The Next Era of Technology Advising: Turning Trust into Better Business Outcomes

TL;DR

Technology advisors can build on trusted customer relationships to help businesses make better decisions across a wider range of needs. At Thrive 2026, leaders from Renodis, Savvy Technologies, and Bluewave shared how they expand into adjacent categories, invest in the expertise to serve clients well, and move from selling individual solutions toward broader, outcome-focused advice.

Follow the customer into the next conversation

Advisors already know that customer trust can open doors beyond the initial engagement, but the real opportunity is to help customers make sense of what comes next. Organizations are weighing decisions across energy costs, customer experience, security, and AI. They may know what they want to improve without knowing which tools fit, how a choice could affect other systems, or what to do after choosing. Advisors who understand a customer’s business can connect those decisions to meaningful outcomes—and help the customer move forward with confidence.

At Thrive 2026, AppDirect CIO Emanuel Bertolin spoke with three leaders from technology advisory firms about how they’re growing their businesses and supporting customers: Bill Frohriep, Chief Revenue Officer at Renodis, Donna Kruse, CEO of Savvy Technologies, and Seth Penland, Founder and CEO of Bluewave. Each leader described a different path to broadening an advisory business, but a common starting point emerged: follow the customer’s needs, and let trust earn you the next conversation.

Start with the customer’s next challenge

Look beyond the product or service that brought you into the account. Ask what the customer’s trying to accomplish, what’s changed in the business, and which decisions are becoming harder to make. The answer may point to an adjacent need, or simply reveal that the customer needs help connecting several decisions.

Choosing where to grow: expand with purpose

There’s no single formula for expanding an advisory business. The panelists’ approaches reflect different starting points and resources, but each tied expansion to a reason beyond adding another line to a catalog.

At Savvy, expansion grew from practical needs that surfaced in existing client relationships. Savvy started in voice and data networks. As Kruse looked across her clients’ operations, she saw other needs: a retailer managing many invoices, for example, or a customer moving headquarters who needed data center support. One customer planning a headquarters move asked if she could help with data-center support, and she said yes.

The example points to a practical distinction: spotting an adjacent need isn’t the same as being ready to serve it. Kruse’s point was that a trusted relationship can help an advisor discover where help is needed and then determine how to provide it. As she put it, “They need help and they need you.” In her view, a technology services distributor can help fill gaps with tools and resources, including sales engineers, so an advisor doesn’t have to personally know every technical detail before exploring a new area.

Penland described a more investment-intensive route at Bluewave. The company expanded through acquisitions and investment in talent and practice areas. He said the strategy was driven partly by customers’ needs as technologies and organizational decisions became more interconnected. Customers were asking for broader help: not just an individual product, but support in making better decisions across technology, finance, customer operations, and other teams.

Renodis took an adjacent path from its core work in connectivity, customer experience, and expense management into energy. Frohriep explained that the company’s visibility into customers’ invoices helped reveal an opportunity: if Renodis could examine telecom expenses, it could also help customers understand utility costs. That work led to energy procurement and, potentially, related conversations such as sustainability.

The different examples point to a useful discipline: expand where customer demand, your existing strengths, and a credible way to deliver meet. An adjacent category should make sense to the customer and to the business you’re building.

When an adjacent need is worth pursuing

Look across recent customer conversations, then use these questions to assess which needs are worth pursuing:

• Is this a recurring customer problem, or a one-off request?

• Does it connect naturally to the work customers already trust us to do?

• Can we serve it well ourselves, with a partner, through an acquisition, or with additional expertise?

• What would the customer need to understand before deciding?

The goal isn’t to chase every opportunity but rather to identify the next useful area where you can bring the customer clarity and support.

Build the expertise a new practice requires

“Building a practice isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’re doing it, you have to go all in. You have to commit and you have to do it.”

—Bill Frohriep, Chief Revenue Officer, Renodis

A new category can look attractive from the outside. Building a practice around it is more demanding.

On Renodis’ move into energy, Frohriep underscored the commitment required: “Building a practice isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’re doing it, you have to go all in. You have to commit and you have to do it.” In the deregulated energy markets Renodis serves, the work includes negotiating with suppliers, securing the necessary licenses, staying current on the market, and providing customers with reporting and updates. The advisor must be ready to support the work behind the offer, not just introduce it.

Penland described a similar commitment in cybersecurity. Bluewave had brought in a new practice lead and was looking at acquisitions to add capabilities. As he put it, “If you can have the cyber conversation and the compliance conversation with clients, that just really underpins all other parts of the tech stack.” He added that enterprise and mid-market clients consume cybersecurity services differently from many other offerings, so Bluewave had to adjust its go-to-market approach.

Kruse offered a related reminder: advisors don’t have to build every element of expertise alone. Savvy could draw on its technology services distributor’s resources, including sales engineers, to support entry into a solution area. That support can help, but it doesn’t remove the advisor’s responsibility to understand the customer, recognize the limits of their knowledge, and bring in the right expertise.

Taken together, the panel’s examples distinguish between spotting an opportunity and being ready to serve it. A customer request may be the beginning of a practice, not proof that the practice is already in place.

What it takes to build a new practice

The panelists’ experiences point to several essentials for delivering well in a new category:

• Identify the knowledge and credentials required.

• Decide who’ll own the practice and how specialists will support it.

• Understand the customer’s buying process and what ongoing service they’ll expect.

• Work out how you’ll keep current as suppliers, rules, and market conditions change.

• Be clear about what your team can handle and when it needs to bring in a partner.

