Pre-deal
Deciding what to acquire
What type of firm preserves and extends your positioning, how the market will read the deal, and what go-to-market you’re actually buying.
Inflection point: Growth through acquisition
You’re buying a firm. Positioning is the part of diligence nobody runs.
Acquisitions make sense on a spreadsheet and fail in the market. Whether you’re screening a target or integrating one you just closed, the questions that decide the outcome are positioning questions: does this make you more of what the market buys you for, and can two teams become one firm the market recognizes?
Two entry paths, one page
Where are you in the deal?
Post-deal
You closed. Now what?
Integration is usually process-oriented, and the bigger gap is positioning: message integration, culture, cross-promotion and cross-sell.
Recognition first
How you know you’re here
- You’re evaluating a target and “does this make sense for us?” has an answer beyond the financials.
- The deal just closed and the acquired team doesn’t understand the position they walked into.
- Clients are asking what the acquisition means, like an accounting firm that suddenly also sells marketing services.
- Cross-sell isn’t materializing the way the deal model promised.
- “People problems” that are really positioning problems: two teams, one name, no shared story.
The stakes
What’s actually at stake
Positioning fit
Acquire the wrong firm and you dilute the very thing the market buys you for. The deal can be accretive and still be wrong.
Market perception
Clients read every acquisition as a statement about what you’re becoming. If the story isn’t managed, they write it themselves.
Culture
Culture is positioning personified. Until the acquired team behaves like one firm, the market sees two.
The revenue model
Cross-sell only works when the combined story makes sense to the buyer. No clear position, no warm handoff.
The engagement sequence
How we work through it
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Pre-deal: acquisition positioning screen
What type of firm preserves your positioning, and how the market will read the combination before you commit.
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Pre-deal: Go-to-Market Due Diligence on the target
Independent assessment of the growth engine you’re buying: positioning, relationships, pipeline, and what it’s really worth. See what it covers
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Post-deal: Positioning Intent for the combined firm
One story for one firm: what stays, what changes, what the market needs to hear.
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Post-deal: culture, message and cross-sell integration
The acquired team learns to deliver the position they walked into; go-to-market integration covers messaging, cross-promotion and the cross-sell motion.
Read this first
Read this first
Insight
You Bought the Firm. You Inherited the Position.
Written about ownership change, but the second story in it (the new managing partner who arrived with an acquisition) is exactly the integration problem: a firm whose position has momentum, internally and externally, built by someone else.
Read the articleBefore you sign, or before the window closes
Know what the market will see in the combination.
Not your situation?
The other doors
01
You’re taking over the firm.
Succession, an employee or partner buyout, or a step up to managing partner. The positioning came with the deal.
See how I can help02
The market moved under you.
AI, consolidation, new buyer expectations, and services that have to change with them.
See how I can help04
Growth stalled, and you can’t name why.
You’re the best-kept secret in your niche: busy, respected, and still winning work on price. Growth stalls when the market can’t see what makes you different.
See how I can help