Telarus protects our culture in a deliberate way.
Telarus is owned by Adam Edwards, Patrick Oborn, and Richard Murray with investment from Columbia Capital. In 2002, Adam and Patrick bootstrapped the company from savings and commissions they earned as Commission River online affiliates. Telarus first consisted of Patrick Oborn generating leads with ShopforT1.com and Adam Edwards making sales from the steady stream of new prospects. That early stream of the residual commission was re-invested into channel managers who could support new agents, new software developers and employ the services of a patent attorney to assist us with the patent application for GeoQuote®, our new real-time quoting software. In October 2017, Telarus acquired CarrierSales, a competitor in the technology solutions brokerage space, to create the largest privately-held technology solutions brokerage in the country. Columbia’s investment in Telarus will fuel its continued growth as it expands its lead as the largest privately-held technology solutions brokerage. Telarus’ existing management team continues to lead and maintain a majority stake in the company.
Our Leadership Team
Adam Edwards is a co-founder of Telarus and serves as our chief executive officer. He’s responsible for the strategy and the culture of the organization which means he focuses on “who we are” and makes sure we’re focused on helping partners be successful.
Patrick Oborn is a co-founder of Telarus and a driver of product development. “What’s next” is what Patrick does, and has done since the beginning. His passion for technology makes him the perfect advocate for partner success.
Richard Murray serves as COO and is one of the co-owners of Telarus. He is a tireless advocate for the independent channel and end-users and serves on multiple advisory councils and industry advocacy groups. He is responsible for overseeing all operations to ensure the best and most efficient support channels are made available to our partners. He is responsible for “What we do.”
Dan Foster is responsible for all revenue streams and driving growth for Telarus and our partners. Dan focuses on the “why and how" to bring strategy, solutions, and passion to delivering a world-class partner experience.
Jen has spent her career in B2B technology growth marketing and is passionate about the alignment of the customer and the organization for the best outcomes. As a data-driven leader, Jen loves to leverage the latest process and technology for bottom-line impact. At Telarus, Jen is responsible for brand, demand, product, marketing operations, customer marketing functions, and the voice of the partner/customer.
Kelly is responsible for overseeing the company’s legal and compliance functions and strategies, including corporate governance and board management, contract negotiation, transactional matters, litigation and compliance. She approaches professional legal advice as a true business partner, with the goal of enabling the business and driving growth via practical guidance and high ethical standards. Kelly brings with her extensive Wall Street law firm and U.S. public company experience.
Joe is responsible for the financial planning, analysis, forecasting, and accounting functions for Telarus. Most importantly, he is ensures that we pay our partners accurately and on time.
Additional Leadership
Bryce manages all support services including account management, project management and general support. Making sure our partners can price, sell, implement, and retain customers is where Bryce focuses.
Chad is responsible for owning the brand strategy, and visual experience across all channels in a way that reflects the unique services, values, and personality of Telarus. He drives awareness and brand loyalty, manages a growing creative team of designers, writers, an email specialist, and works closely with our video production team. Chad partners with peers in sales, IT, and operations to reach and exceed big growth goals.
Christie is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the overall strategy and relationship development of Telarus Suppliers, both internal and external facing. She manages, trains, and develops the Telarus Supplier Management team. Christie also leads the planning of supplier meetings, QBR’s, and initiatives where they develop goals, objectives, measures, and procedures to ensure supplier satisfaction. She assists in the negotiation of supplier contracts and coordinates with operations and commissions team for high level escalation support.
Chris is our leading expert in IoT solutions. Our partners can engage Chris on their related opportunities and gain a critical asset in discovering and designing the best fitting solution for a clients needs.
Ciera manages the training and organization of Telarus support staff, making sure all of our partners are offered the best resources to guide them through their opportunities.
Heather is a seasoned B2B marketer. At Telarus she leads Marketing Operations and Digital Marketing. Her areas of focus are marketing technology, reporting, digital programs, and the website.
