Telarus Discusses AI, Tech Advisor Program and More
ChannelVision welcomes Telarus’ SVP of sales, Tim Basa, to the program. Listen to this podcast for insight into Telarus’ contributions to the broader community, resources businesses need, data readiness for AI, the Better Way pitch and Telarus’ Tech Advisor program.
00:00:00 [Music] Welcome everybody to this Channel Vision podcast right here on channelvisionmag.com. And joining us right now, a very special guest. It’s not very often that we get to talk to a man of this caliber. We have from Taris, we have the SVP of sales, Tim Basa. Tim, how you doing this morning? I’m doing great, Brady. A man of this caliber. I don’t know how to I guess I got to just take the compliment. I I appreciate it. That’s humbling. It’s great to be on It’s great to be on the big show. It’s a
00:00:41 It’s a huge honor for us as well. Uh let’s kind of jump right in with everything. Sure. What are some of the ways that Toaris contributes to today’s channel community? Yeah, that’s interesting because we say the word community a lot around Toaris. We’re very community focused, focused on giving back, offering education and enablement really at every turn for our adviserss. So whether an adviser is just starting in the technology advisor space or maybe leaning into advisory services, they’re a software integrator or a
00:01:16 managed service provider, we want them to feel part of something. So when they come to Taris, the community embraces them. They get the opportunity to attend both live and virtual education events. They get tons of information uh written and also in Tallaris University that’s pre-recorded uh for them to just get up to speed and really get involved. And then of course our our live events all over the country. A lot of these are smaller intimate events, you know, 20 to 50 technology advisors that again meet
00:01:49 you wherever you are. Whether you’re a soloist or you have an established business with employees around the country, they all get a chance to attend. And then every year we have Tolaris Partner Summit, which is our big event. There’s a couple thousand people will come there and it’s total immersion into the Toaris community. So you you really get a good feel. And then we also do a lot of great recognition trips. So, President’s Club, chairman’s club, partner advisory council. So, really, we consider ourselves drivers in the
00:02:18 community. We want this community to thrive and be able to extend into the business world with our cohort of advisors. Uh, if that makes sense. Absolutely. You described a lot of different, I guess you’d say, animals in this community. At the core of it, what are businesses looking for today? Yeah. When you look at an enduser, so let’s just focus on them. So our advisor community as you know serves enduser customers and the enduser is looking for especially now Brady with all the different technologies and competing
00:02:50 priorities. I don’t think there’s ever been a more confusing time to be a business leader. They’re looking for confidence and clarity. Right? They want to know definitively or have a path or have a good resource to make business decisions. And I think the same could be said about the adviser. The adviser wants to have confidence to approach their end user customer with confidence and create the clarity for that end user. And I think that’s a lot of what we’re focused on here. It’s mostly what we’re focused on is arm the advisor with
00:03:23 the services, solutions, and tools to be able to go to their business customer and advance them confidently along with their individual business. Well, I I think confusing is a great way to put it, you know, because there’s so much out there. Uh what are some of the reseller resources that uh that Toaris offers? Yeah, it’s interesting you use the word reseller, Brady, because more and more traditional resellers, so people who weren’t really involved in what we call a referral model where they help facilitate a sale, say between
00:03:56 Comcast and an end customer and get paid a residual commission. Many of these resellers were focused on doing exactly that, reselling a service, right? So it could be a a MSP or a VAR, I think what we’re offering is is a better path forward. So instead of going and negotiating contracts with suppliers, navigating business terms, navigating reseller terms, billing and collecting revenue, doing all of the auditing that goes along with that, and servicing the customer right alongside. There’s a lot
00:04:32 going on in those business transactions. What resellers are doing when they come to Terara, so whether that’s a managed service provider, a software integrator, um big companies that do giant project management, uh technology project management, even construction project management, when they come to Tallaris, what they’re looking for is the easy button. They want to be able to access all the providers and all of the resources necessary to sell those providers without the traditional confusion and that goes along with
00:05:02 navigating all those contracts and build long-term recurring revenue for the relationships they create. So, I think we offer a a great path forward for the resellers who are looking to expand recurring revenue without maybe some of the hoops they used to have to jump through to be a reseller. We’re we’re a bit of the easy button today. Brady, you you mentioned kind of like a great a better path basically and there’s been a lot of buzz about’s better way pitch. Could you talk about that and kind of what it
00:05:35 encompasses? Yeah, look, whether you’re a business owner listening to this podcast, you own a business advis business advisory technology advisory service, or you’re an end customer. There’s I call it a six-pack, a three and three. There’s three limitations that every business has. They have a limitation on time, they have a limitation on money, and they have a limitation on human resources. There’s also only three ways to round out the six-pack that businesses can really grow. They have to attract new customers
