Scott Valentine Gives Partners a B2B Savings Play With New Venture

Channel veteran Scott Valentine has launched a firm that will help technology advisors bring non-telecom related B2B savings to clients.

Valentine, a longtime fixture in the Sprint/T-Mobile channel, started a firm called StopTheStress.com, which provides contingency-based auditing services. Valentine has gathered a group of suppliers, including a fintech company and a medical underpayments provider. He will serve as the bridge between the audit providers and the base of technology advisors/agents that he is recruiting to StopTheStress’ referral program.

StopTheStress’ Scott Valentine

“That’s where my experience comes in. I understand the genre. They haven’t really approached this genre because they don’t understand it,” Valentine told Channel Futures.

Those providers stand to tap into agents’ rich customer bases with B2B savings audits, especially considering that many agents haven’t explored expense management opportunities outside of IT and telecom. The agents would only need to set up an appointment with the customer and the audit provider.

“They certainly could be on as many calls as they want to be, but they don’t have to go beyond procurement,” Valentine said.

He added that his firm and its partners find savings more than 80% of the time. For example, the fintech partner helps companies expand the amount of virtual payments they can make to vendors.

Compensation

Valentine added said that agents can earn residual commissions – which stem out of the savings the auditors generate – that last from three to 15 years.

“I’m building this based on getting people paid well, and there’s some very significant money that comes out of both the fintech side and the medical underpayment side,” Valentine said. “These are not small referral payments. They can range anywhere from a few thousand dollars a month and some cases on the medical side could range up in six figures.”

Valentine will focus on ensuring agents are paid. He said that’s a role he grew accustomed to working on the vendor side of the channel.

Rising Demand for B2B Savings

Valentine said the B2B savings game has drastically changed since the pandemic. Whereas chief financial officers previously would have required the auditor to live nearby, now a video call introduction is extremely feasible. Moreover, Valentine said his group is unique in that few other shops provide free consultation. And in a macroeconomic downturn where financial leaders are looking to cut expenses where they can, CFOs are more willing than ever to discuss these types of audits.

“What do they have to lose? There’s other companies charging million-dollar consulting fees to do things like this,” he said.

Valentine spent 23 years working in the channel. He spent 21 years at Sprint, and stayed with the company following its merger with T-Mobile. However, following the sale of T-Mobile’s its wireline business to Cogent, Valentine decided to strike out on his own.

He said he first bought the StopTheStress.com URL when his daughter was a year old. That was 28 years ago.

“I literally dialed up on AOL and bought that domain,” he said.

Valentine said the focus on non-telecom solutions fits nicely existing players in the channel. His firm avoids competing with technology expense management providers, and it also positions itself as a non-competitor to the tech services distributors, who are more focused on core technology solutions.

“I don’t want to distract them, because they don’t want their agents distracted by non-technology stack ideas. But I can talk to the agent about putting this in our portfolio and then making sure they know they have the support from my company and my vendors to take it from there,” Valentine said.