Jennifer Borzouei is the VP of Strategic Partnerships at Telarus. She has over 18 years of experience as a top performer in the technology space. Jennifer has become an expert in the TSB and VAR communities by strategically positioning voice, connectivity, colocation, and Cloud solutions for 2 of the largest cable providers in the world, while also leading channel strategies for several of the top-rated Gartner Cybersecurity software companies. She holds innovation as a top core value challenging herself to see what’s possible to better meet the needs and objectives of her partners while always striving to improve. She also looks to find new ways to problem solve and grow with a forward-thinking mindset. In Jennifer’s downtime, she enjoys gardening, fishing, skiing, hiking, yoga, Pilates, and the beach.
If you’re interested in speaking with Jennifer about the new Telarus VAR/MSP program, please send a brief message and connect with her.
Jo is responsible sales and support of Lumen services. Jo has significant experience and leads a team of more than 12 specialists who focus only on supporting large and/or complex Lumen opportunities. Jo’s team is known across the industry for their unsurpassed ability to help partners succeed with Lumen.
Josh leads our team of engineers who make sure our partners have access to solution assessments, designs, and knowledgeable engineers to help our partners successfully sell to their customers. Josh has been involved in engineering and cloud technologies over the last decade.
Kameron oversees the field sales operations in the East and Southwest.
Koby is our leading expert in Cloud solutions. Our partners can engage Koby on their related opportunities and gain a critical asset in discovering and designing the best fitting solution for a clients needs.
Kyra is responsible for the overall productivity and effectiveness of the East and Southwest Partner Support organization. Kyra fosters close working relationships with the internal teams, partners, and suppliers to ensure efficient operation and success within the support organizations. She leads the processes and tools that enable the East and Southwest Support teams to ensure any engagement from partners or suppliers have the best experience.
Lesley is responsible for the overall productivity and effectiveness of the international sales organization. Lesley fosters close working relationships with the internal teams and partners to ensure efficient operation and success within the sales organizations. She leads the processes and tools that enable the Sales Team to make Telarus partners leaders that are productive and strategic within their markets.
Michael is responsible for the development, implementation, and maintenance of the software solutions for Telarus and VXSuite. His teams are also responsible for implementing and supporting the IT Support and infrastructure for Telarus. He brings over 25 years of operational, development and IT Management experience to the team, including six years with a Managed Service Provider.
Mike oversees the field sales operations in the US West and Midwest.
Michelle is responsible for managing three separate teams with specific functions. One team handles processing of commission payments from Suppliers. The second team is Revenue Assurance – focused on data analytics on existing commission payments and proactively opening inquiries with Suppliers on commission changes. The third and final team, Inquiries, is a team of analysts who are Agent facing and who handle incoming inquiries and escalations on commission payments. Michelle ensures service level standards are met or exceeded for each team, serves as an escalation point on incorrectly paid or unpaid commission inquiries, and drives process improvement and efficiency through the Commission Team.
Piero leads our Financial Services team that offers partners customized financing options to propel their businesses forward. His team consults with partners to understand their individual goals and build liquidity structures to help them achieve their vision. Piero has more than 15 years of experience in finance and acquisitions.
Ruth oversees the participation management of our selling partners.
Sam Nelson is the Vice President of Partner Development on the Advanced Solutions team at Telarus. She has over ten years of experience in the tech industry by breathing life into new revenue initiatives. As a CX advocate, Sam is passionate about helping partners achieve success with their customers by bringing state-of-the-art solutions to the forefront. She has helped customers and partners understand how to leverage CX as a competitive advantage. At Telarus, she will drive the adoption of innovative solutions through the design and execution of key partner enablement components, including education, tool development, and overall strategy within the partner ecosystem. In Sam’s downtime, she is a CrossFit and TRX athlete and certified coach, helping others reach their fitness goals. If you’re interested in speaking with Sam about the latest CX technologies, please send a brief message to connect with her.
Shane is our leading expert in Unified Communications solutions. Our partners can engage Shane on their related opportunities and gain a critical asset in discovering and designing the best fitting solution for a clients needs.
