Acquisitions and Joint Ventures in Technology

Phil Gerbyshak is a speaker at heart. He provides branding, marketing, and sales insights to teams that are looking to grow. It is a skill that meshes perfectly with his current role as the VP of sales training for Vector Solutions. He oversees onboarding, sales training, quarterly tune-ups, product rollouts, international sales meetings, and integrations for three business units across five locations. His thoughts on acquisitions and joint ventures, especially as connected to technology, made for an excellent interview!

As a sales, leadership, and technology authority, Phil knows that organic growth is mandatory for any company to prosper. There is always room for improvement when it comes to marketing and selling your product. But he also acknowledges that organic growth alone will seldom drive the results you want.

Acquisitions and Joint Ventures

Inorganic growth expands your addressable market, your reach, and it increases your bottom line. You get paid more for solving bigger problems. That is why Vector Solutions has already done nine acquisition deals and counting.

As a technology company, Vector’s acquisitions have always been industry-driven, not geography-driven. The primary objective is to buy organizations and integrate their technology with Vector’s current solution. This is so that they can provide even greater services to their clients. You could try to build all of this in house, but it will take significantly more time and resources. The purchased companies are highly efficient and great at what they do. That’s why it makes sense to look for deals that are good for every party involved.

Do Your Due Diligence

Joint ventures and strategic alliances are extremely underutilized deals for smaller companies. That’s is partially because many business owners associate these terms only with large deals for big companies. And while they didn’t work for Phil at first, there was a seismic shift when he started pursuing complementary partners instead of partners who had similar strengths.

On top of this, Phil recommends setting up a trial period with your prospective partner. Things can go south fairly easily unless you trust-but-verify. Avoid being seduced by slick marketing. Even with all of the boxes checked, things might not work out. However, if you do your due diligence during the planning phase, your business will have the best shot at success. Listen to the full episode on the Fueling Deals Podcast.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.
 

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!