Stone-Goff Partners announced today it has sold its investment in DSG Consulting, LLC to Corporate Visions, Inc., a portfolio company of The Riverside Company.
DSG is a technology-enabled growth consultancy that helps B2B companies accelerate revenue growth through a modern video-based playbook approach. The Company goes to market with a unique combination of messaging, video, training, and enablement services, as well as digital subscriptions used to deploy and reinforce customers’ strategic themes.
Stone-Goff Partners invested in DSG in November 2017, alongside co-founders Matt McClendon and Tanner Mezel. During Stone-Goff’s ownership, DSG accelerated its investment in vPlaybook, the Company’s digital subscription product, led by senior executive Arriane Emdad. In addition, DSG made significant investments in expanding the growth of its affiliate network through sourcing, onboarding, and enabling new and existing consultants.
During Stone-Goff’s investment period, DSG evolved from a company focused primarily on large-scale consulting projects to a strategic growth partner for sales and marketing leaders, leveraging DSG’s deep messaging and enablement expertise coupled with its vPlaybook offering. This unique combination of strategic projects and digital subscriptions helped win blue-chip enterprise technology customers, as well as leaders in financial services, telecom, manufacturing, and healthcare, and propelled DSG to its position as the highest-rated sales training service provider by users on Gartner’s Peer Insights platform.
"Stone-Goff has been the perfect growth partner for DSG. They've helped us enter new markets, develop new buyers, expand our offerings, and improve overall team productivity," said Matt McClendon, co-founder and CEO, DSG Consulting. During the course of Stone-Goff's investment, DSG significantly grew digital subscription clients, driven by new feature developments related to coaching and continuous learning, while also nearly tripling its affiliate consultant network which led to double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth from 2018 to 2021.
"Partnering with Matt, Tanner, Arriane, and the talented DSG team as the business evolved over the past four years has been an extremely rewarding experience. This transaction is a result of the team's hard work, vision, and leadership in the sales training and enablement space," said Hannah Stone Craven, co-founder of Stone-Goff Partners. "DSG is still in the early innings of building out its digital subscription offerings that will drive incremental return on their strategic engagements. We are excited to see the powerful combination of DSG and CVI take shape over the next few years."
Citizens M&A Advisory served as the exclusive financial advisor to DSG in this transaction. Fredrikson and Byron P.A. served as legal counsel to DSG.
About Stone-Goff Partners
Stone-Goff Partners is a private equity firm that invests in lower middle market Technology-Driven Service businesses. The companies we invest in combine service offerings with technology and focus on attractive, defined end-markets. Core verticals include business services, human capital and training, marketing services, consulting services, IT services, consumer services, and outsourcing. Stone-Goff invests in founder-owned businesses and corporate carve-outs.
Founded in 2010 by Hannah Stone Craven and Laurens Goff, Stone-Goff leverages the extensive investment, operational, and sector-specific experience of its partners and Talent Network to drive value creation within its portfolio companies.
About DSG
Founded in 1994, DSG enables salesforces to implement their company’s growth strategy through customized sales enablement programs. Solution offerings include sales message creation, sales process design, sales coaching system development, in-person and virtual training and ongoing reinforcement and content updates post-launch. The Company serves a diverse, blue-chip customer base across six core verticals including Technology, Business Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Telecommunications and Financial Services.
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