Most people we talk to ask the same question within the first five minutes:

"Wait — if I'm not paying you, how do you make money? And what's the catch?"

Fair question. Here's the honest answer.

The short version

Service providers compensate us directly when we bring them business. They treat us like an outside sales channel — the same way a software company pays a reseller. You pay the provider's standard rate. We get paid by the provider on top of that. Your price doesn't change.

You pay the provider's standard rate whether you go direct or through us. We earn a residual from the provider. The math works out the same for you either way — except we usually find better pricing than you'd get on your own.

That's the whole model. There's no asterisk.

Who pays us (and who doesn't)

Service providers pay us a monthly residual — a small percentage of what you spend with them — for as long as you're a customer. That residual comes out of the provider's margin, not added to your bill.

We have direct agreements with regional providers like Hunter Communications, LS Networks, TDS, and Nuwave. For everything else, we work through master technology services distributors (TSDs) that give us national access to AT&T, Comcast Business, Spectrum, Lumen, RingCentral, Zoom, and essentially every other major provider in the US.

Either way, the customer pays the provider directly. We're never in the billing path.

Why providers actually prefer this

This is the part that surprises people. Service providers don't tolerate brokers because they have to — they actively prefer working with us for certain accounts.

A direct sales rep has one product to sell: theirs. They have quota pressure, they have to qualify every deal against internal criteria, and they're not incentivized to design the best solution — only to close their solution.

We come in with a qualified customer who's been pre-researched, knows what they need, and is ready to sign. The provider's customer acquisition cost drops significantly. They'd rather pay us a residual than fund another inside sales rep.

What we actually do

The work falls into five buckets:

  • Research. What providers actually serve your address. What service tiers they offer. What promotions are active right now. Whether your current setup has redundancy gaps. What's about to be decommissioned (looking at you, copper POTS lines).

  • Quote. Multiple providers, side-by-side, with apples-to-apples comparisons of MRC, install cost, contract length, and SLA. Not just the rate card numbers — the real numbers after we negotiate.

  • Contract review. Provider contracts are written by provider lawyers. We read the fine print so you don't have to. Termination fees, MAC fees, SLA exclusions, auto-renewal traps.

  • Implementation management. This is where direct sales falls apart. After the contract is signed, the rep disappears. Implementation gets handed to a coordinator in another department who doesn't know your account. We stay involved — coordinating with providers, escalating when timelines slip, making sure cutover happens cleanly.

  • Ongoing escalation and advocacy. The provider is your front line for support — they own the network, the equipment, and the troubleshooting. When you're not getting the resolution you need, or a ticket is stuck, we step in. We have direct channels into the providers that customers don't, and we use them.

Why this beats going direct

Three structural reasons.

Going direct

  • One provider per conversation
  • Sales rep paid on quota, not fit
  • Disappears after the sale
  • You're one of thousands of accounts
  • No leverage on pricing

Through Insero

  • Multiple providers compared side-by-side
  • We're paid the same regardless of provider
  • Stay involved through implementation and beyond
  • You're a real account — we have hundreds, not millions
  • Volume leverage with every provider we work with

The vendor neutrality is the big one. We don't care which provider you end up with — we get paid either way. Which means we recommend what fits, not what's most profitable for us.

"Am I really not paying more?"

Direct answer: no. Often less.

Provider pricing comes from their rate card. Direct sales reps can discount within a range. Brokers can discount within that same range — sometimes a different one, because we have volume relationships.

What's more, providers regularly run promotions that aren't shown on the public-facing rate card. Free install. Months of free service. Equipment credits. Term-length kickers. We see those in our partner portals. Direct customers often don't.

The pricing comparison usually breaks one of two ways:

  1. We match the direct quote (most common)
  2. We beat it via promotions or programs you didn't know existed

Almost never does going through us cost more.

When a broker doesn't make sense

We're not always the right answer.

When going direct is probably fine:

  • You're a one-person business with a single internet line and you're happy with it
  • Your IT person has deep provider relationships and prefers to manage everything directly

Where brokers add real value:

  • You have multiple services across multiple providers
  • You have more than one location
  • Your current contract is up for renewal
  • You're moving offices
  • You're hitting reliability problems and need a redundancy strategy
  • Your business depends on uptime and you'd rather have an advocate when things break

If that's you, the math is straightforward. Same price as direct, plus an actual advocate.

Common questions

The takeaway

The "free" part isn't a gimmick or a loss-leader. It's how the channel has been structured for thirty years. Service providers pay channel partners because it's cheaper for them than building internal sales teams to cover every market segment.

You get the same pricing, the same providers, and a real advocate. That's it. That's the whole pitch.