Curt Allen, Ken Bisnoff, Other Channel Heavies Form Consulting Practice

Curt Allen, Ken Bisnoff and other big names in the channel have struck out on their own with a new consulting practice, EagleTEQ Advisors.

Allen left his job as Vonage’s channel chief and Bisnoff became a technology consultant after nearly 22 years with TPx. Other founders include:

EagleTEQ addresses the technology solutions provider and distributor markets, and the private equity/investor community. The founders have a combined 150 years of business experience, hence the hook “we have been there, done that.”

The consulting practice’s services include leadership advisers, sales on demand, sales enablement as a service and marketing as a service.

Cromwell originally founded the consulting practice in 2016 and the five are now equal partners.

EagleTEQ’s Mike Cromwell

“I’ve known my new business partners Curt Allen, Ken Bisnoff, Steve Braverman and Cardi Prinzi for many years, during which we’ve been competitors, business partners and over time have become close friends,” Cromwell said. “I’ve held them all with a high degree of respect and couldn’t ask for a better team to be working with to take my initial vision to an entirely new level. Our new business will focus on both technology solutions providers, as well as technology distributors such as channel partners, VARs and MSPs, with our mission being to help our clients accelerate their growth trajectory. While our focus initially starts by delivering a full suite of advisory solutions centered around business planning, go-to-market strategy, and sales and marketing, our combined expertise enables us to help our clients quickly pivot from our recommendations to operational execution.”

Quick Formation

Allen said the five founders came together in mid-December. It “steamrolled real quickly” toward an operating agreement and aligning resources.

EagleTEQ’s Curt Allen

“You can hire someone who will bring in a Harvard MBA who may or may not have worked in our space, or you can hire us, who’ve all sat in your seat and we’ve done your jobs,” Allen said. “We have a lot of engagements in the hopper already just from our network. A lot of fractional officer work seems to be emerging where someone will say, ‘Hey, I can’t necessarily afford to hire Curt Allen to come in and be channel chief, but I’d love to hire Curt as a fractional channel chief to help me, whether it’s coach someone on the team, help us find someone to run that role, or put a plan together for us to execute inside the channel, those types of things.”

EagleTEQ can provide chief revenue officer, channel chief and chief marketing officer roles, or help with mergers and acquisitions, he said.

There haven’t been many people starting consulting practices supporting either the buy side or the sell side of channel business, Allen said.

Channel businesses had to transform due to COVID-19,and EagleTEQ can help them with that continuing transformation, he said.

“We’re kind of authorities on successfully developing that remote workforce — that remote leadership,” Allen said. “We think a lot of them have been light on execution. And so we’re going to sell people strategy for sure. We’re going to work to understand their definition of success and build a strategic plan toward that. But it’s that next layer. It’s taking that 150-plus year user experience combined and building tactical plans to execute those things in this environment, whether it’s utilizing tools, understanding exactly what …

… the ROI is on purchasing, sales, resources, hiring, expanding, buying another business, moving into new products and moving into new markets.”

Assisting Partners with Growth Plans

Companies that have doubts about their plans will be looking for help, Allen said.

“We’re going to work with partners to help them understand their critical numbers, to help them build plans that help them decide, ‘Do I expand? Do I purchase sales resources? Do I try to open another market geographically? Or do I try to add practices to my suite of services?” he said. “These are all decisions that sales partners are thinking about every day, all while they’re running every aspect of their business and are resource-limited and those types of things. So there is a component of EagleTEQ that’s going to be focused on being of service to the partner base.”

For the first six months, the founders are going to determine through initial engagements what the market warrants, Allen said.

“We have a general idea where we think the need is,” he said. “But the marketplace is going to dictate where we focus as we move down the road and where we can do the most good. So super capital-light on the front end to give us the agility to kind of pivot as we’ve seen the marketplace pivot so much over the years. We’re not going to be pigeon-holed into, ‘We’re going to be these guys and this is what we do.’ We do believe those three target markets are pretty static. It’s going to be the providers. It’s going to be the distributors, and it’s going to be the investors that that will hire us.”

New ‘Retirement Plan’

Just a few short years ago, Allen emerged from retirement to become Windstream‘s channel chief. He now says the consulting practice is his retirement plan.

“I failed miserably at retirement because I can’t stand still,”  he said. “So this for us is what retirement looks like. We get to keep doing what we love to do when and where, and how we want to. We get to choose how we’re engaging and who we’re engaging with. I feel like this is something I could do forever.”

The founders hope EagleTEQ will make a big impact out there.

“For us, success isn’t necessarily building a bunch of brand equity,” he said. “It’s really about the work … and engaging with partners from an expansion perspective. We wouldn’t expect to add other partners at the founder level. But we absolutely expect to draw from our network of experts, sector experts in different categories, whether it be product sets or disciplines, and have folks as contractors that would help us in some of these engagements. We would expect later this year to start hiring employees.”

EagleTEQ’s Ken Bisnoff

Bisnoff said the consulting practice is an opportunity for him to work alongside a team of “technology industry leaders that I have always respected, admired and liked.”

“I’ve started and managed multiple businesses and have adapted to incredible transformations with technology, sales and marketing initiatives,” Braverman said. “I love applying my 29 years of experience and near future vision to help other people’s businesses think differently, which ultimately creates growth and positive culture.”

And Prinzi said the consulting practice provides “me and the entire team with the opportunity to put our many varied experiences to use so that we can add real value to help clients make material improvements in their business.”