that everything goes successfully? Because there's plenty of stories about how acquisitions go sideways very quickly. You need to have a really clear conversation and honest conversation with your new employer about their goals for you, their goals for your people or your division.

[23:04] And understand how your current team and skill set fit into that. And am I just continuing sort of business as usual? Is this something where I need to learn new skills or do things a different way? You know, what I've learned is that the big fish that eats the small fish gets to make all the decisions. I'm on my third different call recording device, meaning that, you know, there are companies out there that their call recording system will attach itself to your sales calls. I'm on my third in a year and a half because of acquisitions and that's because the acquiring company had previously decided that was the one that they wanted to go to. And so you have to get very accustomed to.

[23:51] Losing some decision-making, you might love product A, but your acquiring company uses product B, and you're going to have to pivot over to that and get used to it. The survival technique there is that every once in a while, maybe once a quarter, you should sit down and think about, is this a company and is this a role that I would have applied to? Because initially, you're just happy to keep your job. Sure. You're like, hey, cool. They kept me.

[24:20] Everything's roses. I can do what they want. But it's important every three or so months to do a check-in with yourself and say, is this the role that I want? Do I have the tools that I need to succeed? Can I help my team and my leaders perform and hit their goals? And if you can't, then good for you for making it through the acquisition, but you're not in the right seat conceivably or even on the right bus, and it's probably time to look around. So I would just say get used to change. Get used to not making decisions because those decisions have already been made, and they're probably pretty loyal to what they have. I think you still owe your employer the ability to say, hey, this is my experience. This is technology I'm used to. I'll tell you you know today in where we are we're on our third recording technology but I'm an expert in going in in listening to calls and giving sales leaders and reps feedback on those calls what they could have done what they couldn't what they should have done maybe what they did really well and now we're rolling this thing out to the rest of the organization and I'm one of the people that's constantly up talking about how you use the system it's because the experience that I brought from before so I might have lost my favorite system but a transferable skill that I have is still very valuable to the new employer and I think if you just get accustomed to change it can be very very good but I but I do find that a lot of people get change fatigue and.

[25:49] And they wake up every once in a while and go, you know, I got this offer of employment. I stuck with it, but my job is so different now than what it was before. I'm just not happy. And if that's the case, I would advise you to leave.

[26:01] You know that you made a good run of it. They kept you for a reason, but it's not exactly the role that you want anymore. Sales is such a job. You just can't fake it. You've got to be in it 100% to succeed. and I would say do a check-in with yourself every quarter to figure out if that's where you want to be. Get used to the change. And if you're better because of it, stick around. But if you're not better and you're taking a step backwards, then you need to be somewhere else. Great insight. And sales leaders listening, to reinforce something that David just said is, it's not the tool, it's the outcome. So he is the expert in listening to calls and giving feedback, no matter what the platform is. He has a favorite and he's still flexible enough to remember. It's the outcome. It's not necessarily the tool David Thank you so much for sharing that bit of wisdom with the sales leaders listening today Yeah, so I've got a few questions to wrap up today, so first one being if You could go back and coach younger David go back as far

[27:02] as you like doesn't matter how far Yeah, and go hey younger David in the future. You're gonna have had this amazing career all this great experience and, And you're going to have a lot of scar tissue and bumps and bruises. What would you coach younger David to say or do different to get to the same place with a little less scar tissue and maybe one or two fewer bumps and bruises? Yeah, I love that question. So I would have taken a few more risks earlier in my career.

[27:28] I was extremely loyal and I worked in the same organization for 13 years. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[27:37] But when I went to market and I really wanted to find something else, a lot of people looked at that and said, I don't know if you really pushed yourself. I don't know if you went outside of your comfort zone. I don't know if you grew enough and found enough things. And typically when you're a little younger, you can afford to do those things because you maybe don't have a family. You don't have the mortgage. You don't have the cars and the school costs and all that sort of stuff. And you know and I wish that there were some other maybe riskier roles that I left at and took instead of being extremely loyal to an organization and I think that's something that in looking back I was definitely more loyal to them than they were to me not a bad organization but when I went to market in and found out about different roles and different promotions that were were available. There was a lot more money on the table than I was getting. And I felt, you know, in hindsight, I was more loyal to them than they were to me.

[28:36] And so I would advise people to just make sure that you're getting what you want out of your current role, that you're challenging yourself, that you're growing. And if you're not, then maybe it is the right idea to take that recruiter call. Maybe you can't afford to go no base salary commission only build up a book of residuals and, and, and do that sort of thing. So, um, that would be, that would be my advice is maybe, um, don't be, I don't know if I was necessarily complacent, but don't be so loyal that it costs you that next future role or that next future income.

[29:10] Totally makes sense. Thank you very much for that insight today.

