When asked why he invited other technology advisors to his annual customer appreciation event, Michael Agri's answer was simple and direct.

"Most of them brought me all these customers," Agri, president of North Atlantic Consultants, told Channel Dive. North Atlantic Consultants formed a partner network called Verticle with three other firms last year, exchanging sales leads through it to collectively cross-sell into customer accounts.

They are joining a growing TA collaboration movement aimed at jointly selling to and supporting customers. Agri said 60% of his 2025 business came fromTechnology Advisor Alliancemember referrals.

While some TAs are hiring subject matter experts to enter new technologies and verticals, and others are being absorbed and merged into private equity-backed platforms, other TAs see partnerships as the way forward.

"If you want to look bigger and appear to have more expertise, the trend now is for TAs to come together, sign cooperation agreements, and then go to market jointly," said JP Panzica, CEO of Accelerate Partners. His company invited TAs to its sales kickoff in February. Accelerate helps partners provide cybersecurity consulting and manage LLM (large language model) adoption.

Large LLM providersdo not pay commissions to partners, making services the next best revenue source. However, servicesare not native territory for TA businesses。

"Do I build it myself and recognize revenue within my TA? Or do I set up a subsidiary LLC to do the AI MSP business? These are real-time discussions the new generation of TAs is having about how we will handle this situation," Panzica said.

TA partnerships differ from the massive "super agencies" that staff multiple technology practice areas internally. Seth Penland, CEO of Columbia Capital-backed Bluewave Technology Group, said last week at Channel Partners Conference & Expo that national platforms and a few regional boutiques will ultimately capture 80% to 90% of the TA market. Partnerships allow smaller firms to pool resources to remain competitive.

Agri believes IT buyers want to treat TAs like primary care physicians. When a patient injures their foot, the doctor issues a referral to a podiatrist. Customers understand and value partners who recognize their own strengths and bring in experts to complement them.

"Collaboration, in my view, is no longer optional. It is mandatory," Agri said.

Use cases vary. Sonya Ziegler Meline, president of Sierra Peak Solutions, lends her hospitality industry expertise to other partners while bringing in partners to handle contact center and AI business. Agri receives referrals for Vonage and RingCentral customers who need certified partners to manage their solutions. Accelerate, meanwhile, has hired a CISO familiar with the security space.

Thanks to partnerships, TAs do not have to say "no" to customers—and do not have to fake expertise.

"I would rather make sure my customers get the expertise they need than go in and try to force a square peg into a round hole," Ziegler Meline said at Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

One of Accelerate's partners was helping a credit union evaluate its telecom expenses. The credit union wanted to migrate to the cloud, but that TA was not strong in that area. Accelerate stepped into the deal, procured disaster recovery as a service, and brought the customer into Tierpoint's data center.

Technology services distributor Telarus split the commission between the two partners. The residual commission model makes it easier for partners to collaborate on deals.

"We don't even have to pay them an hourly fee, which is incredible, because they are in the same industry as us," said Ashley Rowland, co-founder of TAA. "So they understand what the payoff is if we close the deal together."

Why partnerships are surging

TSDs (technology services distributors) are facilitating collaboration between partners through revenue-sharing options. In past decades, the original TA had to write checks to its partners. Now, upstream TSDs can directly restructure the finances of a deal.

"Intelisys or Sandler or Telarus will just send me a 50% check and send you a 50% check, and we don't even have to touch anything," Agri said.

TSDs provide specialized sales engineers that TAs can bring into customer calls to go beyond their own capabilities. The problem is that there is a limited number of sales engineers who can consistently serve the TA community.

"TSDs are hiring some really good engineers. But sometimes in front of a big opportunity, the customer will say, 'Oh, that meeting was great. Let me bring this team in,'" said Ryan Rowland, co-founder of TAA. "Meeting after meeting after meeting, and then the TSD will say, 'Hey, guys, there are other TAs that want to use this engineer too. You can't lock him up for six meetings this month.'"

Partners are also more interconnected and visible than in the past. TAs are leveraging third-party associations like TAA andTCSPto vet potential vendors and partners.

"We never had anything like this before, where we could meet privately, with no TSDs, no vendors, and we could share secrets," Agri said. "We can share information like, 'Who is terrible?' Because knowing who is not good at something is just as important as knowing who is good at something."

Vendors are also increasingly supportive of partnerships, said Cynthia Ferrell, head of TeamKC Telecom, a member of the Verticle group. Unified communications and contact center providers actually expect sales partners to bring in specialized service partners. The key is to notify them at the start of the deal, Ferrell said.

"You won't encounter any resistance at all," she said.

Going deeper into partnerships within Verticle has energized George Stewart, managing director of Prime Telecom Consulting.

"Now I am part of a team going to market together. I have an incredible sales force that I never had before," Stewart said.