00:06:08 to their business. They have to sell more and retain their existing customers. And then they can raise prices. So three and three. I think what we offer is a better way for a traditional MSP or a traditional software reseller or a traditional consultant to navigate those environments both for themselves and their client. Like I just talked about, we give them a a clear glide path on any service that they want to represent, whether it’s advanced networking, contact center, UKcast, unified communication as a service or
00:06:47 communication platform as a service, cloud, and I get I know cloud broad topic and so is cyber security also a broad topic, but our better way is become part of the teraris community and let us fast track you on a path to success with any or all of the categories that interest you to help you service your customer in a better way, uh, a broader way, which also boxes out the competition. Uh, we can talk about that too. Boxes out the competition and really helps you with attracting more new clients. So more opportunity top of
00:07:23 funnel converting those opportunities into wins and then at the end of the day generating more revenue for your business while you help your customer do the same. All right. Now obviously covers a lot of ground as a tsd and uh you mentioned all these different categories. Uh one that’s been absolutely white hot and constantly expanding is AI. Uh what what what needs are you seeing in this area? Yeah, look AI is a buzzword everywhere. It means different things to different people. I think that our big focus is around AI
00:07:59 readiness for advisors. So getting their mind right and also helping them think about readiness for their customers also uh around AI enablement. So making sure that we have the right providers in our portfolio to enable the solutions that advisers and their customers are going to want. So uh for us we want to be the clarity and the confusion sort of the the the clear signal in all the noise and also help help our adviserss do the same thing. So back to that combination of give them clarity, inspire
00:08:36 confidence, advance together. uh and we’ve built as you know we’ve built a lot of materials around that uh AI readiness uh a lot of white papers and tools that our advisers have access to. It’s interesting that you say that because I was going to ask about the data readiness for AI uh the ebook that published not that long ago. Uh how does this specifically kind of assist with uh leading versus lagging in in your transformation? Yeah, I think it’s I’ll use a simple analogy. If you want to paint your house, there’s a lot of steps
00:09:12 to get it right and make sure the paint sticks and it endures for 10, 15, 25, 50 years, whatever the time frame is you’re hoping for, right? And I think with AI, it’s very similar. There could be a lot of excitement that you want to go and and do something just like, you know, painting your house, right? Excitement. Hey, I want to get the fresh color on. I have a big grad party coming. I just got to get it done. Well, if you miss steps, you pay the price later. So, we’ve already seen that with AI. So, what
00:09:39 we’ve what we’ve done with the AI readiness tools is laid out steps. Think about the 25 steps to paint your house better. We’ve done that for AI. So, a customerf facer to go through and look at the steps required to get ready for AI at whatever level they want to go. Whether it’s an over-the-top solution, AI that’s going to sit on top of what they already have or a rip and replace where they’re going to pull out a technology, put a new technology in that’s AI enabled. We want to give them the steps to success
00:10:14 as we see them and as the market sees them today. The great thing about this is this is going to be an evergreen document. So as changes are made in the marketplace and technology will continue to update both the checklists and information information informative white papers and trainings that we have. Is there a best way in your opinion to harness AI’s power? I think the best way is in the eye of the beholder like beauty Brady. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. AI it depends on what the business owner is is trying to get out
00:10:46 of the tool set. And I think that’s where advisers, the best advisers are really able to unpack what’s going on in their customers environment, clearly identify and triage what’s the most important thing. Uh in some case it might be the the easiest path to get a good proof of concept right for AI. So I think is there a best way? I think the best way is in the eye of the beholder. I think the most important thing is to identify the ways. Then prioritize where you want to start. Then do the AI readiness based on where
00:11:22 you’re going to start to make sure that you check all the boxes that you’re you’re ready to take the next steps. And be careful of shortcuts. It’s really easy in this environment to get excited and try to make a decision quickly. I think you have to go slow to go fast. uh a lot of these decisions are going to be made, you know, once every three years, once every five years. Uh the decision makers making them are going to put a lot of thought and contemplation. So, I think you stay close to your buyer, be
00:11:49 part of the decision-m process, nurture them through maybe a short-term solution and the readiness to get them to a great long-term solution and and the and ultimately the best possible outcome for their business. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Uh now, I wanted to talk about Terresa’s tech advisor program. I know it’s been instrumental for a lot of companies. What sort of value does Taris bring to this program and basically what sets it apart? Yeah, it’s similar in context if you want to talk about it to
