---
title: "Most Acquisitions Fail Like This: What Nobody Tells You About M&A"
episode: 87
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Chris Heller"
guest_title: "Chief Revenue Officer"
date_published: 2026-06-09
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:43:21
word_count: 7373
topics: ["mergers-acquisitions", "sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "revenue-operations"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/chris-heller-why-most-acquisitions-fail/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# Most Acquisitions Fail Like This: What Nobody Tells You About M&A — Full Transcript

> Episode 87 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Chris Heller.
> Published June 9, 2026 · 00:43:21 · 7,373 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/chris-heller-why-most-acquisitions-fail/

## 00:00 — Intro: from real estate license to CEO of Keller Williams

**[0:00]** - Today I have Chris Heller, Chief Revenue Officer of Place. Chris is not your typical CRO. He has a incredibly interesting career, gaining his real estate license as a sophomore in college, and then working his way to being the top rep in the world for the company that he worked with. And he's had a stellar career in sales and technology. Today, Chris is gonna go deep on what it takes to get to the Chief Revenue Officer position, what it means to lead a go-to-market organization at scale, and one of the topics that so many companies have troubles with, mergers and acquisitions. How to make that a success, and not just a headache for the organization.

**[0:48]** Chris, thank you so much for being here today. Really, really excited to dive into some of these topics, especially on the M&A side, because I think that's something that's really unique to where a lot of people just don't have experience in that area. But I would love if you could walk us back to the beginning of your career and how you got to what you're doing today. - Yeah, I would say there's probably no connection other than having done it between the beginning and where I am now. I was a sophomore in college. My dad called me and said, "Hey, you're gonna get your real estate license "and come up to Lake Tahoe and sell timeshares

## 01:22 — The career origin story: timeshares, 27 homes in year one, rookie of the year

**[1:22]** "for the summer to make some money." And I said, "Okay." And I did that, and that summer job turned into a... Actually, he then took a position in San Diego. We moved to San Diego for the rest of the summer. And then that summer job continued on for three years. Growing to school part-time, working every day because they would let me, and I was making a lot of money. And then I got burned out. Like I just couldn't do it anymore. It's a grind, it's a hard sale. And it was, as a young person, good way to learn skills and make money, but certainly not a career. I had met a real estate broker like three years earlier who kept recruiting me, sending me no cards,

**[2:06]** calling me every time I saw him, wanting me to come work for his broker. And he caught me at a weak moment one day and I said, "Okay, I'll give it a try." I had bought a townhome right before my 21st birthday. And so I knew what owning real estate was, but I had no idea what a real estate agent did. Literally my first day, I was like, I knew nothing. But just through sheer determination and grit and willing to do whatever it took, that first year I sold 27 homes. The average agent will sell six, seven homes a year. I was Rookie of the Year in San Diego. And then every year after that, increased the number of homes I sold

**[2:51]** till I was one of the top 10 agents out of the 37,000 in the national company that we were part of. Stayed there for 16 years, building a great business, making great income and building a family and all that stuff. And then woke up one day and said, "I could keep doing this for a while." But the minute I stop, it stops. Like there's, I wake up and eat what I kill every day and I'm really good at hunting and killing, but it's, I wanna build something. And there were no opportunities within the company. I, through a twist of events, ended up at another company that was much more entrepreneurial where you could own businesses and have a sales team.

**[3:42]** And I did that and those businesses became successful. After three or four years, I was actually the number one. At that point, we had probably 80,000 agents. I was number one in the country. The company was only in North America. It was number one in North America. And then the next year, I took an executive role with the company. The CEO called and said, "Hey, we have something we wanna do and we think you'd be the person to do it. Are you interested?" And I was like, "Yeah, now I had no idea on how to do what they wanna get done or how I was gonna do it." I had like no clue whatsoever, but it sounded like a big opportunity.