[29:15] Curious, what have you read, watched, or listened to, whether recently or in the past, that you would encourage the sales leaders listening to check out for their own development? Yeah. Okay. So my two favorites right now, and one of them is an oldie but a goodie, especially when you're going through change, is Who Moved My Cheese? Yes. And it's such a great little book. I mean, you could probably read it while you're sitting at the airport waiting for your flight. It's a 30 to 45-minute read. But it really does cause you a lot of introspection around change. And I won't spoil it for anybody because you could literally read it in 30 to 45 minutes. But it just talks about how some people adapt to change really well and sort of continue to trudge on and don't hang on to the past and how a lot of people hang on to the past. And I can tell you, going through acquisitions, I deal with this daily, still daily. I have people that will tell me, well, I know that this is what we need to do now, but I wish it was this a year ago or two years ago. It's not that anymore. Move. Yeah. Right. So who moved my cheese is great for that. From a sales strategy standpoint, I absolutely love the jolt effect.

[30:26] The gentleman that wrote the Challenger sale have come out with – it's probably about a year old at this point, I think, just around risk mitigation in the sales process. And I think that as salespeople, we sell our product every day. We help people go through these evaluations every day. And we take it for granted that the buyer probably doesn't. The buyer might go to market once every five years or once every 10 years or has never done that before and there's a lot of risk sometimes in making these decisions and the jolt effect.

[30:56] Speaks to that and talks a lot about how buyers aren't really worried about missing out on a deal i'll give you one free month or discount my setup fee they're more worried about messing up making a wrong decision and it costing them their standing in the organization so i think if you're going Going through organizational change, Who Moved My Cheese is fantastic for that. Cute little read. I buy it for my sales teams all the time. And if you're looking for probably more majors to enterprise-level sales book and just how do you help buyers navigate the troubled waters of their change and get a new technology, just understanding their point of view and helping them ensure their project is successful, definitely Jolt Effect. Love those because especially with risk mitigation is a huge deal. I had a client years ago, and they were sharing with me that if their buyer, like the person who signs off on the purchase order, picks the wrong service, they never work in the industry again. Oh, yeah. Like it literally kills their career in an industry. Yeah, yeah.

[32:02] So talk about indecision. Like if I could lose my career over picking the wrong thing, I'm going to take forever to make a choice. Right. And as salespeople, we got to we can't have our buyers necessarily taken forever. So thank you for both of those recommendations.

[32:18] Last question for you. You've given us incredible ideas and insights already today. What do you have as a closing thought, a final piece of wisdom or even something to plug? The floor is yours. Yeah, I don't have anything to plug. I feel like I just gave a big shout out to two books. So hopefully they'll slip me a free copy, autographed copy or something to that effect. I'm a sales leader today and a sales professional. But I don't have a book that I'm selling or anything like that. So feel free to look me up on LinkedIn. My photo actually is exactly what I look like. So I'm not playing with the me with hair from 20 years ago and 10 pounds lighter.

[32:58] But I always love to share and hear new ideas from a sales professional and a leader standpoint. I feel like we should constantly be learning. And I hope that what people took away conceivably from today is just to be a little bit more open to the change, to be a part of the change, to recognize there could be very good things for them out there in acquisitions. But also to not have the blinders on so much that you don't check in with yourself every quarter or so to figure out if you are in the right place and if you're not you should advocate for yourself and you should make that change there could be some really fun things out there for you acquisitions could be the best thing for you ever and if they're not then go find something else be you know be happy life's in the short so totally what a great way to wrap up today's episode of Full Funnel Freedom. David, thank you for being our guest today. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[33:55] Sales leaders, I really enjoyed that conversation with David. The world of mergers and acquisitions has so many moving parts. And to be in it and have to not only not necessarily share everything that you might want to share with your team because you're not legally allowed to.

[34:17] But then also keep the sales team motivated and moving and selling and growing revenue during. And then, oh, hey, afterwards, I'm with this new company and I'm a small fish in a giant pond. What do I do? I thought was really, really powerful today. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are in the comments on our social media. For me, several big takeaways today. The key one is around conversations. And, you know, that conversation that David was talking about with the acquirer about which members of the team are going to be kept on post-acquisition, if any of them. What is my role as a sales leader going to look like in the acquiring company? Am I going to be lower down the hierarchy? Am I going to be at the same level? What am I going to have as reports, et cetera, et cetera. And then also even before that, like he shared, he was brought on to essentially grow the company so that they could get acquired. And when we work with our clients, one of the things we say is we support you in and eventually exiting for your number, not the number you're told to take by sustainably scaling your sales. And so as a sales leader, you need to be in position and need to know that in advance, because if you're not, well, that's definitely a yellow flag, if not orange, or maybe even red flag with your new employer. And then that other key insight that David had around it's not the tool.

[35:43] It's the outcome. And with sales tech stacks growing and expanding all the time, we might have our favorites and we might not be able to use our favorite if we are acquired or even if we are acquiring and it is decided that we're going to use some of the tech from the acquired company. Company, keep in mind what is that ultimate mountaintop that we're trying to get to. An example David gave is ultimately we're doing call reviews and giving feedback to the sales leaders who report to us and to their frontline team. So those are my big takeaways. Tell us what yours are in the comments on social media. And until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast. Podcast you can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about i'd love to connect with you i'm easy to find hamish knox on linkedin also if you'd like a free 15 minute call with me go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to sandler until we connect on the next episode go create full funnel freedom.

[36:58] Music.