Sharron leads the HR team and is responsible for the culture of the organization making sure we hire the best and retain the best team to help our partners.
Stefanie Cortese has worked in a technology role for the past 13 years. She is a “born in the Cloud” technology leader who specializes in collaboration and business automation. Creating operational efficiencies through technology is her passion. At Telarus, she leads a team of technology professionals to support and manage the services and applications the company has to offer. Throughout her career, she has been fortunate to mentor young technology professionals and is passionate about the women in technology movement.
Suzy is responsible for driving overall training and sales efficiency via sales tools and technology, and process improvements. Suzy works cross-functionally to design and deliver comprehensive sales playbooks and drive campaigns and processes that increase partner sales and breadth of product knowledge.
Tim Basa is an entrepreneurial, results-driven executive leader with a superior track record for empowering high-performance teams to consistently achieve growth, profit, and strategic objectives and key results that exceed the expectations of clients and investors. A recent addition to the Telarus team as SVP of sales, Basa is responsible for leading the US field sales team and expanding the Telarus Capital Program, which offers unique financial services to Channel Partners.
An award-winning thought-leader with more than 28 years of experience in the technology industry, Basa was named a Telecom Master Mind by PHONE+ magazine, recognized as a Power Seller in Crain's Business, and was a recurring selection by Channel Partners Magazine readers as a Channel Executive of The Year.
Channel Futures awarded Basa both the Channel Influencer award for his vision and impact on the direction of the IT and communications indirect sales channel and the Circle of Excellence award, which honors Channel Executives for their vision, innovation, and advocacy of the indirect channel.
Basa is a high-energy, hands-on leader who empowers individuals and teams to conquer challenges and achieve ambitious goals in the most competitive market conditions.
His teams excel by implementing a unique combination of battle-tested fundamentals, innovative problem solving, high-impact sales and marketing techniques, relationship building, cross-functional collaboration, and old-fashioned hard work.
Basa is known for collaboration, alliance building, masterminding solutions to difficult problems, sharing lessons learned, and teaching real-world techniques that create results. This makes him a popular choice for advisory boards, media appearances, and participation in sales, marketing, and personal development training.
Basa has served as a strategic advisor, board member, consultant, and business coach to various business and non-profit organizations.
Trina is responsible for the overall productivity and effectiveness of the West and Midwest Partner Support organization. Trina fosters close working relationships with the internal teams, partners, and suppliers to ensure efficient operation and success within the support organizations. She leads the processes and tools that enable the West and Midwest Support teams to ensure any engagement from partners or suppliers have the best experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a technology solutions brokerage, and what does Telarus do different than other technology solutions brokerages?
A technology solutions brokerage is a distributor that
- Signs carrier contracts and consolidates volume
- Assists its sub-agents with pre-and-post-sales support
- Consolidates commissions from multiple carriers into one monthly commission statement/payment
- Leverages its size to gain concessions from carriers on behalf of its agents. Since technology solutions brokerages pool the volume of hundreds of independent agents into a single contract with each carrier, the community at large does not have to bear the burden of sales quotas, providing for a more stable and stress-free income stream.
Telarus, Inc., founded in 2002 by entrepreneurs Adam Edwards and Patrick Oborn, was created in response to the horrible agent support they received as subagents. Frustrated with long delays that accompanied each price quote request, the level of commission they were earning, the lack of accuracy of their commission checks, and the risks they took entrusting their business to technology solutions brokerages who stood on shaky financial ground, Telarus was born. Agents today will find Telarus is the best, offering real-time quotes on the transactional products, personalized support from industry experts on complex solutions, direct contracts with all carrier partners, audited commissions, and home-grown software that makes agents efficient.
Here are a few of our differentiators:
- Full Service Support
- Sales Engineering
- Base Management
- Project Management
- Partner Support
- Commissions How You Like It
But even more important than the efficiencies we’ve created is our reputation. Integrity is at the heart of our business and we take great pride in doing right by our agents and carriers, even when nobody is watching. Our philosophy is that business is a direct reflection of its owners and management, not an entity you can hide behind while making immoral decisions.