**[4:21]** It was a big opportunity and I liked challenges. So I took that. My job was to expand the company globally. So over the next five years, we expanded into over 20 different countries that became very successful. And when there was a leadership change, I was the obvious person to take over running the company. So I became the CEO. That company was Keller Williams Realty. And in the 2010 to 2017, we doubled the size of the company and more than doubled the profitability of the company. And I grew globally as well as domestically. And then decided to make a change and left not knowing what I was gonna do. In fact, forced myself for the first time in my life

**[5:06]** not to do anything for six months, which was an interesting exercise to go through. I mean, Anthony, I'm sure you can relate to this and most listeners can. It was for every day of my life, I had a mission every day when I woke up. And then to not have that was like a real adjustment, but a good one and a good thing to force myself to do. But after about six months, just through happenstance, which has always happened in my career, there was introductions made. And next thing you know, I'm being offered to become the CEO of the sister company of the second largest lender in the country. And did that all the while.

**[5:49]** I was also involved with a lot of startups as an investor, as an advisor on the board. One of the companies I was on the board of in 2019 was really taking off. The mortgage industry was in a slump. So we weren't really able to do much where I was and felt like a racehorse in the starting gate and the gate wouldn't open. And so I joined the startup, became the president of the company. Six months later, we made a very large and opportunistic acquisition that was only be able to, this was in, it closed in June of 2020, right? Little thing called the pandemic started hit in May, I mean in March of 2020. So we were probably the only company crazy enough

**[6:30]** to go get a bunch of money and do a big acquisition. We bought a search portal similar to Zillow or realtor.com. We bought the fifth largest one, the only privately owned one. And so, and the only reason we were able to buy it 'cause no one else was thinking about buying anything right in March, April and May and June of 2020. We sold that company last year and to a national mortgage company. And then decided I didn't want to stay on with that company. Just didn't want to keep doing the same thing I've been doing for the previous five or six years. And a friend of mine who's the founder of Place, who'd been after me for several years

**[7:12]** to come and help him and join the company. And their biggest need was in someone that was really focused on the revenue side of the business. The two co-founders had sort of divided and conquered and were focused on other parts of the business and no one was waking up every day saying, okay, how can we optimize our revenue opportunities and make sure that we're monetizing the things we should be monetizing? And that's how I ended up where I am right now. - That's a fantastic story. And one of the things I'm really curious about, I'm sure has been a through line throughout your entire career. If you don't mind going back to when you were an agent

**[7:52]** doing 4X the volume and productivity of the average agent, is there something there that you were doing that is applicable across sales roles in general? What was making you so successful? - Yeah, actually for the last 26 years, I sold over 100 homes a year for 26 consecutive years. So I was doing much more than 4X the average. I like to think I was just using common sense and logic. And I was, but then I was also developing my skills at a very high level. And so when I say common sense and logic, Anthony, what I mean is at the end of my first year, just through, sure, blood, sweat and tears, figuring out how to do things,

## 08:13 — What made Chris 4x more productive than the average agent

**[8:42]** I literally worked every day and I worked ungodly hours. I was probably at the office at 6.30 in the morning and sometimes I'd come home for dinner and then go back to work or not come home for dinner. And at the end of that year, I was like, I can't, how am I gonna sell any more homes than I did this year? I can't work any harder, I can't work any longer. I don't wanna work harder or longer. I wanna actually have a life too. So the only logical conclusion I came to is I had to hire someone to do some of the stuff I was doing so I could focus on the high impact or the revenue generated activities. So I hired an assistant.

**[9:23]** Now back, this was in 1989, a long time ago, for a real estate agent to have an assistant was unheard of. I was in an office with 60 or 70 people and the agents, most of which were all older than me, were like, what are you doing? Who do you think you are, the president or something? Hiring an assistant and I'd look at them and say, well, you've been stuffing envelopes for the last two and a half hours. I'm gonna pay someone to do that so I can be helping more people buy and sell homes. So it was just like, it was a logical conclusion to come to that I needed to create leverage. And so that continued on. So as I became more successful

