LOS ANGELES — April 25, 2023 — Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Sales Empowerment Group (SEG), a highly recognized outsourced sales and marketing consulting firm and a portfolio company of RFE Investment Partners, has acquired Action Selling, an award-winning sales training company. The transaction was announced on April 18, 2023.
Founded in 1990 by Duane Sparks, who authored the productivity-focused training program, Action Selling has trained, assessed, and certified more than 500,000 salespeople. Over the past decade, Action Selling has been consistently recognized as being one of the top 20 sales training companies by Training Industry, the most trusted source of information on the business of learning, and SellingPower.com, the leading digital magazine for sales managers and sales VPs.
SEG is a sales and marketing consulting firm providing services that drive revenue growth. The company uses a strategic, time-tested approach and works with its clients to create a sales-focused culture that helps revenue grow faster. SEG serves a variety of middle-market and larger companies in manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, technology, professional services, and other sectors.
The combination of SEG and Action Selling provides clients with a comprehensive suite of solutions across the entire revenue function: SEG, with core competencies in virtual sales teams, consulting services, sales playbooks, sales assessments, and a proprietary technology platform, and Action Selling, with its tried-and-true, multiprogram sales training platform.
RFE Investment Partners is a private equity firm focused on making control investments in established small market companies located in the United States. RFE is a long-standing firm founded in 1980 with more than 40 years of experience investing in the lower middle market. RFE’s investment strategy is to transform its portfolio companies from the lower end of the market to fully professionalized and market-leading middle-market companies. RFE is currently investing out of Fund IX.
Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to SEG, a portfolio company of RFE Investment Partners. This transaction highlights the team’s expertise and continued success in the professional learning sector, marking the team’s 10th transaction since the beginning of 2021.
About Houlihan Lokey
Houlihan Lokey (NYSE:HLI) is a global investment bank with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial restructuring, and financial and valuation advisory. The firm serves corporations, institutions, and governments worldwide with offices in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. Independent advice and intellectual rigor are hallmarks of the firm’s commitment to client success across its advisory services. Houlihan Lokey is the No. 1 investment bank for global M&A transactions under $1 billion, the No. 1 M&A advisor for the past eight consecutive years in the U.S., the No. 1 global restructuring advisor for the past nine consecutive years, and the No. 1 global M&A fairness opinion advisor over the past 25 years, all based on number of transactions and according to data provided by Refinitiv.
