Today’s guest highlights the importance of trust, empathy, and understanding in fostering meaningful experiences in the workplace. He also discusses the keys to successful acquisitions, how to avoid common mistakes by acquirers, and how to create post-acquisition strategy.

Anthony Webb is a mergers & acquisitions lifer, licensed lawyer, venture capital investor, servant leader, and engaged father.

Currently, he works in Corporate Development and M&A Integration for Adobe.

Anthony shares what makes work most meaningful to him, from being given the opportunity to solve complex problems, to building great team environments, to driving tangible results by empathizing with others, understanding their objectives, and providing supportive leadership.

Through a personal experience, Anthony illustrates how creating safe spaces allows trust to be built, in turn paving the way for effective communication. To empower your organization’s “culture carriers,” it is vital to create a space where ideas from both sides can come to the table, promoting innovation and better decision-making.

Asked what goes into a successful M&A, Anthony unpacks the concept of excellent end-to-end execution. It starts with creating a crisp corporate strategy, followed by homing into the target space, then getting the right people to the table for diligence, and, finally, building an integration strategy and approach.

Anthony explains that divesting businesses gave him a new perspective that allowed him to understand what to look for in an acquisition. Drawing from these experiences, he provides insight into the often unpleasant surprises that occur during acquisitions and offers strategies on how to avoid them, chief among them being the consequences of being overly optimistic and simplistic in a deal.

Anthony discusses the importance of knowledge retention and being sensitive to the motivations of the target company's employees. Building trust and openness, according to him, leads to better acquisition outcomes.

Anthony shares how simply attending routine meetings of the acquired company during a several-month "stabilization period"—allowing all voices to bring ideas to the table—allows acquirers to learn and gain more value from the acquisition for the long-term.

Connect with Amanda Setili:

● www.setili.com

● LinkedIn

● Twitter

● Facebook

Connect with Anthony Webb:

● LinkedIn

Colleen Francis provides a proven, realistic gameplan to creatively adapt our sales and marketing efforts in a topsy-turvy world.

Colleen is an award-winning speaker, consultant, and the author of Right on the Money: New Principles for Bold Growth.

A successful sales leader for over 20 years, Colleen’s results have attracted hundreds of industry-leading clients, including Chevron, John Deere, NCR, Trend Micro, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, and Dow.

Colleen is a recognized thought leader in sales leadership, an inductee in the Professional Speaker Hall of Fame, and has been named the #1 sales influencer to follow by LinkedIn.

In Right on the Money, Colleen writes that the past two years could be regarded as “an evolutionary moment for sales”, and that “evolution came by revolution” as a result of the pandemic. That is, the world of sales was forever transformed once salespeople were forced to be creative sans traditional belly-to-belly interactions.

In fact, many sellers realized that they could be much more efficient and profitable working remotely to meet the needs of the new buyer, instead of being on the road all the time. Expense accounts could be scaled back and a lot of time could be saved—all with virtually no impact on employee and client trust.

Another huge shift Colleen has seen is the morphing of the business development specialist (BDS) role. Historically, this role has served as a “cold-calling team” that passes leads to senior sales people after a simple vetting process The new and more effective role for these more junior people is nurturing existing customers, giving customers strong reasons to stay loyal to your company.

In today’s world, Colleen’s clients have found that the inside sales role is better left to an experienced, seasoned professional able to have high-level discussions with prospects.

Colleen points out that the pandemic revealed poor sales practices, in that some companies had been going overboard on customer-centricity. She explains that a “customer is always right” approach can cost a business money, brand reputation, and access to markets.

Likewise, there is a danger to incorporating potentially controversial social issues in one’s branding and marketing efforts. Instead, Colleen advises, your company may wish to focus on the good it can do in its own community.

In Right on the Money, Colleen proposes a formula she calls “the Tempo Triad”, in which she encourages salespeople to engage in conversations across three different media platforms (she recommends LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) in three different ways:

1) sharing their company’s unique content

2) sharing something a customer posted

3) commenting or asking a question about something a customer has posted.

Connect with Amanda Setili:

● www.setili.com

● LinkedIn

● Twitter

● Facebook

Connect with Colleen:

● www.engageselling.com

Get her book, Right on the Money:

● www.amazon.com/Right-Money-Principles-Bold-Growth/dp/163195671X

Today’s guest teaches us that by playing the long game, we future-proof our career.

I’ve known Dorie Clark for 11 years, and it was so much fun to have her on my podcast. I especially loved her story about a woman who became part of her Recognized Expert community and got back in touch a year later to thank Dorie. “I made one million dollars in my first year!” she reported. But that’s not the best part, which is that the woman is 80 years old.

This is an example of what Dorie does so well: to inspire others to reach higher and to give them the skills and tools necessary to succeed. Join us to hear countless actionable tips, including gems from her latest book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World.

Dorie teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, and was recognized as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards.

The Long Game advocates taking a ten-year view when it comes to setting your goals and milestones. Dorie believes that, through a series of small and methodical steps and experiments, coupled with defining the kind of person you want to become, you can achieve extremely meaningful results.

Dorie recommends that we consciously choose how to spend our time. That doesn’t mean filling out every minute of your calendar and sucking the marrow out of each moment of the day. She’s tried that, and she found that such an approach often does more harm than good.

Instead of taking an overly quantitative approach to setting your daily schedule, get clear on your top three goals for the year and invest ample time working toward each of those goals. For example, Dorie’s three areas of focus in 2022 are relaxation, monetization, and friends. So most of her activities center on these three priorities.

Dorie says, “We need to train ourselves to systematically toggle between heads up and heads-down mode.” Give yourself the “white space” to look around and look within. Take time to rest and recharge, and periodically take stock of your progress to ensure that you’re on the right track.

Finally, Dorie offers her advice on avoiding the comparison trap. While comparing yourself to others may be a good “research tool”, staying stuck in that critical mental space impedes your ability to chart your unique path forward.

Connect with Amanda Setili:

● www.setili.com

● LinkedIn

● Twitter

● Facebook

Connect with Dorie:

● www.dorieclark.com

Get her book, The Long Game:

● www.dorieclark.com/longgame