**[10:03]** and then started to develop my skills at a higher level and become a real professional salesperson, I needed more help. And so that assistant grew to two assistants and then to agents and people to help show properties and do different activities so that I could keep selling more. Almost like a doctor's office, going from the old time doctor who made house calls to now a modern day doctor that has a receptionist and an insurance person and a PA and a lab tech and all those people so they can see lots of patients. That's how I developed my business. So it was just taking a business approach to things. I actually, from the very beginning, had a bookkeeper

**[10:50]** and had a P&L that I looked at every month when most agents didn't even know what a P&L meant. So it was just a business approach and a very process approach. And then there was a very disciplined approach. I became extremely disciplined in certain areas that allowed me to be a lot more efficient and a lot more effective. - Yeah, definitely personally as a founder, learning how to focus myself on higher leverage things and upgrading along the growth of lean scale has been something continually trying to do. From a go-to-market perspective, what does modern day leverage look like? 1989, it meant, hey, hiring a system

**[11:31]** when nobody else was even thinking about doing that. When you're leading go-to-market teams now, what are the best ways they're getting the most leverage possible? - Well, I still, and this has been true forever and I think will probably be true forever, I think the most important thing is just talent. You have to have really talented people. There's no replacement for that. So that's number one. Number two is technology, especially now. I mean, we're all leveraging machine learning and AI at a level that wasn't even imaginable a few years ago. And that creates a lot of leverage.

## 11:55 — Modern-day leverage: talent first, technology second

**[12:20]** I started my first company in 2020 as an agent but a side business of developing some software for real estate agents. And so I've always been involved or I've been involved with technology for a long time. I don't consider myself a technologist. I'm not an engineer, I'm not a product person, but I've understand the power of it and the benefits and how to leverage. And that is whether it's go-to-market, whether it's any other part of the business, we have to make sure that we're leveraging the tools that are available to the high extent if we wanna maximize our leverage. - Yeah, going to the talent comment you made,

**[13:04]** I think it took me a little bit of time to recognize this. I think everybody knows there's a big difference between an A player and a B player. I don't know if people really understand the magnitude of difference and the tax that you pay when you bring a B player onto the team because even if they can do their job okay, they're not helping everyone else around them level up. They're usually requiring a little bit of help here and there, so it just drains the overall system. But when you put an A player into the field, you just immediately recognize they're leveling up everyone around them. They're doing 2X, in your case in real estate,

**[13:40]** you're doing 20X the output, doing 100 houses to the average of five or six. It's dramatically different if you can get your team full of A players. - Yeah, it's, and you're right, like the cost of not doing that is greater than most people ever understand or realize. You know, the best analogy is sports. Like if you look at, you know, the championship teams, I don't know, pick a sport basketball. You know, when Kobe came to the Lakers, immediately leveled up everyone else. Like his standards for excellence, his standards, you know, Michael Jordan. I saw an interview recently of one of Michael Jordan's former teammates and said, you know, what was the thing

## 13:48 — The hidden cost of B-players and the Michael Jordan standard

**[14:27]** that you learned most or the biggest impact? And he said, it was no days off. Once Michael was there, it was like, you know, we practice harder, our practice were harder than the game. So they were like, that's the thing that we learned. And so that's what an A player does. The true point, they level up and it causes the rest of the team to up their game. At the same time, if we bring in people that are B or C players, we're unconsciously sending a message and it's the wrong message if you're trying to build, you know, a championship team, whether it's in business or in sports. So, you know, it's something that I think people intuitively know is important,

**[15:10]** but I don't think they really understand how important it is. - I'm always curious how, we definitely have our methods for who we're looking for, who we're recruiting, how we suss them out before making a decision. In your experience, you've built so many sales teams, go-to-market teams, are there things you're looking for? Are there ways you can test this in the recruiting process? Because I feel like that's the most difficult part. - It's definitely things I'm looking for and I'm always looking, right? So even when I don't need someone, I'm looking. Yeah, there's a lot of, we have a lot of industry conferences and I'll get the question all the time.

