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Hello, everyone. Richard Murray, chief commercial officer at Telarus. Today, joining me for our executive interview is Adam Burke, VP of sales and partnerships at Quest Technology Management. Adam, thanks so much for joining us here today.
No.
Thanks for having me in studio today.
This is awesome. Excited.
We we just completed a a great year together. A lot of growth over what we had done together in twenty twenty four. I know you guys have grown overall as a company in your production last year as well. Let’s just start out by talking about like what you see was core to that growth and success in last year.
Yeah. No. So we appreciate the growth in the partnership and had amazing twenty twenty five together.
Majority of that business came from, you know, the advisor and the partner community having more outcome based conversations with their clients. That’s typically request succeeds the most is where we have the business outcome conversation and more and more advisors were leaning into complex engagements that tackle multiple layers of the IT stack. And Quest and the channel and as we’ve been a partner of yours for years, we attack multiple different layers of the IT stack. And we saw advisors lean into that, trying to get through education, through updating and letting them know different ways we can help.
And it’s bearing fruit. It’s been good to see.
And I think that’s one of the main things I wanted to talk about today because those layers and how you guys engage is fairly unique within the marketplace, what you guys do. And so talk to us, let’s start with when an advisor engages with Quest, kind of walk us through that process of what they should expect and what expectations they should set with their customer.
Yeah. So when you engage in the Quest, I’d say the first and foremost, be curious around what your clients are trying to achieve and then bringing us some information. Your engineering team does a fantastic job of this. Your advisors do a great job of this. Bring us the information of what your client’s trying to do as opposed to, hey, they might be buying this license or this piece of hardware or investing in this data center. Can you get me a quote?
Those conversations, we like to have internal conversations quickly with the advisor around what is the client trying to achieve?
And then we set the expectation of, okay, what resources do we need to bring to that first customer call to execute against that opportunity? And then we also do qualify pretty heavily with your advisors. How are they making this decision? You know, why are they making this move? You know, is this a review of maybe evaluating the technology or are they ready to move with something? Or is there a pain point or a compliance?
Why are they making this transition? None of these things happen in a vacuum. So we really try to invest in the qualification as much as possible to put the right resources with them.
And I think that I mean, it is a unique engagement when when many of our vendors are about, you know, they’re hammer and nail. We have a problem. You hit it. You solve the problem. Yeah. And you guys are in trying to just create overall solutions to solve the problem.
Yeah. So so it’s funny. We we actually align very, very well with the technology adviser community. We’re very, very similar to them as far as how they evaluate opportunities.
We’ve built a business around what we call a building block strategy. So we have cybersecurity assets, we have infrastructure assets, we have cloud assets, we have data center and we have application development resources. So we kind of are like a system integrator for the middle market where if you can understand what the client’s endpoint objective is, we have the same ability as a TA to go pull those resources, put it together in a holistic solution and deliver it back as a service or resell those components to the end user. And it’s a little bit of a dialogue as far as, because a lot of our competitors, they have their backup solution or they have their firewall solution or they have their data center.
And that’s the answer, right? You need pipeline, you need opportunities, and then you need to hit those opportunities with your whatever hammer and nail you got going on. And it works. It’s just we’ve built a company that basically takes what’s available in the market and then addresses the customer’s challenge and needs.
But the challenge with that is the TA, the advisor has to buy into that strategy and also critical customer has to buy into that strategy because ninety percent of the market, what we’re seeing is that hammer and nail approach. Hey, I’m gonna scale up to be the biggest backup provider in the world, or I’m gonna scale up to be the biggest data center provider in the world. We just have a different approach and there’s a huge, huge opportunity in the middle market for folks who can help solve those challenges.
And one of the things I’ve loved from my perspective is is the one at Telarus, you know, whose team is overbuilding our portfolio of suppliers, is you guys expand the tool belt for the TA.
I mean, you talked about how you you, in many respects, can operate like the TA. There are there are vendors and suppliers that have come to us that that don’t have channels. They’re really more of a resale model, and and you guys can implement them and take them on and then make that that go through. I’ve loved that. But I do wanna pull on a thread of something that you just mentioned. You’re seeing a lot of success in mid market.
Let’s talk about what what market trends you’re seeing within that mid market that our TAs need to make sure they’re watching out for and are are ready to help solve those problems in.
