You Just Signed an LOI… Now What?
You just signed a Letter of Intent (LOI)… now what? Do you keep rolling with the big firm and the even bigger price tag?
Unless you're a serial acquirer with a steady deal pipeline and a clear buy-vs-build strategy, you're likely staring at two imperfect options:
Keep the large advisory firm on the meter to run your due diligence, planning, and execution. Or cobble together an internal "integration task force" made up of smart people who have some deal experience… and full-time day jobs that already keep them busy.
Neither path is wrong. But both come with tradeoffs.
The Real Problem with the Two Traditional Paths
Big firms bring frameworks and logos, but they don't live with the long-term consequences inside your company. They hand off the playbook and move to the next deal.
Internal teams know your business deeply, but they're rarely set up with the time, structure, or integration muscle to turn LOI into actual results. Smart people plus deal experience doesn't equal a functional integration office.
The Gap Between LOI and Real Value
Once the LOI is signed, the clock starts ticking:
Customers are nervous. Employees are speculating. Leaders are juggling the day-to-day, the board, and now… a deal.
With Due Diligence timeframes being pushed to 30 days or less, a predictable pattern emerges:
Due diligence becomes a checkbox exercise. People chase documents instead of insights. Planning gets generic. Teams reuse old templates that don't match the actual value drivers of this deal. Execution gets reactive. Fire drills, last-minute asks, and late-night Slack threads become the norm.
Meanwhile, that shiny synergy model in the board deck assumes everything will just… work.
This is exactly where a different model pays off: a focused integration leader who can quickly spin up, guide, and elevate your in-house talent — without saddling you with permanent headcount or a seven-figure consulting bill. <--- read that again...
How Ramsey Group Plugs Into Your Team
Ramsey Group is built for this moment: after LOI, before chaos. Instead of dropping in a huge external army, we plug in as your specialized integration office working with your internal experts, not around them.
Here's what that looks like (in days, not months):
Fast spin-up. We come in with ready-made playbooks, governance models, and templates so you're not starting from a blank page. Your team doesn't need to reinvent the wheel—they need to accelerate it.
Education while we execute. We don't keep the "secret sauce" in a slide library. We teach your teams the frameworks, the decision-making logic, and the systems so they own it going forward.
Using your in-house experts as the engine. Your people know your customers, systems, culture, and the actual quirks of how this business really works. They're not interchangeable team members—they're the foundation.
Relentless focus on value, not vanity metrics. Instead of tracking 200 line items no one reads, we anchor on a small set of value drivers and the levers that actually move them.
Why Not Just Hire a Full-Time Integration Leader?
You can, and at a certain scale, you should. But most companies hit one (or all) of these problems:
Once the integration slows, they don't know what to do with that role. Been there, done that. The integration leader becomes the "catch-all" for every cross-functional fire drill unrelated to the deal. Or they're let go after closing, and all the integration knowledge leaves with them.
The reality: integration is episodic. You need deep expertise during the season, and a sustainable model that your organization can run after the season ends.
The Third Way: Integration Leadership Without the Overhead
Ramsey Group gives you exactly that:
Senior-level integration leadership when it matters most. Not a junior coordinator. Not a part-time PM. A battle-tested operator who's done this dozens of times.
A durable operating model your team can own going forward. We're not here to create dependency. We're here to build capability.
No long-term headcount commitment and no oversized firm overhead. You pay for expertise and execution during the window when it's critical—not for office space and bench time.
The Two-Year Truth Test
Signing the LOI is the exciting part. Living with the deal two years later is the truth test.
Are your customers still there? Did the integration actually drive the value you modeled? Are your best people still engaged, or did they leave in the chaos of transition? Does your organization actually understand how the two companies are supposed to work together, or did they just follow orders from consultants?
We've seen the difference integration leadership makes. And we've seen what happens when companies skip this step and hope it works out.
Ready to turn that LOI into real, measurable value? Reach out to info@ramseygrp.com for a free consultation.