00:12:19 what we just said for the customer. If you’re an adviser, what we try to do is map specifically to the advisor’s needs. So, if you’re a really experienced, fully scaled advisor, uh a lot of times they come to us and they say, “We don’t need anything from you, right? We already have engineers. We already have a great quotes team. We already we already and that’s great. So, we let we let them know, hey, that’s that’s perfect. What we find out is sometimes when you have your own engineers, you might have two and we have 20. Uh our
00:12:48 engineers might just be great thought partners for engineers because sometimes it’s lonely at the top, Brady. Right. So, you need you just need someone you can riff with. So if you’re fully scaled, maybe the maybe the value or the real the real benefit to you is that you have a thought partner and you’re also aligned with someone who has the scale to support you as you scale. Now go the opposite direction and let’s say you’re a soloist and you’re relatively new to the technology advisor space. Well, now
00:13:16 we have the equivalent of a PhD in becoming a technology adviser. You join the Toaris community. You have educational events, local, regional, national. You have Toaris University. You have the full support of our sales engineers, solution architects, our advanced solutions team that dives into each practice that we already talked about, whether it’s cloud, mobility, IoT, advanced networking, UKcast, CCASS, we can really lean in and help you build those practices. And then on top of on top of all of those things, you have a
00:13:48 dedicated SPDM or PDM partner development manager that’s working with you shouldertoshoulder to help you navigate best practices. And I think where the rubber meets the road is sometimes on that local relationship or that that onetoone relationship with a partner development manager that understands our community and helps really map to the success points you want. And then of course, you know, you can imagine with over 20 years of experience in the space, we have all of the back office tools that you would
00:14:17 need. So we have Tallaris Hub that’s really an all-in-one operating system for an adviser to manage quotes, orders, commissions, detailed reporting. Um, and then you when you win big with Toaris and maybe you need a project manager, we have a project management service. Uh maybe you want help managing your account base. We have a customer success service. So I think the the potential here is limitless. And for the advisers listening uh get a hold of us and and help us unpack the path to success for
00:14:51 you. Uh any other differentiators for Taris that uh you know really drill home the differences? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, Brady, we’re we’re a modern distribution platform for anybody looking to get into the sale or represent the services, this abundance of services that is out there. Don’t limit yourself to the direct contracts you have. Don’t limit yourself to being a spe in one area. Um, I think the the days of the specialist are great, but a specialist in today’s world is analogous
00:15:29 to a plumber. And Brady, if you were going to build your dream home, you wouldn’t call the plumber first. You’d get an architect, right? Or you’d get a general contractor. So I think what what our differentiator is is we help technology advisors be great general contractors to build complete projects using our services, solutions and tools, all the things that we’ve talked about so far today and help them get their business to the next level. I like to say sometimes adviserss will come to me and say, “Hey, I’m stuck.” So I’ve heard
00:16:04 it so much now and I’ve watched adviserss get unstuck. I’d say a differentiator for us is we help an adviser get unstuck. We help them get to the next level, whatever their next level is for them. So for someone it might be just getting their next five customers and for somebody else it might be building a whole brand new sales team and for somebody else it might be expanding nationally with a with new offices. Wherever they are, we’re going to meet them where they are today and help them meet their most ambitious
00:16:30 goals. All right, that’s great stuff right there, Tim. Uh so if people want more information, maybe follow along at home. uh Toaris the tech advisor program or any of the number of thought leadership things that you guys have going on like where can they go? Yeah, of coursearis.com is loaded with information. So they can download all of the resources the the outward facing resources there. If they’re not a Toaris advisor and they want to become a Toaris adviser, they can also they can also reach out to us via the website and get
00:17:01 access to university and all of our events around the country. Um, they’ll also see a lot of posts on LinkedIn. So, if there’s somebody that they know in the Toaris community already, maybe they’re connected with on LinkedIn, they can of course reach out to that person, you can reach directly out to me. Uh, I’m Timbasa everywhere on social and I’d be happy to start their path to success with Taris. All right. Uh, Tim, thank you so much for the time as always. Thank you, Brady. Appreciate you guys.
00:17:30 Of course. Yeah. And while you guys are online checking out Toaris and all the great things that they have going on, don’t forget to also visit channelvisionmag.com. On there you can find great podcasts like this one as well as CVTVs and webinars and white papers and uh daily blogs and just so much going on on channelvisionmag.com. Uh don’t forget to also give us a like and a subscribe so you know when new episodes drop. And that’s going to do it for today with our good friends Toaris. This has been Channel Vision Podcast.
00:17:59 Take care. [Music]