How to Become a Successful Acquirer

(Helping CEOs make the highest-stakes decisions with confidence and discipline)

Ian currently presents this workshop as a breakout session at conferences or as an inhouse session for ambitious acquirers.

If you are an MA based business we can deliver this workshop to your team for free!

Find details on and apply for funding for our course

Here

and entering C-15862 in the xpress Course ID box.

Administered by Commonwealth Corporation, The Express Fund provides Massachusetts-based employers fast, simple access to grant-funded training, helping businesses in Massachusetts respond to emerging needs.

Program Description

Ian Smith delivers a high-impact, interactive workshop designed for CEOs and senior leaders who are considering—or actively pursuing—growth through acquisition. Drawing on 40+ years of hands-on deal experience, 40+ completed transactions representing over $1 billion in enterprise value, and the frameworks outlined in The Acquirer’s Playbook, this program equips leaders with a proven, structured model for evaluating, approving, and executing acquisitions with confidence and discipline. The program is built around Ian’s proprietary six-phase Acquisition Approval model — the same framework detailed in The Acquirer’s Playbook and refined through decades of real-world deal execution. What makes this model distinctive is its central thesis: integration thinking must permeate every phase of the acquisition process, not just the final step.

Concepts Covered:

  • Strategy & The Acquisition Profile
  • Target Identification & Assessment
  • The Investment Paper
  • Deal Structure Driven by Integration Strategy
  • Due Diligence as Integration Validation
  • Post-Acquisition Integration & The IMO
  • AI-Enabled M&A: The Emerging Solution

Would You Buy Your Own Company?

Ian currently presents this workshop as a breakout session at conferences or as an inhouse session for management teams.

Program Description

An Interactive Workshop for Private Company Owners, CEOs, CFOs & Their Trusted Advisers.

Ian Smith delivers a high-impact, interactive workshop designed for private company owners, CEOs, CFOs, and their trusted advisers who want to build a business that a serious buyer would actually want to own and pay a premium for. Drawing on 40+ years of hands-on deal experience, 40+ completed transactions representing over $1 billion in enterprise value, and the frameworks refined across those deals, this program equips leaders to look at their own company through the cold, unsentimental eyes of an acquirer, and to close the gap between what the business is worth today and what it could be worth at exit. The program is built around Ian’s proprietary Saleability Test™ — a fifteen-driver diagnostic scored the way a buyer scores it, not the way an owner hopes it will be. What makes this model distinctive is its central thesis: the buyer’s lens must permeate every decision you make in the years before a sale, not just the conversation you have on the way out the door. Value is built deliberately, over an 18–36-month runway — or it is discounted, sharply, in diligence. Value isn’t created at exit it’s exposed!

Concepts Covered:

  • The Mindset Flip — Would You Buy Your Own Company?
  • How a Buyer Actually Values You — EBITDA × Multiple and the Value Gap
  • The Buyer’s Diligence Lens — The Saleability Test™ (15 Value Drivers)
  • Quantifying the Value Gap — Today’s Number vs. Exit-Ready Number
  • Closing the Gap — The Value-Creation Agenda & Prioritizing by EBITDA Impact and impact on the Multiplier
  • How to fix low scores
  • The 18–36 Month Runway — Building Transferable, Owner-Independent Value

Value to Attendees

The session has one job — to move the audience from the comfortable position of seller (what could I get for it?) into the uncomfortable, clarifying position of buyer (would I actually pay for it, with my own money, knowing what I know?). That single shift in perspective is the most reliable way to surface the risks, dependencies, and missed growth levers that quietly suppress a company’s value years before a sale is ever contemplated.

Tailored Workshops – Please reach out below to discuss your requirements