Your company acquired another business, and you’ve been assigned the integration.
You know you need business decisions before you can build the system. But early in a merger, executives are focused on strategy. The specific operational rules—who owns which accounts, how leads get routed, how territories work—haven’t been decided yet.
Without those decisions, the project stalls. If that stall persists and a hard deadline forces you to build before stakeholders have decided how the unified business will operate, you’ll end up squishing the orgs together.
The system will function technically, but it won’t work as intended for anyone. The “unified” platform will become something teams have to work around instead of with.
You can avoid this. The key is helping stakeholders turn their strategic goals into specific operating requirements you can actually build.
You Need Concrete Business Requirements Before Building
Take the goal to “enable cross-selling.” It sounds clear, but you can’t build anything until someone decides: How will this actually work?
Will you train every rep to sell the full portfolio? If so, have you built in time for enablement and change management in your implementation timeline? If you go this route, you’ll have one opportunity owner per deal. No need for splits or overlay compensation.
Or will you run specialist pods—like Salesforce does—where you have a prime and co-prime account executives? That requires opportunity teams, overlay compensation plans, and routing rules to determine which specialist handles which product.
These are very different go-to-market motions—each requires a different approach to compensation, opportunity ownership, and territory management. And Salesforce operates in black and white—lead goes to Rep A or Rep B, an account is shared or it’s not. Stakeholders need to choose which approach before you can build.
Cross-selling is one example of dozens of decisions like this:
Data Visibility: Do you need an open model to encourage collaboration, or strict boundaries to protect existing enterprise relationships?
Territory Logic: Are you carving the combined market by geography, vertical, or named accounts?
Pricing Models: Will the brands maintain separate legacy price lists, or move to a unified model on day one?
Six Areas Where Decisions Need to Be Made
Those decisions—and dozens more like them—fall into six strategic areas. We created the Salesforce Org Merge Decision Framework to help you facilitate these conversations with stakeholders. It’s designed to force decisions across all six areas—no “TBD” or “hybrid” strategies allowed:
Go-to-Market Strategy: How you position determines if you need separate systems or an open security model.
Pricing & Packaging: How customers buy dictates whether you need a simple merge or a complex CPQ and billing integration.
The Operating Model: Defining who “owns” the record prevents territory wars and determines your sharing rules.
GTM Enablement: Deciding between pods or generalist reps shapes how you’re enabling your sales team to sell post-merger.
Technology Strategy: Evaluating the legacy tech stack determines what data gets migrated and what gets retired.
Change Readiness: Assessing user readiness helps determine whether you need a phased rollout or a single big training push.
How to Move Forward
We’ve helped companies complete their integrations in 60 days by getting everyone aligned before building starts.
Download the framework and use it to lead your next steering committee meeting. It’s the fastest way to get the answers you need and keep your integration on track.
