Whilst senior management has its eye on cutting costs, your sales start to drain away. And you have to make very large cost savings to counteract a 5% or a 10% drop in sales!

External channels can be very tricky. The balance of power can vary greatly. On the one hand, in financial services many independent intermediaries have no choice but to offer their clients the best products. On the other hand, large retailers offering own-brand labelled products can switch suppliers overnight.

And power can be expressed in many ways.  Many intermediaries may consider they have little power compared to their supplier , but they often hold the upper hand by not  disclosing the names of their end-customers.  If they defect, or are no longer required, there is a real chance that their supplier will never find out which customers it has lost!

Often intermediaries are loath to be overly dependent on one supplier.  So they will automatically switch-sell until they find themselves back in their personal comfort zone. In some cases, this will cost the acquirer half the sales it thought it had acquired.

How can this sales attrition best be halted?   How should sales forces be restructured following an acquisition? What strategy should you follow with channels?  And how should all of this be communicated – internally and externally?  To find the answers, we talked to a number of managers in large companies who have been through the process of integrating large acquisitions.

One thing is certain.  As one manager put it: ‘With acquisitions you only ever get one bite at the cherry.  You only lose your credibility once. You can’t go back!’