From Acquisition to Organic Growth: Why Data, Sales and Culture Decide Everything
With Daan De Wever, Co-founder and CEO of Dstny. Hosted by Stijn Van Daele and Jeroen De Broyer.
Daan De Wever, co-founder and CEO of Dstny, explains what has to be right inside a company that grew through acquisitions: consistent value creation, control over data and definitions, measuring marketing through acquisition cost and lifetime value, sales due diligence, AI that starts from core processes, and a culture that accepts differences between countries.
Daan De Wever is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Dstny, an international cloud communications company that grew through many acquisitions and, in his words, has revenue of almost 300 million euros. He started selling at sixteen by looking for sponsors for parties, was active in the data centre world, and has been full-time at Dstny since 2009. He also coaches start-ups and has had private equity investors on board twice.
This was the first episode of Inside the Growth Engine. In it he looks at the commercial mechanisms behind that growth: what has to be right internally to carry such scale, from data and marketing measurement to sales assessment, AI and culture across countries.
Transparency note: Dstny has worked with Stretch, as is mentioned in the conversation.
This episode is spoken in Dutch. The summary and quotes below are our own English version of what was said.
Key lessons
Commercial excellence is consistent value creation, not a tool
For De Wever commercial excellence is not a tool or a process. It is creating value consistently and systematically, for customers and for other stakeholders such as shareholders, and being able to translate that back into numbers. Teams carry it when there is no politics, goals are clear, and the company dares to make choices, for example about what a channel is. Without choices you end up with customers of many profiles who are all served differently, and scaling does not work.
Get control of your CRM and data as fast as you can
A tool is only a tool, he says: even a good spreadsheet can be a good CRM if you use it consistently. What matters is having the data and being able to manage on it, with a weighted and an unweighted funnel. After acquisitions, definitions of data differ from country to country, and he calls the lack of data in acquired companies a big frustration.
Treat marketing as a data point
In many companies, certainly small and medium-sized ones, marketing is a nice picture without a measured return. Few can say what a campaign cost, what the acquisition cost is and how it converted. Dstny found that its local marketing agencies defined marketing differently in each country, which led to centralised content and a rebranding. His two key metrics are customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.
Prepare events, and count the real cost of sales visits
Trade fairs cost a lot, and he says the work before the event matters more than the event itself: be targeted, know your message, plan meetings in advance and use digital before and around the fair. He has also been annoyed by salespeople driving to every meeting, since the cost of five trips for a small customer makes the return disappear. Dstny has modelled sales cost in project decisions since the early days.
Think end to end: onboarding, adoption and customer success
In a technology business the sale is only the first part. Dstny works on frictionless purchase and onboarding, on converting from a premium model to a paying one, and on running experiments to find the highest conversion. It then moves from reactive support to proactive customer success. He says an NPS above 50 suggests low churn, and that perceived value decides whether a customer stays.
Buyers research online first, so you need to be found
New generations do a lot of online research before deciding, and if you do not score there, you have a problem. He points to the shift from brand campaigns to digital, SEO and SEA, and now to language models, and tests how Dstny shows up when he asks who the leading provider in Europe is. Personal contact stays important, but you have to hope you are in the consideration set.
Do a sales assessment on acquisitions, not only a financial due diligence
In a small company the best salesperson is usually the founder, and the founder is the one who leaves after the takeover. So a scalable sales model has to be put in place just as the biggest sales force walks away. He says companies do financial due diligence and sometimes commercial due diligence for big deals, but almost nobody assesses sales excellence. He expects private equity firms with operating partners to do this more, because stacking companies and multiple arbitrage no longer work alone.
Growth after acquisitions shows the value
In a higher interest rate environment, buyers want to see what organic growth you achieved after the acquisitions. He calls organic growth an important driver of value, and says it is a challenge even for a company like Dstny. Growth also gives the option to keep investing.
Start AI from core processes, not from "we have to do AI"
He warns against saying "we must do AI", since AI alone says nothing. His approach is to take a core process, such as acquisition, redesign it around human work and technology, and manage the change. AI only works with the right data: a voicebot without access to the right data will not make customers happy. He thinks the risk of not starting is bigger than the pain of starting.
Accept cultural differences, and use a pioneer country
He does not believe in one company culture: an office in Lyon differs from one in Stockholm. What you can do is set a frame, build a feedback culture and look for people who embrace change. Dstny started the experiments in one pioneer country and let others ask to join, instead of a big bang. He says line managers, change agents and ambassadors matter more than an intranet nobody reads.
In his words
Short quotes, translated from Dutch. Times are approximate.
Commercial excellence is consistently, continuously and systematically creating value, for your customers and for your other stakeholders.
Daan De Wever, around 2:30
We do all this due diligence, but you do not do a due diligence on your sales.
Daan De Wever, around 26:30
One Dstny culture does not exist.
Daan De Wever, around 38:00
Chapters
- 1:00 Who Daan is and how he started
- 2:00 What commercial excellence means
- 4:00 Transparency, clear goals and making choices
- 5:00 Growth from Belgium to many countries
- 6:00 Control over CRM and data
- 8:00 Central marketing and the rebranding
- 9:00 Marketing as a data point
- 11:00 Funnels and acquisition cost
- 13:00 Creating value through marketing
- 15:00 Digital marketing, SEO and language models
- 16:00 Events and trade fairs
- 18:00 Go-to-market trends: online buying behaviour
- 20:00 Digital onboarding and experiments
- 21:00 Customer success and end-to-end journeys
- 24:00 Customer acquisition cost and lifetime value
- 26:00 Acquisitions and sales assessment
- 29:00 Private equity and commercial due diligence
- 30:00 Organic growth after acquisitions
- 31:00 AI and experiments in Germany
- 33:00 AI starts with core processes
- 35:00 Disruption risk and pricing models
- 37:00 Culture across countries
- 40:00 A pioneer country and change agents
- 42:00 Staying curious as a CEO