The standard isn’t that every advisor must become an expert in every technology. It’s that customers should get competent guidance, clear expectations, and access to the expertise their decision requires.

Make the shift from transactions to outcomes

“Our conversations are less about how do I save money and more about how do I move our business in the right direction.”

—Seth Penland, Founder and CEO, Bluewave

The customer conversation is changing. Instead of asking only how to lower a bill or buy a particular product, customers increasingly want help deciding what will move the business in the right direction.

Frohriep described the difference through Renodis’ energy work. In earlier conversations, customers often focused on cutting costs. With energy prices rising, the discussion has also become about risk management: whether to lock in pricing and create a more predictable budget over the next few years. The customer’s need is still financial, but the question has shifted from “How do I save?” to “How do I plan for uncertainty?”

Penland said Bluewave was seeing a broader move away from cost as the sole focus. Customers may come prepared with information, but they still need help turning that information into a decision, achieving the outcome they want, and getting the right support after the purchase. “Our conversations are less about how do I save money and more about how do I move our business in the right direction,” he noted. That means building a business case and delivering a more structured recommendation through what the company calls the Bluewave Blueprint.

That shift raises the bar for advisory work. A recommendation is more than a product match. It should show how the proposed decision relates to the customer’s goals, what trade-offs matter, and what support will be needed to put the decision into practice. Penland described this as a move from a broker industry toward an advisory industry, one that rewards firms investing in more robust processes and client deliverables.

Once the customer’s goals, constraints, and key stakeholders are clear, the advisor can turn that discovery into a recommendation the customer can act on:

A practical way to strengthen a recommendation

• State the customer’s goal in their terms.

• Explain the options and the trade-offs that matter.

• Connect the recommendation to the expected business outcome, without promising results you can’t substantiate.

• Identify the people, dependencies, and next steps involved in implementation.

• Agree on how the customer and advisor’ll know whether the decision’s working.

This turns the conversation from a comparison of offers into a decision the customer can understand and act on.

Bring more of the business into the conversation

Technology decisions no longer sit neatly within the IT department. As Penland observed, decisions increasingly involve multiple stakeholders because the technologies affect different functions across a business.

Kruse has seen that breadth in practice. An advisor can remain focused on IT and information security, but there may also be an opportunity to connect with marketing teams buying reputation-management tools or exploring AI. Every part of an organization may be making technology decisions, and an existing relationship can help an advisor find a respectful path into those conversations.

The relationship is the bridge, not a substitute for understanding the new stakeholder. A connection in IT doesn’t automatically mean that marketing, operations, finance, or customer service has the same goals or buying criteria. Advisors need to learn how each team defines the problem and how its decision connects to the rest of the organization.

This is especially important when a technology decision touches several functions. A solution may affect customer experience, compliance, budgets, workflows, and security at once. If the advisor hears from only one stakeholder, important requirements can be missed. Broader discovery helps create a fuller picture and gives the customer a better basis for making a decision.

How to bring the right stakeholders into the conversation

• Ask your current contact which other teams’ll be affected by the decision.

• Explain why bringing those stakeholders in could help clarify requirements or trade-offs.

• Learn each team’s priorities before recommending a solution.

• Keep the customer’s original contact informed and involved.

• Translate technical considerations into the language of the business outcome at stake.

The aim isn’t to sell into every department. It’s to help the customer coordinate decisions that already cross departmental lines.

Help customers make sense of AI

AI is appearing in more customer conversations. Kruse urged advisors not to be intimidated by it: “Learn about it. Understand what your clients are doing with it,” she said. She also advised them to familiarize themselves with the resources and solutions available through their technology services distributors.

Frohriep noted that customers increasingly reach out to advisors because they don’t know what to do and lack the experience to make a decision confidently. In that context, trust matters. An advisor’s credibility comes not from claiming certainty, but from helping the customer navigate the question and bringing in the right expertise when needed.

For an advisor, a useful first step may be to ask how the customer is thinking about AI: which business problem they hope to address, which teams are exploring it, and what concerns they have about implementation or risk. Then determine whether you can offer relevant guidance directly or should bring in a specialist. That keeps the discussion grounded in the customer’s needs rather than in the buzz around a technology.

Turn trust into a repeatable growth strategy

“Land and expand. That’s it. That’s my whole business.”

—Donna Kruse, CEO of Savvy Technologies

Asked for one piece of advice on growing a business, the panelists offered three perspectives. Frohriep urged advisors to “embrace the technology wheel” and explore its categories. Kruse summed up her approach in three words: “Land and expand. That’s it. That’s my whole business.” Penland looked beyond business growth, encouraging entrepreneurs to find ways to make an impact outside work.

The panelists’ advice points to a repeatable rhythm: stay curious about customers’ changing needs, earn the next conversation by serving them well, and invest in the expertise to follow through. Advisors turn trust into better outcomes when they understand more of the customer’s business and make complex decisions easier to act on.

A quick guide for advisors

• Start with the customer’s changing needs. Look for adjacent problems connected to the work they already trust you to do.

• Expand deliberately. Check customer demand, strategic fit, and your ability to deliver before adding a category.

• Invest in the practice. Build or partner for the expertise, processes, and support customers will need.

• Lead with outcomes. Help customers understand their options, trade-offs, and next steps, not just the product.

• Connect the right stakeholders. Technology decisions often affect teams beyond IT.

• Keep learning. Especially in emerging areas such as AI, be clear about what you know and when to bring in additional expertise.