**[15:50]** Oh, how was the conference? Or was it productive? And I said, there always is. 'Cause I'm always looking for either someone to hire or someone that I wanna hire at some point, looking for an opportunity for either a company to buy or partner with, right? So if you're always looking for people and looking for talent, you may not need them, but when the need comes up, you know who you're gonna call or you have a list of people you're going to call. So that's one thing, just always be looking. And then there's no substitute for a track record, right? There's no substitute for someone who has a track record of success or of getting results.

## 16:05 — How to recruit when you don't need anyone (yet)

**[16:31]** You know, when I look back at like in my own career, every opportunity I've gotten, I didn't ask for any of them. I didn't like try to seek them out or create them or anything else. They all came from me getting extraordinary results and then people come into me and say, "Hey, we do this." You know, and I'm not looking to make a move or anything else, but if I were, the last thing I'd be worried about was what I was gonna be doing next 'cause I know there'd be more opportunities than I would ever want or could choose. The biggest challenge is always choosing the right one. So you look for people that have gotten great results

**[17:07]** because that's the evidence that they know what to do. And then there's other characteristics too, right? You look for people that are resilient because people that have gotten knocked down and how do they respond when they get knocked down? Were they a victim about it? Do they blame situations, the market, circumstances, or do they take responsibility and get up and become better because of what they went through? Those are all characteristics of talented people. So you look for those characteristics. You look for what their track record. Another one that I always look for is I just, for whatever the role is,

**[17:45]** I want people that are better or smarter than I am at it.

**[17:50]** If they aren't, then I'm likely having to pull them along. If they are, they're gonna be pushing me and that's what I want. I want people pushing the organization, pushing me, pushing the company. And that's what talented people do. - 100% right. And I think it's tough to be patient. And to your point, you find great talent because you've been focused on it. You've been investing in it. In some cases, I'm sure years, sounds like you went to work with a former friend that they know your character, they know your track record. So these things are built up over years. It's not impressing someone in an interview process. So yeah, you have to always be vigilant.

**[18:33]** And I think the best way to get the next best thing is to do the work that's on your plate extraordinarily well right now. - Yeah, yeah, especially for young people, everyone wants opportunities. Everyone wants something more than what they have. And they're always angling on how to do it or how to get there quicker or what's the shortcut. The most surefire way, I don't care what role you're in. You could be a server in a restaurant. Just be the best damn server in that restaurant and opportunities will come. You're gonna get offers to manage. You're gonna get offers from customers that see like, oh my gosh, this person's phenomenal

**[19:13]** in their customer service or they're phenomenal in their communication or whatever. It's like, that's where opportunities come from is being extraordinary in whatever you're doing right now. - It's funny that hits home really well for me. I worked six years at Carabas Italian Grill, very proud of that experience, School of Hard Knocks. And I started at 16, busing, hosting. And then at 19, it would go like server, then bartender. And at 19, I was running the whole bar, doing the ordering, everything, like I can't even drink, but I'm running the bar. And yeah, that came from busing the table as well. - Yeah, 100%.

**[19:56]** - One thing I wanna go back to that you brought up and you asked if I've had this experience and I certainly have when you take a break. One of those times that happened, I was at a company called Emailage. It got acquired in 2020. It was in March, crazy time 'cause it was February when we made the announcement, not everything started getting shut down yet. And so like the LOI was there, but it hadn't really closed yet. And that's when the NBA shut down, airports started shutting down and we were wondering like, hey, is this deal gonna close or not? God willing, it did close. But what ended up happening after that,

**[20:33]** I was working at Lexus Nexus and big Fortune 1000 company. And I really didn't have anything to do. And it was the pandemic. So I was just kind of sitting at home. And I think that was one of the most challenging years of my life being in a position where there wasn't a lot of work to do. I was maybe working a handful of hours a day and I was just going crazy and I needed the next thing. Is there anything that you felt like you learned in the boredom about yourself or about what to do next during that time? - Yeah, it's a really good question. I read a book at that time, which I have recommended to numerous people

