Acquire a company with good-better-best pricing to complement your three-tier model, and you don’t get six options. You get nine. That’s not a pricing strategy. It’s a math problem that compounds into a revenue nightmare.
I recently joined Fynn Glover, founder of Schematic, on the Monetizing SaaS podcast to discuss B2B SaaS pricing. While we covered everything from my transition from product management to pricing consulting to the impact of AI on monetization, one topic deserves its own spotlight: how M&A creates exponential pricing complexity that kills the very synergies executives promise their boards.
What We Covered
- Why pricing complexity grows exponentially in M&A scenarios
- The concept of “commercial debt” and how it accumulates post-acquisition
- Why sales teams rationally resist cross-selling after mergers
- The SVCS framework for strategic pricing decisions
- How misaligned pricing models sabotage revenue synergies
- The human dynamics that make integration hard
- Practical approaches to pricing rationalization
Timestamped Outline
04:10 Optimizing Self-Serve Sales Models
07:52 Leveraging Pricing Changes to Accelerate Deals
10:55 Pricing Challenges in Mergers
16:41 Strategic Customer Alignment Choices
19:21 CEOs Lose Customer Insight
23:08 Objective Decision-Making Support
26:31 Product’s Role in SaaS Pricing
30:00 Strategic Pricing in B2B SaaS
37:48 Product Manager Personas
42:19 Tech Excitement and Uncertainty
Three Reasons Your M&A Synergies Are DOA
1. The Math Problem: Your Complexity Just Went Exponential
Here’s the brutal math lesson most executives learn too late. When you merge two companies with standard three-tier pricing, the combinations multiply, not add.
If you think just in the simple case, I buy a company. We have a good, better, best offer. I acquire another company, has a good, better, best offer. I now have not six combinations, but nine. It’s three squared.
This isn’t theoretical. I’ve worked with companies drowning in 200+ SKUs because they kept acquiring without rationalizing. Each acquisition multiplies the complexity:
- 2 companies = 9 combinations
- 3 companies = 27 combinations
- 4 companies = 81 combinations
Your sales team can’t sell what they can’t explain. Your customers won’t buy what they can’t understand. And your RevOps team? They’re building Frankenstein quote-to-cash systems, trying to accommodate every permutation.
The worst part? This complexity is entirely predictable. It’s not a surprise. It’s math. Yet I watch company after company walk into this trap because nobody does the calculation during due diligence.
2. The Human Problem: Why Your Sales Team Sabotages Your Synergies
Every acquisition press release includes some version of “expanded cross-sell opportunities.” Then reality hits: your sales teams actively avoid selling each other’s products.
This isn’t a training problem. It’s economics.
You end up with the acquired sales reps from both companies who are only comfortable still selling their own products because they don’t understand there’s education in terms of, like, what are the capabilities, what are the use cases, maybe it’s slightly different… But then on pricing and packaging, if they’ve gotta completely change the way that it’s priced and packaged as they bring in this new thing, they know all of a sudden that’s gonna confuse everything and slow everything down.
Your sales reps aren’t being stubborn. They’re being rational. When you’re chasing quota and have two options (sell the product you know with the pricing you understand, or fumble through a complicated explanation of an unfamiliar solution with different pricing mechanics), which would you choose?
The compensation structure makes it worse. They’re more worried about getting the deal in front of them.
If mastering the new product means longer sales cycles and lower close rates this quarter, your best reps will stick to their comfort zone. Every time.
Sales enablement can’t fix this. You can’t train away structural misalignment between products, pricing models, and incentives.
3. Commercial Debt: The Compound Interest Nobody Calculates
Technical debt gets all the attention in M&A. But there’s a more insidious problem: commercial debt.
A lot of times that becomes a consideration, that and that can build up, and I like to think of that as commercial debt. Especially as companies acquire multiple companies… Those problems grow. It’s not linearly. It grows exponentially.
Commercial debt accumulates from every misalignment:
- One product charges subscription, one pay-as-you-go
- Different contract terms
- Mismatched billing systems
- Legacy discount structures
Unlike technical debt, which primarily impacts your engineering velocity, commercial debt directly attacks your revenue. It shows up as:
- Lost deals from confused customers
- Lengthened sales cycles
- Higher churn from pricing surprises
- Missed upsell opportunities
The cruel irony? Commercial debt is invisible during due diligence. It doesn’t show up in financial models or technical architecture reviews. But post-acquisition, it compounds faster than credit card interest, eating away at the synergies you promised.
The Bottom Line
M&A success requires thinking beyond product synergies to the commercial realities of integration. Here’s what separates successful acquisitions from expensive failures:
- Do the exponential math during due diligence: Map every pricing combination and ask if your sales team can actually sell it
- Align sales incentives with integration goals: If reps make more money avoiding the new products, that’s exactly what they’ll do
- Budget for commercial debt reduction: Plan dedicated resources and a timeline for pricing rationalization. It won’t fix itself, and it doesn’t get better the longer you wait.
The SVCS framework we discussed shows why pricing isn’t just about numbers. It’s about strategic alignment between segments, value, competition, and strategy. When that alignment breaks during M&A, so does your revenue model.
Facing pricing complexity after an acquisition? Let’s talk about untangling your commercial debt and realizing the synergies you promised your board. Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit producttranquility.com.