TelePacific, Sandler Partners Host Luncheon for Texas Partners

TelePacific Communications recently teamed with Sandler Partners, its top-performing master agency, to host a luncheon at the Intercontinental Dallas for existing and prospective agent partners operating in Texas markets.

Dick Jalkut, president and CEO of TelePacific, kicked off the event by sharing his insights on industry trends and market developments, and articulating the new focus and capabilities that TelePacific is bringing to the Texas market in partnership with Sandler Partners.

In late 2011, TelePacific acquired Tel West Network Services Corp., a fiber optic network provider linking the five biggest metro markets in Texas. At the time, Tel West was direct sales focused. TelePacific initiated an integration effort to bring Tel Wests agent program into its own agent channel. This past January, with Tel Wests operations and agent program fully integrated, the company’s name was changed to TelePacific Communications Co., and channel management started forging new agent relationships in Texas.

The agent community has always been very important to us,” explained Ken Bisnoff, senior vice president of strategic opportunities and channel chief for TelePacific. We have developed terrific relationships with agents in California and Nevada, and we intend to do the same in Texas. This event provided us with an opportunity to meet and greet many of the agents who work with Sandler Partners in Texas, and further educate them on our capabilities, agent-centric philosophy and unwavering commitment to supporting agents and taking care of customers.”

Bisnoff’s presentation during the luncheon touched on universal agent concerns such as timely quoting and sales support, sales engineering assistance, provisioning support, timely and accurate billing, and other service and support themes as well as TelePacifics Ethernet broadband footprint and strong performance in customer satisfaction and retention as documented in third-party surveys.

Alan Sandler, managing partner of Sandler Partners, took advantage of the event to explain how dealing with TelePacific will differ from agents’ past experiences dealing with Tel West, man of which were reported as being unpleasant.

The Tel West to TelePacific transition isnt just a name change,” Sandler said. Its a sea change. Having been an independent agent myself, and now representing the interests of nearly 2,000 agents, it would be difficult to overstate the importance of working with agent-friendly carriers, and TelePacific strongly supports the agent community.”

Feedback from agents attending the luncheon was positive. Paul Seeley, Southwest regional vice president for Sandler Partners, reported that agents working with Sandler Partners Texas office appreciated TelePacific’s message of channel commitment. Based on the feedback we received, agents were really intrigued and appreciated what they saw and heard at the luncheon,” Seeley said. I dont think it will be long before TelePacific duplicates its channel distribution success from other markets and scales up quickly in Texas.”