OUR FOCUS
What is Acquisition Road?
We focus on doing one thing really well: working with Marketing Agency founders and principals to help make their companies more attractive to potential acquirers. We’re not saying we’ve got all the answers, but we do have the experience, having personally sold two different agencies to two different of the top publicly traded holding companies: WPP and Advantage Solutions. We’ve taken our lumps along the way, made a few mistakes and done our best to learn from them. Whether it’s generating sustainable growth, improving financial metrics, creating that unique point of difference “the agency catnip” that drives potential acquirers wild, we’ve done it and will help you do it too. On occasion, if the circumstances are right, we’ll make a financial investment in your business to help provide capital to fuel your growth and evolutionary journey.
How We Work
We are a consulting firm and work within a retainer compensation model, with a three-month minimum engagement. Monthly retainers vary depending on scope, but most engagements are below $10,000 per month. We are not business brokers and do not charge a commission based on a liquidity event.
How We Help
Our Approach To Transformative Evolution
We work in key areas to help drive transformative change in your business so that it becomes irresistible to potential strategic acquirers:
- Identifying your desired buyer profile: strategic vs. financial
- Agency brand promise: Is what you do differentiated?
- People, Mission (Being mission driven) and Values
- Strategy & Structure
- Financial Realities, Operations and ARR
- The Look of a Leader: Thought Leadership
- Managing your SLT and Succession Planning
- The Sale, Process and Transaction
Agency Investment
When evaluating prospective investments in Client firms, we prioritize opportunities that accelerate growth and breakthrough digital innovation.
Specifically, we look for the following attributes:
- Mission led organization focused on excelling in its core competency while putting people first
- Unique, proprietary capabilities grounded in insights and the belief that nobody can do it better
- Competitive greatness
- Track record of profitable growth (or at least profitability)
- Entrepreneurial culture
- Potential for 10x growth in 3 years
Buy Side Acquirer Consulting
We are also available to provide counsel to Acquirers on prospective transactions or targets.
LEADERSHIP
Our Founder: Kevin Gross
Acquisition Road founder Kevin Gross has been on an advertising agency journey his entire 35-year career. After graduating from Law School and becoming a member of the New York State Bar, he heard the siren song of his family business: a global B2B advertising agency with five offices and 250+ employees. It was decided to put the business up for sale, and there was much do in order to get it ready. The first step: returning the agency’s largest office, in Chicago, to profitability. After stabilizing the business and returning it to growth, Kevin was on the team that ran the sale process to merchandise the agency, identify WPP as the lead acquirer candidate, and negotiate the final transaction. He stayed on as an employee of WPP as a key part of the integration and operational team to ensure performance post sale for four years, and managed the business, now a division of WPP, to a successful maximum earnout.
After his tenure at WPP was complete, he founded CSSI, the leading innovation, product development, and marketing communications agency in the food space. After 12 exhilarating years, working with what he considers the best team of agency warriors on the planet, he sold the business to Advantage Solutions. After managing the integration and staying on at Advantage for five years, and once again achieving the maximum earnout, he left to focus more where is true interests lie: consulting with other agency principals, and selective angel investing.
Testimonials
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
Kinetic12
While not seeking the imminent sale of the business, we relied on the counsel of Acquisition Road to help evolve our industry leading consultancy and take it to the next level. We are now enjoying exponential growth and when the time comes we will be ideally positioned to maximize our liquidity event
Halverson Group
We’d built a unique strategic consulting agency working across the CPG landscape, and leadership felt the time was right to shop the business. Working closely with the principals of Acquisition Road was invaluable to our successful acquisition outcome.
Olive Street Design
I've found the insights and counsel shared by the Acquisition Road team to be invaluable as we continue on our growth journey toward an eventual liquidity event. It's helpful to bounce our thinking off of someone who's been through it already.
