Alan Sandler opened his Sandler Partners National Summit 2026 keynote promising not to sell out to private equity, and he urged independent agents to think twice before giving up their companies.

This wasn’t the first time Sandler promised his tech services distributor (TSD) would stay the course. He promised partners in 2022 that he would resist selling for at least 10 years. Before taking the stage Tuesday, Sandler played a video from last year’s Partner Summit where he also denied rumors he would sell.

But those rumors popped up again after Sandler hired his childhood friend Adam Press as president in July, mainly because Press is a former investment banker.

“Ever since the private equity money came into this industry four years ago, somebody's been saying Sandler Partners is the next to sell. They've been wrong every year, but since Adam joined, the whispers are starting again: ‘New president? They must be selling,’” Sandler said. “I'm not going anywhere. Sandler Partners is not for sale.”

Sandler said that while Press was an investment banker and managed investments “for one of the wealthiest families in the world [the German industrialist Thyssen family], he also started two companies and built them into large businesses.

“He knows exactly how those [M&A] deals get done,” Sandler said of Press. “But that was a long time ago, and it's not why he's here.”

Sandler, 62, said business is booming for his company. He put Sandler’s run rate at $1.2 billion with more than 20% growth. “We're the second-fastest-growing TSD in the country,” he said. “Number one got there by buying 55 companies. It's been an incredible ride getting Sandler Partners to where we are today.”

Still, the TSD competition is fierce. Sandler said at least 22 TSDs were acquired last year. “A lot of the founders took off for the golf course, the beach, or the mountains. They looked at the slope ahead and decided the view was better from the chair lift,” he said. “Good for the ones who sold. They built something and somebody paid them for it. Why did the TSDs sell? Here's the part the Sandler team understands because we live it every day. The mid-sized TSDs got squeezed from both ends. Some of the owners told me they felt marginalized and were losing money, so they got out while somebody was paying good multiples. We looked at that same slope, and we just decided to climb it.”

He urged independent agents to do the same. He said one TSD bought 55 agencies, four TSDs totaled 125 agent acquisitions and nearly 200 agencies have sold.

“Some of you are sitting there wondering, should I cash out now while buyers are still paying?” he said. “What you're really asking is: is the independent agent headed for extinction? It's one of the biggest career decisions you'll ever make. If you're thinking about cashing out, that's your call, and you've earned the right to make it. Just know what you're holding.”

After all, he wondered, “How much golf can one person play?”

Sandler acknowledged survival in the tech world is far from certain. He put up a screenful of logos of companies – some giants at one time – that no longer exist. “Our industry has its own junkyard, and some of us have a front-row seat,” he said.

“But not everybody disappeared,” he added, showing another screen of logos. “These providers were in the channel 15 years ago, and they're with us today at the summit. Every product that died, every company that didn't make it, this group is still standing. Every time this business changed, you had to leave behind what you knew and reinvent yourself.”

Besides rapid growth, he said Sandler is a company where people enjoy working with almost no employee turnover and it added 5,000 new sales partners in the past year.

“Most of the providers on that junkyard slide borrowed too much too early and built networks that never filled up to pay for the crushing debt,” Sandler said. “A lot of people were affected by the fallout. Let's hope that never happens again to anyone in our channel. Sandler Partners is the last of the major TSDs that doesn't have to answer to private equity or venture capital. So who do we answer to? The only people we answer to are sitting in this room: employees, sales partners, provider partners.”