## 21:00 — Why the most reliable career strategy is being extraordinary at what you're doing now

**[21:13]** who are going through transitions or those things. And the book was called "The Surrender Experiment". It's a great book and it's actually a true story of the author. And what he talked about in that book is what I experienced firsthand. And that is that when you're not trying to force an outcome or create an opportunity or anything else, and you just relax into things, and this is gonna sound a little woo woo, but the universe, the right things show up, right? The right path shows up. You gain clarity. And so there was an adjustment period where I was like for the first time in my life, not waking up knowing exactly what I needed to do

**[22:02]** and what I wanted to accomplish and everything else. And that created a little anxiety at the beginning, like getting used to that and like not knowing how to react to that and missing that, like I gotta go do this thing or accomplish that thing or, you know. But then as I forced, and I literally forced myself. Like I said, hey, I'm not gonna make any decisions for six months. I'm not gonna do anything. About three and a half months into it, I did meet the founder of a company, highly successful, his third company, self-made billionaire, and I ended up going to work for him about three months later, maybe about four months later, it took a while.

## 22:15 — The six-month sabbatical and "The Surrender Experiment"

**[22:46]** But I didn't seek that out. That just happened. Like I got a phone call one day of someone who wanted to talk about my role at Keller Williams and I informed him. He didn't know I wasn't there anymore. He said, oh, well, you know, if you're ever in the area, we'd still love to talk to you. And a few months later, three months later, I was in the area that began that journey. But, you know, I just learned that, yeah, I learned a lot. Learned about patience, learned about letting go, learned about, you know, being able to be quiet enough to see and hear, you know, the right messages. And I've advised a lot of people, like, you know,

**[23:26]** a lot of people go, oh, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna be doing. I gotta have something before I get rid of this thing. It's like, I know it feels that way, but you don't. In fact, there's, and whether it's relationships, whether it's a job, like creating that space to not do anything, I think is so important, so valuable. - Yeah, and sometimes you need that space to even take advantage of an opportunity because if you had been, you know, still deep in with whatever your current mission was, it maybe holds out an opportunity for that to pop up. Or like you said, would you have had that conversation? Would you have had the open time to go do that?

**[24:03]** Sometimes you need that to make some magic happen. - I think not sometimes, I think always, I really do. I mean, there's, you know, there's that old adage, you know, when one door closes, another one opens. The truth is, when one door closes, a whole bunch of doors open. You just have to give it enough time to, you know, to see them and find them. There's never a shortage of opportunities. There's just our, you know, sometimes it's our inability to see them, you know, because we're either scared or fearful or angry or whatever, and you can't see opportunities when you're experiencing any of those reactions. So whenever there's a change that happens,

**[24:47]** whether it's a change of career or an external change, something in our country or in the world or in our company, you know, if we resist that or get angry about that or get fearful about it or don't like it or any of those things, it creates a filter that prevents you from seeing opportunities. You can't be in that space and see opportunities at the same time. - Right, right. And I think for those who are listening that might be in a role, they feel like maybe it's not in their zone of genius or in a situation where maybe it's not going where they want to go. Sometimes letting go first will be the thing that opens up those doors. - For sure.

**[25:29]** - One area I'd really like to spend some time with you on, 'cause I think I can learn a ton, our audience can learn a ton, is your experience with mergers and acquisitions. It looks like you've been on both sides of the deal. You've gone through deep levels of integrations. How, a lot of people will maybe go through that process maybe once or twice. What has been your experience with that and what advice would you give maybe on either side of the deal? If you're getting acquired, if you're looking to buy a company, and what does it take to make it really valuable on the other end of it? - Yeah, so those are two very different experiences, right?

