By Patrick Oborn, Adam Edwards, and Richard Murray
This blog will address the “why” behind our actions and to give you a sneak peek into the Telarus boardroom as we discuss our strategy. Spoiler alert! It’s all about our partner’s success!
IT PAYS TO BE A WINNER
Here at Telarus, it’s always been our goal to help partners sell more and achieve more. We started off writing unique pricing automation software, helping partners with search engine optimization, and other very non-traditional approaches to this business. We are firm believers in differentiation through innovation.
We’ve done very well maintaining a focus on technology, engineering, software, and account management, our partners and the industry require that we deliver more. Our network, cloud, and UCaaS providers are continuing to experience massive consolidation which translates to decreased support, high sales expectations, and reduced ability to work with multiple master agencies and direct partners. The best way to maintain and even improve partners’ experience through Telarus is to collectively sell more – it’s the only language our providers understand.
For the past 15 years, Telarus and CarrierSales have enjoyed 30 percent plus annual growth rates, a phenomenal accomplishment by any measure. With the hard work of our partners, our reinvestment in new technology, and with commitment of our carrier channel managers and internal back office staff, we’ve managed to earn the number one or two spot with the big boys in this industry: Comcast Business, Spectrum, InContact, ACC Business, CenturyLink, AireSpring, Nitel, and more. As a combined organization we’ll continue to increase that list, ensuring our partners have the resources and security they deserve.
TAKING THIS BUSINESS TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL
Even with this amazing organic growth, we need to grow faster to be ready for what our partners and providers will need from us. The agent model has proven to be the preferred method to distribute network and cloud services. With no geographic barriers to entry, cloud services can be sold anywhere; the issue is there isn’t a sales force large enough to address the market. It’s this trend that caused us to take a step back, survey the master agent landscape, and pursue acquisition discussions with our peers – all of whom understand this business and have a focus on supporting agents who are seeking to build residual-based consulting practices.
The three main characteristics we looked for included:
1. A master agent with new areas of expertise (by far the top trait!)
2. A master agent with a focus on carrier relationships that we did not have
3. A master agent who could help us achieve #1 status with more of our existing service providers
EXCITING NEW BENEFITS TO AGENT PARTNERS
With CarrierSales, which coincidently is located just five miles south of Telarus in Sandy, Utah, we found the perfect match. Through the addition of CarrierSales we will improve the agent experience by offering our partners:
1. Increased support with industry veterans
2. Contact center expertise and providers (InContact, Five9, and more)
3. Mobility expertise and providers (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint)
4. Direct access to every major ILEC at top-tier commission (AT&T, Verizon)
5. Diamond-level support and commission with CenturyLink
6. Access to cloud compute and cyber-security experts
The coming together of the two companies also means that Telarus partners will have access to new providers such as Cox, AT&T (direct), Verizon (direct), Bullseye, Fuze, Netfortris, CallTower, IntelePeer, PGi, Sprint, and more. Conversely, partners who work with CarrierSales will now have access to Comcast (direct), Spectrum (direct), Exede, International providers (Telstra, China Telecom, NTT, expereo, Tata, Telia Carrier, etc.), Mitel (formerly ShoreTel — premise phone systems), data centers (QTS, Peak10, DataBank (C7)), NaviSite (Managed Microsoft O365 and Azure), and more.
The combination of the two companies will also make Telarus’ patented tools like GeoQuote, the fiber maps app, the interactive UCaaS matrix, and free circuit monitoring (on all circuits) available to partners of CarrierSales, saving them time and helping them design better solutions for their clients. It also means Telarus partners can tap into the contact center and mobility expertise that CarrierSales has assembled to help agents close the most lucrative deals in this business.
As you can see, this combination is a huge step towards offering the partner community more value, creating a frictionless and safe place for them to turn to for complex opportunities for decades to come.
TIME FRAME
We are very excited about this merger and are racing against the clock to integrate the two companies. However, we also want to make sure we don’t rush things and do this right. Currently, we plan to complete our internal integration over the next 60 days, with an end-date goal of December 31, 2017.
We look forward to helping our partners take their businesses to a whole new level by broadening the amount of expertise they can access by working with us. We are excited about what our collective future holds as this business continues to shift in favor of the broker model. We love what we do and look forward to helping our partners see what others can’t for years to come!
To our continued success!
