Well, I think, you know, specifically with comp plans, You know, these are, you know, these dealers are largely very entrepreneurial, very sales oriented. Your salespeople feel like they own their own business within.
Acquiring Minds
Buying and Building a Xerox Dealer to $30m
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their geography, you know, changing comp plans was a big, was a big deal. I was probably a little bit naive to that. The first time we did it thinking, Hey, they'll love our, you know, comp plan that, that we created because ours is the best and, and all of that.
But, you know, I, it really helped me after the first time to do that, seeing the reaction that people had and, and all that, not that we were trying to do something bad, but it was really to be learned to be more
purposeful and methodical when you're dealing with somebody's pay, uh, and stuff like that, you know, the second and third times through is like to, um, you know, uh, you know, let's, we'll, we'll create the best instead of, Hey, we're going to use benchmarks comp plan and we're going to eliminate this comp plan. Maybe we merge components of that together and let that happen over the next. Yeah.
you know, the next year do it, you know, down the road or something like that. But other things like how to handle a support call. There was a lot of synergies gained by having one call desk, you know, the same being consistent and people answering the phone.
Don't try to delay a name change. Everybody knows the businesses is selling anyway. Let's be upfront about that.
Yeah. and move forward with that and get past that and get everybody, you know, pulling together in one culture. So, you know, there was things that I learned to say, hey, slow play this, but let's move fast in this general direction. And I think every time our staff did an acquisition, you know, we would get better and better, you know, as they went by.
You know that one of the most common levers to pull in a target acquisition is technology, updating the systems of a business that may still be running off a spreadsheet or even pen and paper. But tech is complicated with tons of solutions out there. So choosing the right cloud platform, CRM, telephony, compliance, and cybersecurity, not to mention implementing all that, is a job in itself.
Acquiring Minds guest Nick Akers knows this firsthand. As a former searcher who now owns Enzo Technologies, Nick has seen the tech challenges searchers face when acquiring businesses. His team at Enzo regularly works with searchers and their acquisitions, offering a complimentary IT audit of the target company.
Nick takes a personal interest in all their searcher clients, drawing from his own experience in the search phase. Enzo dates back to 1989, so this is a company that has managed the tech for hundreds of small businesses over decades. And one last thing, no long-term contracts with Enzo, a big differentiator.
Check out EnzoTechnologies.com, I-N-Z-O, or email Nick directly at Nick at EnzoTechnologies.com. And don't forget to tell him you're a searcher. I'm going to want to hear a little bit more about how, what these acquisitions kind of all amounted to, because that's a big part of how you grew the business.
But let's do actually now return to the story, but we're not there yet. The structure of the deal, do you recall how you put this together and what year are we in now?
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