**[26:15]** If you're being acquired or acquiring. So let's talk about if you're being acquired. And it depends on your role too, right? If it's your company or if you're just someone in the company that's being acquired. Many times you don't have control, right? Like if you work at a company, that company is being acquired, that's out of your control. Now what is in your control is how you react to it, how you approach it. Are you judging it? Are you resisting it? Are you embracing it? Are you trying to create a blank slate and go into it with an open mind to see and create opportunities? So like that impacts your experience

**[26:56]** and the success of that transition as much as anything. If you're the one in control, if it's your company, then I think you, one of the most important things is just making sure culturally that it's a fit and it's a match, right? And being really clear on what's important to you. I think that's another thing that is a big miss for a lot of people. If you've ever, and most of us have, been in a relationship and that relationship ended, you get really clear on what you don't want in the next relationship. Like when I got divorced, I didn't know if I wanted another relationship, but I knew what I didn't want. Like I was crystal clear on what I didn't want.

## 27:13 — M&A part one: what to do when your company is being acquired

**[27:43]** And so whether you go through something that causes you to get that clarity, or you force yourself to like make a list. I have a chart I've used every time that I've made a change, right? I decided to leave the company after we got acquired, or I decided to join this company or leave that company. I just created a chart and I have on the vertical access, all the things that are important to me, right? Like the people, trust, integrity, safety, emotional safety, do I believe in the vision and the company?

**[28:24]** Do I see a path to winning? Are these people I respect and who respect me? Like those are all the things that are really important to me. And then across the horizontal access are just the different opportunities and just check off. All right, does this opportunity check that box? Does it check this box? Does it check that box? So you can really see, hey, this one sounds more exciting or it could be more lucrative, but it only checks three of my 17 boxes or whatever the case may be. So it helps give you clarity when you know what's important to you and what you like and what you don't like. I was talking to someone just this earlier this week

**[29:10]** who's making a career change and CEO of a company, looking at some other opportunities. And this person was talking about the nuts and bolts of her options and the financial parts. And I said, hey, which one are you gonna have the most fun in? Which is gonna be with people you'd like and respect? And because here's what I know. If you're not in a good environment, the amount of energy that you have to expend to manage that is intense. And it takes a toll, takes a toll on the quality of your life and everything else. When you're in an environment, I was in a role leading a company, but because of some of the board members and everything else,

**[29:56]** it had to spend more energy managing relationships and the situations and the dynamics than I did on doing the job. And that was exhausting and was not fulfilling in any way, shape or form. So if I'm gonna spend energy doing something, I want doing positive things. So I know it's a long-rounding answer to your simple question, but I think those are some of the things that are super important. - Well, I think a lot of people don't highlight the culture alignment aspect enough. And I think that comes out in real financial results too. So post acquisition, great. Champagne's popped, hopefully, unless it's like a fire sale type situation.

## 30:25 — The values-vs-opportunities chart Chris uses for every career decision

**[30:43]** But people are excited about it. We're anticipating synergies and we're gonna realize this. But if you're not culturally aligned, I think it can be immensely difficult to pull that off. Are there any, like knowing your values, knowing who you are, are there any other big red flags like, hey, I know maybe on paper this looks good, but I don't know if we're really gonna realize the synergies and value if we make this happen. - Yeah, I think, so from like a leadership perspective, like I said, and these are personal for me, but these are like non-negotiables, like trust and respect and integrity, like those, and those are all kind of interrelated,

**[31:27]** but those have to be there. Like it can't be, well, yeah, they might be a little bit of this, but the situation's so good or the opportunity's so good. It's never worth deviating from your standards

**[31:44]** for a situation, 'cause it never works out. Like those things are gonna come up, those things that you know that are important to you that aren't there. Shared vision, like are you aligned with the vision? Is there, and do you see a path to winning? Like when I took this role, I spent a lot of time. In fact, even though I've known this person for 15 years, he was, we were in a conversation with someone else, and he said, yeah, Heller put me through the ringer for several months, 'cause I had lots of conversation, lots of really trying to suss out how he thinks and how he, to make sure that we were aligned on things,

