Should We Just Call Master Agents Distributors?

Primary agent? Services distributor? Technology sourcing platform? Many people in the channel want to do away with the term master agent, but they can’t agree on a replacement.

Master agent leaders are discussing how they can most accurately describe themselves to their partners and the outside world. And it’s not just master agents participating in this discussion. Vendors and channel partners are also lobbying for new terminology. As Channel Futures wrote last week, some partners consider master agent a racially offensive term, while other partners simply think it misrepresents the relationship between master agents and subagents.

However, disagreement abounds on how to proceed. While vendors like Comcast are looking to build the term “primary agent” into their vocabulary, master agents have already attempted to brand themselves as “technology services distributors.”

Telarus’ Richard Murray

“What would be interesting is if people adopt ‘technology services distributor’ at the same time as the providers say, ‘We like primary agent,’ and you end up with VHS vs. beta,” Telarus chief operations officer Richard Murray said.

The industry could end up with competing terms that confuse partners and customers even more. That’s why Murray said he’s eager for everyone in the channel to engage in this discussion.

“Until it’s more broadly embraced by all masters, suppliers and subagents, everyone’s going to keep running back to the muscle memory of master agent,” Murray said.

The Default

Murray said channel partners lean toward “master agent” because it describes tiering well. The master agent aggregates the contracts, and the subagents produce the sales. However, he said the term master agent makes no sense to the outside world.

“If you’re getting a haircut and somebody asks you what you do, you can’t say, ‘I’m a master agent,’” he said.

And the outside world consists of more than just barbers. Consider private equity firms and other purchasers, who are eeyeing the channel for the first time. Murray said niche terms like master agent confuse and distract these prospective buyers.

“Most of them get really glassy-eyed when they hear the term master agent,” he said.

Murray said he often uses the insurance broker model to describe Telarus to the barber.

“The barber tends to know an insurance agent and knows that that agent is brokering somebody,” he said.

While that approach works for short, casual conversations, does it communicate the full value of a master agency? Kelli McMillan, national partner manager at Five9, doesn’t think so.

Five9’s Kelli McMillan

“They do so much more than contracts,” McMillan said. “They do contracts, yes, but they also do back-office support, and they have a lending arm.”

Service Distributors?

Several master agents, including TBI and Telarus, started calling themselves technology services distributors a few years ago. However, their initiative didn’t affect channel partners’ everyday language.

TBI’s Mike Onystok

“It didn’t stick,” said Mike Onystok, TBI’s senior vice president of operations. “The channel kind of just reverted back to master agent, and to save time, we just continued to go with that.”

But Onystok and Murray still see the usefulness of the term technology services distributor.
“You’re a distributor versus a consultant or whatever element a subagent may want to take on,” Murray said. “It also provides some level of understanding of function and speaks externally in a way that master agent never did.”

And by some accounts, this isn’t …