About LevelTech
We spent years selling the thing you're now being sold.
Almost everyone who explains your technology options has a stake in which one you pick. We don't, and we know exactly how that stake works, because we used to have one.
Full disclosure
Here's how we get paid, before you ask.
We're compensated by the supplier ecosystem, the same way your insurance broker is paid by the carriers. You've already trusted that model with something more important than your phone system.
What that means in practice
- You pay us nothing. No fee, no retainer, no hourly rate.
- If you sign with a provider we brought you, that provider pays us a residual out of margin they had already built in.
- Your price is the same whether you come through us or walk in the front door.
- The residual only keeps paying while you're still a customer, so we have every reason to get the fit right and none to push you somewhere you'll leave in a year.
- Telling you to stay exactly where you are is a perfectly good outcome, and it happens.
Rates are close enough across providers that steering you wrong isn't worth it to us. If one is out of line with the others, we'll say so before you decide.
What we actually do
Four things, and none of them involve installing anything.
Work out what you've got
A real inventory of what you're paying for, what it's doing, and which contracts renew when. Most companies can't produce this, and that's the first problem, because you can't negotiate what you can't list.
Build the shortlist
We do the vetting you'd otherwise do yourself. Fit, reputation, size, vertical experience, compliance track record, and what the contract actually says. You get options with reasoning attached, not a stack of brochures.
Sit on your side of the negotiation
We know what these agreements look like from the inside. Which terms move when you push, which ones never do, and what the number can actually be rather than what it says on the first quote.
Stay after the signature
Most of the value shows up later, at the escalation nobody's answering and the renewal that was about to pass by default. We hold the provider to what they said in the room.
The background
I know what's in that quote. I used to write them.
I'm Darren Barnes. Before starting LevelTech I spent thirteen and a half years in sales and sales leadership at a large regional managed services provider, and around twenty-five years in technology before and alongside that.
So when a proposal lands on your desk, I'm not guessing. I know what margin is built into it, which line items are there because they're profitable rather than because you need them, which terms will move if someone pushes, and which ones the provider will never give up.
That's the whole reason LevelTech exists. Not because vendors are dishonest, because most of them aren't, but because a good rep working under a good comp plan still has no way to tell you their product is wrong for you.
Who we work with
Companies with real technology and no spare hands.
Usually somewhere between 25 and 1,000 people. Owners, IT leaders, and the finance person who noticed the bill.
- You've been with the same provider for years and the service has quietly slipped
- Something renews soon and you have nothing to compare it against
- Your cyber insurance renewal is asking for controls you're not sure you have
- You've outgrown the provider that fit you at half this size
- You're about to make a big call and want a second opinion from someone with no stake in it
Start with a conversation, not a proposal.
Thirty minutes on what you've got and what's annoying you about it. If nothing needs fixing, we'll say so and that's that.