David Barnes, Chief Financial Officer at Trimble Inc. (NASDAQ:TRMB) This episode is sponsored by the M&A Science Academy, DealRoom, and FirmRoom.  To join our growing online community of M&A practitioners, visit mascience.com/academy.  Ready to take your M&A to the next level with software made to manage each stage of the deal process? See how DealRoom can facilitate your next deal at dealroom.net. FirmRoom provides 80% cost savings over VDRs that bill by page and delivers a far better user experience to boot. Sign up in under 2 minutes by going to firmroom.com. Episode Timestamps 00:00 Intro 04:29 The Role of CFO 05:14 How the CFO’s roles differs from the CEO 06:24 Decision-making process and approvals workflow 09:43 Communicating opportunities 11:15 Prioritization 14:18 Balancing the allocation of budgets 16:42 How equity compensation works 18:14 How aligned investment analysts are when evaluating a company 20:08 Forecasting deals 22:53 Priorities when looking at deals 26:49 Balancing priorities when structuring earnouts 28:31 Understanding a company’s culture 31:08 Integration from a CFO’s perspective 33:49 How the speed of integration impacts value realization 37:05 Biggest lessons learned as a CFO 39:23 How to pitch deals to the CFO 41:38 Craziest thing in M&A