Is Telarus a technology solutions brokerage or a software company?
Both. When Telarus founders began the company, they found it was not acceptable that quotes took days, even weeks, to come back. It was not acceptable to manage a large base of customers using Excel spreadsheets. It was not acceptable to be in the dark with relation to all of the carrier’s service footprint. The only way to build the technology solutions brokerage of the future was to invest heavily in software so that the necessary efficiencies could be built into the quoting, customer management, accounting, and commissioning systems. Today Telarus is consistently one of the top producers with each carrier we represent. Telarus is heavily involved on the back end as we generate millions of lines of source code each year with our team of software developers who have built our robust systems on the foundation of PHP, Cold Fusion, mySQL, SQL Server, Java, and JavaScript.
Having our own software development division enables us to produce tools at the request of our agent partners and employees. All of our peers have to license outside software and any modifications are extremely difficult, which is a challenge Telarus does not have.
What Is the ownership and financial structure of Telarus?
Telarus is owned by Adam Edwards, Patrick Oborn, and Richard Murray and backed by Columbia Capital. In 2002, Adam and Patrick bootstrapped the company from savings and commissions they were earning as Commission River online affiliates. Telarus first consisted of Patrick Oborn generating leads with ShopforT1.com and Adam Edwards making sales from the steady stream of new prospects. That early stream of residual commission was re-invested into channel managers that could support new agents, new software developers, and to employ the services of a patent attorney to assist us with the patent application for GeoQuote®, our new real-time quoting software. In October 2017, Telarus acquired CarrierSales, a competitor in the technology solutions brokerage space to create the largest privately-held technology solutions brokerage agent in the country. Today, Adam, Patrick, and Richard each own a one-third share of the company. All of our growth has been internally financed through operations. By keeping creditors and outside investors from tainting our decisions or changing our focus on our number one goal Telarus has empowered itself to revolutionize the way carriers sell network solutions through the agent channel.
How much commission does Telarus pay their agents?
Telarus pays its agent and VAR partners a residual commission according to the terms in your contract. We offer pass-through as well as fixed commission percentage payments which are negotiable based upon the volume and growth potential of a new partner. The standard rates that we pass will be revealed to you once a non-disclosure agreement is in place. To get started, complete your agent application and we contact you with further details. As a Tier 1 technology solutions brokerage, Telarus enjoys the highest commissions available from each of our carrier partners, so our pass-through is, in many cases, higher than what you can earn working with a carrier on your own.
How and when are commissions paid?
Telarus pays out commissions on the 28th of each month via Electronic Funds Transfer (ACH). International agents can receive their commission via PayPal.
How long after a sale does it take for commissions to be paid?
The answer varies between 30 and 90 days. The main factor is the time it takes for the supplier to credit approve your client, install, turn up their service, and send or collect a first bill. Once the supplier receives its first payment from a client, Telarus is paid around the 15th of the month, just 13 days ahead of your payday which is the 28th of each month. Bigger networks will start to commission as soon as the first site is turned up and billing, and continue to grow until the entire network is billing.
Looking for a company who is small enough to feel the impact of your contribution, yet large enough to provide career stability and ongoing mentoring?
Welcome to Telarus – the company built from the ground up to foster, celebrate, and reward excellence. As an industry thought leader, we’re looking for the best and brightest to join our team and to make an immediate impact.
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Get Started”I needed resources, people with integrity, and people with experience. Telarus wants to see me succeed and the amount of support around me is really overwhelming. If I don't succeed, it's because of me, not because Telarus didn't give me the support I needed to succeed. It's like going into battle by yourself, or going into battle with an entire team with different expertise behind you; by yourself, you wouldn't last very long.
Elan CraneWheelhouse Virtual Solutions
”When I chose Telarus as my partner, it was because of their knowledge in the industry and their relationships. I help customers get off premise and onto cloud. It's the experience and selections that Telarus comes to the table with that allows me to put together real solutions. Then they support me and make me look better.
Jill BlankenshipCEO at Frontline Group LLC