**[32:27]** versus just jumping in and then finding out that there's this big disconnect or something else. The other thing is, and this becomes, it becomes more apparent as you get older, but the, again, the old cliche, life is too short. Like to be in situations that aren't optimal or that aren't fueling you or fulfilling you, it's not worth it. There's literally, to be in a bad, there's no amount of money that could cause me to be in a bad situation that I just didn't like or that caused me not to be able to sleep at night or feel good about myself or what I was doing. It's just not worth it. - Yeah, totally agree. And even if you did pay,

**[33:20]** like what are you gonna use the money for if you're having a miserable day every single day? So I think the hypothesis is I make more money and I'll be able to afford a better life, but if that's not even on the table in the situation, then what's the point? - Yeah, and there's no guarantee that you'll have that life, right? Things happen all the time to people. So there's no, you could say we're all on borrowed time. So, and at the end of the day, on your last day, none of that stuff's gonna matter, right? What's gonna matter is, do you look back and say, hey, I had a good adventure and I think I made an impact and I think I made a difference

**[34:02]** and those are the only things that are gonna matter. - I love that, absolutely. Did you have a good adventure? I think, did you impact the people and did you live a life you're proud of? Hanging on to the M&A topic a little bit, you've been on the buying side. So you probably have an unfair advantage potentially have, you're looking at multiple companies when a lot of companies are getting acquired, maybe that's happening to them for the first time. What would you say tends to help a company stand out, make that process successful? Sounds like cultural alignment's a huge one in doing that, but are there any things that are like,

**[34:44]** man, this killed a deal or hey, this got us really excited about me rallying my company to make this deal happen? - Okay, so you're talking about, has the company been acquired, what stands out? What should you be doing to make it a problem? - Yeah, since you have that perspective of being the buyer, you're out looking for them, what stands out? Good, Erwin. - Yeah, so here's what I've seen work and here's what I've seen not work. How you bring your people along and when you bring them along is critical. I've seen people do it at a really high level where they've, 'cause anything can happen in any transaction, right? None of them are guaranteed to close.

**[35:27]** So if you don't wanna make an announcement to the whole company early on, oh, this is what we're doing. Now, the company may know that you're looking at opportunities and merger opportunities and acquisitions and a lot of them are gonna need to know that 'cause they're gonna be asked to provide data and diligence information. But bringing them along at the appropriate times for their protection is really important. The companies that don't do that tend to have a lot of swirl and then you have a bunch of people that don't understand why the deal's happening to begin with, that have opinions about it or have judgment about it or you know,

**[36:05]** and then you have this internal battle that's going on while the founder's trying to keep a smiley face with the acquirer, he's dealing with a bunch of chaos or she's dealing with a bunch of chaos that they really created themselves. - The other thing is just communication. I mean, there's nothing more important than communicating and over communicating and asking questions. Like if I'm not getting a lot of questions, you know, from the people of the company that we're acquiring or from the leaders, I'm like, I'm worried about that 'cause they should have a lot of questions and I want them to ask them and I want to be able

**[36:45]** to have them create that space where they're comfortable asking them and that they can, which gives me an opportunity to give them answers and for them to see that, you know, I'm being real and authentic and truthful with them, right? That's an important foundational piece to building that relationship. The other, and when that doesn't happen, you know, then the deal closes in, you know, now you're discovering things or finding out things or they're discovering things or finding out things or, you know, that are counterproductive or actually harmful to what you're trying to accomplish or whether it's integrating the companies

## 37:18 — M&A part two: what makes a target company stand out to a buyer

**[37:24]** or, you know, building the business or, you know, taking it from, you know, where it is to there. Those are all things that get in the way of that. So like communication is always a huge one. How the founder or leaders of that company are handling it with their team to bring them along. Then, you know, also the acquiring company, you know, how they address the team and make them feel is a critical component to it. You know, when we meet with the new team for the first time, you know, whether it's pre-closing or post-closing, you know, really understanding where they're at. I'll give you an example. This was actually not very long ago.