Yeah. So so one of the things we’re seeing a lot of, especially in the middle market, is people are kind of getting a little exhausted with the subscription models, right? The licensing SKUs, the as a service, all those types of things, they’re fantastic. But like we’ve seen private equity and other organizations have gotten involved and a lot of subscription based total contract value, annual contract value is getting pushed on the marketplace. And that’s been happening for the last three years. What’s the saying? You first have the innovators, then you have the imitators, then you have the idiots.
I’m not sure what phase we’re in right now, but I could venture to guess what phase we’re in right now with that. Maybe the third one.
And clients are getting frustrated with subscriptions for assets that are not being used. So what we’re seeing like similar, go ten years ago, telecom expense management, software expense management, evaluating what they have, what they’re subscribing to, and what they’re utilizing. Great entry point if you’re trying to be technology advisor and get clients to get the most out of their products.
That’s an area where a lot of people are looking for help, whether it’s in the Microsoft space, the security space, or, you know, just the business record space. There’s a lot of fat in licensing subscriptions right now, and people are trying to do more with less.
And there were there was a lot of promises made from from those products that are, to your point, now being found out and and tweaked and changed, and there’s a different way to engage. Are there any other solutions or technologies that are really specific in the mid market space?
So optimizing the investment for what they have. So you can go in there and you can help audit and you can help evaluate and see what they’re using. But also, how do you get the most out of that investment? So sometimes trusted advisors and technology advisors will pass on an engagement. Let’s say it was a security appliance or it was a tool or it was an investment that the client made, they missed that transaction. Go back six months, go back eight months, touch base on them. How’s that project going?
Because what we do is we help implement and optimize what they may have already invested in. A lot of MSPs, lot of VARs, a lot of system integrators kind of want the whole boat.
I don’t care about the whole boat. We’ll take a piece of it. Right? So they may have already invested in the Ferrari, but they now they need someone to help them manage, maintain, and operate that Ferrari. Or maybe they need a different, you know, a downgrade on that as well. But we can come in there and help them. The TA can can help solve the problem there too.
Never downgrade a Ferrari. Never downgrade. Yeah. Yeah.
With the remaining time, you guys do some very unique things. What’s the most unique product set that you guys have that you’re seeing success with?
So if I was to go to a TA and say, Hey, lead with this to move out of traditional UCaaS, CCaaS carrier sales, and you want to get involved in professional services or security or application development, we have a product called technical on call support where we have about eight out of ten times we’re closing that deal on the first call with the TA. And what technical on call support is, is basically think of it as Uber for engineering.
We have a network, we have resources, we can coordinate engineers on an international basis. I don’t care if it’s Perth, Australia or Frankfurt, Germany or Atlanta, Georgia. If you need a resource with a specific skill set or a specific capability, whether it’s a cable tech or a senior level engineer or a cybersecurity architect or a database administrator, don’t care what it is, you have a managed service with Quest where you open up a ticket, you have a resource coordinator, gets that person to the location and the project at the time you need them, at the time your client needs them.
Especially in the middle market, we all hear about technology being constrained, technology resources being constrained. Technical on call support is a no brainer. And we’re really excited. We just built out a pay as you go model.
Typically, it was a retainer based structure, but we listened to the channel and a lot of clients didn’t want the full retainer. So we built out a pay as you go, pay per drink model for those resources. Completely channel friendly, goes directly through the advisor.
Yeah. Very unique and a lot of success with those. Let’s close with, you guys have been in the channel for fifteen years. I think you more than than really any other supplier that comes to mind off top of my head. You you are highly engaged in in in the community with deals themselves. You see a lot of interactions with customers and advisers. What advice would you give to them about the best way to to pitch with Quest and win deals in this space?
Yeah. Great question. So stay curious and don’t worry about being the expert in the specific field. I see so many people get in their own way and kind of stop their momentum because they’re afraid that they’re going to look foolish or, you know, not have the direct answer or anything like that. There’s an amazing power in the ability to say, I don’t know the answer to that, but let me go find out. That if you want to lead with your customers or with your business, you have to be humble enough to say, I don’t know the answer to that, but I want to help you. Let me go find out.
And you have a supplier with Quest who believes that same thing. And I might not always have the answer for your engineering team, but you’ll sure bet that I’m gonna go find out and give them feedback like, hey, yeah, we can we can execute there or hey, that one’s not quite ready yet. So have that mindset as a TA. I’m not sure, but let me go find out. And if Telarus and Quest can’t figure it out, I don’t it’s not there.
With the portfolio that we all have, that that that’s great advice and I I think a great place for us to end. So that’s all we have today. I wanna thank Adam for joining us, giving us some great things to start the year with. Take care, everyone.