Telarus Vets Start New TSD Targeting Enterprise-Focused Partners

XCV Partners has emerged as a technology solution distributor (TSD) targeting an elite group of enterprise-selling partners.

The Texas-based TSD emerged this week under the leadership of Doug Tolley and Roger Blohm, two former leaders at VXsuite and Telarus, with a boutique model of sorts. Tolley and Blohm tell Channel Futures that they are not looking to replace the national TSDs — which include Telarus, Avant, Intelisys and Sandler Partners. Instead, they say they want to work with a select group of mature agents and suppliers who want to engage in lead sharing and a different form of MDF.

XCV Partners’ Doug Tolley

“We don’t think this is like a revolution where the TSDs have done a bad job; this is not a knock on them,” Tolley told Channel Futures. “We think there’s a certain group of partners who have evolved beyond what they can provide. For us, this is an evolution. This is the next logical step in the evolution of the growth of the TSDs at the top of the scale. Not in the masses, but at the top of the scale.”

Moreover, the company is offering higher pass-through of vendor commissions to partners, mitigating what XCV Partners leaders call a “TSD tax.” That taxation occurs when agents sell a deal through a TSD yet don’t leverage any of its resources. XCV Partners is targeting partner firms that have built up their organizations to the point where they employ their own sales engineers.

The company is offering four levels of commission split, ranging from 85/15% to 95/5%. The pass-through level is tied to the number of sales partners run through XCV (which is the Roman numeral for 95), with the top quadrant taking on equity in the company.

XCV Partners’ Roger Blohm

“You have an 80-20 pass-through as a standard process. Then, TSDs layer on all these other things: engineering support, account management support, supplier management, concierge-level service, solution sales, etc. Ultimately, the high-performing agents who don’t need all that extra stuff end up paying for it, whether they use it or not. We’re targeting high-performing, superstar, enterprise-selling agents who don’t want all of the fluff and want two things: excellent supplier relationships and the highest possible pass-through,” said Tolley, XCV’s general manager and vice president of channels.

XCV Partners exists under Caliber Solutions Holdings, a family of businesses that contains the technology advisor firm Caliber Solutions and technology procurement company Novar. Caliber, led by TA 101’er Chris Gamble, has signed on. The agency’s success in the enterprise space helped it earn recognition on the Inc. 5000. But in the wake of an acquisition of one of Caliber’s main TSD partners, the partner was mulling whether it should sign direct contracts with its key suppliers.

For Gamble and Caliber, XCV Partners has emerged as the alternative. XCV said it has signed agreements with 10 suppliers, which it lists on its website.

Lumen confirmed to Channel Futures on Friday that it has signed an agreement with XCV. Another company on the list, an aggregator, said it is in the process of signing an agreement, but has not officially signed a contract yet. In one case, XCV leaders said that had formed a verbal agreement with a vendor to transfer a contract Caliber held into XCV’s name.

However, Tolley said they see 30 or 40 as the ceiling for how many vendors XCV intends to sign.

(Editor’s Note: Channel Futures originally listed eSentire as one of the signed suppliers, as XCV lists it on its website. After the article was published, a spokesperson for eSentire told Channel Futures that eSentire has not signed an agreement with XCV.)

“We’re chasing the suppliers our partners already tell us they need. Caliber says, ‘Hey, we’ve got to deal right now with so-and-so. We need to track those guys down.’ There’s a little bit of that,” Tolley said. “But even more importantly, we’ve got our …