**[38:10]** We had a meeting with this team and we had a person from our team, sort of a people ops leader, who was leading this like this interaction. And this person was going really heavily into, you know, our company and the history and the financials and where we're going and this and that. And I had at one point just stop and say, stop that person and say to the employees of the company, say, hey, you're going to have plenty of time to learn about us. I know right now, all you care about is how this is going to impact you and what does this mean to you and are you safe and is your job safe and everything else, right? So it was, you know, knowing the audience

**[38:54]** and reading the audience and being able to address the things that they care about and that are important to them so that, you know, they can, you know, go home that night and tell their partner or their spouse or, you know, hey, this is what's happening and this sounds really exciting versus, I don't know what this means and we shouldn't, you know, maybe we should cancel our vacation because I don't know if I'm going to have a job, right? Like these are human beings and we have to make sure that we're, you know, caring for them in a way that helps them do their job and be productive and not, you know, create challenges for them.

**[39:33]** - Yeah, and if you're not creating that environment of psychological safety, then it's going to be very difficult as you navigate the integration process. You'll have people looking, thinking, hey, maybe I'm going to get fired. I should start looking and leave. They may withhold information so that way they have certain value and a lot of people will perceive that. So I think that's an unbelievably important thing to do. And when we, when I was an email agent, we went through that acquisition process. LexisNexis did a great job of that. They flew out, we rented like a giant auditorium. The whole company could go in.

## 39:57 — Why over-communication during integration is the single biggest success factor

**[40:05]** They introduced their whole leadership team and had a plan for how integration was going to work and what was next. And I remember leaving those meetings feeling like, okay, there's a plan, team knows what they're doing. And I think that made the integration really, really successful. - 100%, yeah. When you've been through it, you know what works and what doesn't work. - Yeah, I was fortunate to go through a good one, but I could see where if they didn't do that, I don't know if you have any horror stories of, hey, we didn't do this upfront or we delayed XYZ during the integration process and it caused trouble. I don't know what it looks like when it's bad.

**[40:43]** - Absolutely. I mean, what it looks like when it's bad is a lot of people leave, right? A lot of people leave before, during and after. And people that shouldn't have, right? And people that would have had great opportunities, but they didn't, you know, things weren't handled the right way. And so they didn't feel safe or they didn't see or things weren't communicated with them. So they, you know, they pulled the grip cord, excuse me, and, you know, and jumped. So, you know, that's, those are the ones that aren't, those are the ones that aren't handled well. 'Cause in a, you know, look, there's always gonna be some people that leave

**[41:22]** 'cause maybe it's the right thing for them to leave or the best thing or they have an opportunity, but those happen anyways. But it's when good people leave when they shouldn't have, that's when, you know, it wasn't handled well. And that's what it looks like when it's not handled well is you lose talent, you lose congruency, you lose momentum, you lose, you know, everything. - Chris, that's really insightful on making those integrations and acquisitions successful. And I can kind of see the through line just across your career and how you've approached either your job managing a team, managing a company, looking for acquisitions that make sense.

**[42:03]** I love that it's always tied to core values and doing the right thing at the right time. And I really appreciate everything you shared. I think anyone listening has an opportunity to learn quite a bit, whether you're in that sales role, just knowing, hey, it's gonna take level of effort focusing on high leverage things. I think that's gonna always apply, especially today with opportunities to leverage AI and other tools to give yourself more leverage. And then I think everything you shared with, especially going through a career transition, if you don't give yourself the opportunity to give yourself that space, sometimes you may be missing out

## 42:05 — The all-hands mistake: knowing what employees actually want to hear first

**[42:37]** on opportunities that are waiting for you. So have the courage to do that when appropriate. And some of the biggest moments in people's professional lives, that merger acquisition that happens, staying true to your values and making sure you're creating a environment of psychological safety, and then making sure there's a path to winning together, I think highly important. Even if it looks nuts and bolts on paper look good, we have to make sure those things are aligned. So I've learned a ton. Chris, just thank you so much for everything. And I can't wait to see what you do next. - Thank you. I'm always looking forward to what's next.

**[43:14]** And I know everything I do is preparing me for the next thing. So appreciate the opportunity to share and hope this was valuable.