The Merger & Acquisition Leader's Playbook

CHAPTER 5Organic Revenue Growth: So Valuable

The first component of the commercial playbook is organic revenue growth because the commercial playbook focuses on revenue. The next two components—customers and marketing and sales—go into more depth. Costs get picked up in the operational playbook, and inorganic growth through further mergers and acquisitions (M&A) gets picked up in the financial playbook.

Growing organic revenue requires marketing and sales efforts. Let's use Philip Kotler's definition of marketing: “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.”¹ Sales then converts that value into transactions.

Every sales funnel that ever was is a variation of awareness–interest–desire–action.

Awareness

• ⇨ Interest
  • ⇨ Desire
    • ⇨ Action

The pivot is desire. If you don't have a product or service that others are going to value, nothing else matters.

Generally, marketing owns the top of the funnel, generating awareness, and fueling interest. Again, generally, sales turns that desire into action. With that in mind, growing the top-line has to involve new customers or current customers buying more or paying more.

Mergers enable this with cross-selling, new ways, new products, new geographies, end markets and new technologies.

Cross-selling is the art and science of getting the customers of one of the formerly ...