<aside> ♻️ This document is a draft and subject to change. This is a work in progress and we are collecting feedback from partners at the moment. Please direct your feedback to: [email protected].

</aside>

Summary:

• Issue:
  • Some partners have expressed concerns around client ownership and recognition for the work involved in client relationship development that leads to other partners winning work on the back of this. Integral has similar concerns.
• Resolution:
  1. Referral Fees: Partners and the BD team should use referral fees (on Quotes in Able) when collaborating on client relationships in recognition of existing client relationships that have been passed on. We recommend a Referral Fee between 5% to 15% of the top.
  2. Incentives: We will incentivise partners to bring work on-platform and collaborate fairly by rewarding partners with additional work that the BD team wins directly.
  3. Client Communication: We will not communicate with your clients (partner clients) unless asked. If any clients approach us, we will reach out to the partner in case we suspect this client has worked with a partner before.
  4. Transparency: We are transparent about clients the BD team approaches, inbound queries, and quotes/tenders we have open. Partners can thereby see and check for themselves that we are true to our promise.
  5. Disputes: We have dispute processes for situations where client relationships are not respected.

Issue

• We just completed 20 interviews with partners to learn more about what would enable partners to do more/all of their projects with the help of our Able platform or with other Partners.
• From interviews, partners indicate they have had very positive experiences around working together with other partners, the program coordinators & the BD team on clients they have relationships with.
• Some partners indicated they wanted more certainty & clarity on client “ownership” and a recognition of the work involved in client relationship development, and assurances against “stealing” or approaching clients (clients meaning both the client contact person and a client organisation).
• We have similar concerns regarding introducing partners to clients who our BD team has built long term relationships with, as the network is not sustainable if long term clients get taken off the platform.
• This document outlines our thinking around this issue and proposes improvements.

Resolution

• Referral and client introduction fees.
  • Client relationships are valuable in our industry and should be respected and honoured. We aim to create incentives and practices that encourage good behaviour and fair exchanges in value.
  • We expect Partners and the BD team to use referral fees to recognise pre-existing client relationships and reward introductions of a client to another partner that lead to new projects.
  • When creating a quote, the quote owner (whether a Partner or BD team member) should use the “Deal Owner” split (or another empty split) to assign a referral fee to another partner or BD team who has introduced the client and created the original relationship.
  • Future Features: in the near future we plan to separate the “Deal Owner” into a “Deal Owner” and “Referral Fee”, and create prompts regarding who may have had a pre-existing relationship and therefore may deserve a referral fee.
  • The original or prior relationship owner (meaning a partner or someone from BD-team with an active client relationship) are compensated by using referral/client introduction fees.
  • We recommend 5-15% for a referral/introduction agreed upon between partners or between partner/bd team.
  • Referral and client introductions fees will be handled at the discretion of the person creating a deal on Able. We will create an open, transparent trust based system and expect most people will do the right thing. Due to the complexity of relationships it is difficult to codify what a fair fee is, eg:
  • We recommend the following guidelines:
• Incentives
  • We will prioritize working with partners that honour & reward pre-existing relationships.
  • We will allocate more projects to partners that actively do projects on the platform.
  • Partners that do not pay fair relationship fees will less likely get allocated future projects.
• Guarantees to partners around the clients they work with:
  • We will not approach clients that you are working with directly for new projects/quotes (aka stealing clients).
  • We can ensure this for clients with active quotes or projects on the platform. We ensure this by adding all clients to our CRM system and flagging them with the partner name, so we cannot accidentally approach these.
  • If we do approach clients on your behalf, for example, because you have requested we support upselling or reaching out, the resulting projects are owned by you unless otherwise agreed. See referral and client introduction fees.
  • If a client approaches Integral directly (for example, email the BD team or fill out an enquire form) and we see the client is in the CRM tagged with a partner, we will always contact that partner to discuss the best way to get back to that client. If a client mentions they are reaching out via a partner or partner referral, we will contact the partner.
  • We do not know which clients we cannot approach if they are not on the system (we don't know what we don't know). Question to partners: Would you like to upload a “do not approach individual active client contact list”? IE: “John Doe at ClientCorp” for client contacts not on the platform? Would that be helpful?
• Transparency about BD activities
  • We post information (person name & company name) of all inbound website enquires in the partner Teams Channel, so you can check if any of your clients have approached us and we have not reached out to you. We are working to extend that to inbound emails & phone calls in the next few months.
  • We publicly share which clients/organisations the BD team is currently approaching during the fortnightly BD meeting. We are working towards extending that in written form. We are working on extending that transparency
  • Sometimes we might bid against each other, and we consider this an opportunity to work together, but very happy for partners to do competing bids (we love for you to do that on the platform). We are working on making transparent outstanding quotes & planned bids/tenders we are working on.
  • If someone (partner or BD team) creates a quote for a client company that has previous quotes. We are working on emailing all previous quote owners of that client to notify there might be an overlap.
  • The transparency rules do not apply to quotes started by partners, these will remain private to other partners. BD team will see partner quotes to ensure they do not approach the same client. ****Question to partners: or do you prefer they are hidden from BD team? That way we cannot check against collisions.
  • We are looking at making historical referral fees transparent. Thus, partners can judge who has honoured the fee guidelines.
• Stop using terms like “Integral owned Clients”
  • We increasingly see Integral as an enabling platform, community and network that supports multiple types of stakeholders. Stakeholders include individual partners, loose teams, established leadership development firms and our sales team. In this ecosystem the concept of “Integral owned clients” makes little sense. The above incentive structure gives equal rights to all parties.
  • If a client prefers to directly work with a partner on future projects, after a current project is won by the Integral BD team, that is great. We encourage you to build strong relationships whilst delivering projects. Even if the client worked directly with the BD team before, that is fine with us, but we expect you to provide fair referral fees when working on future projects.
  • If you get asked by a client to do more work for them, whilst you are aware of a previous relationship by another partner or our BD team, we recommend you work together on that. The original relationship owner can be easily compensated by adding them as an owner to the program and given a fee.
  • We expect everyone to reach out to whoever has the strongest relationship (other partners or the BD team) when you feel the client or projects are better off being supported by others or in collaboration with others.
• Disputes & abuse
  • Disputes between partners: If there is an issue or dispute, every effort will be made for resolution, based on values. However, if a resolution cannot be found, and a partner has clearly broken the trust of the network, as a last resort, we might opt to sever ties for this and future projects, to protect the integrity of the network. The dispute coordinator will be an Integral Director.
  • Disputes from partner to Integral. Disputes will be publicised so that other partners can judge if Integral handles with integrity. As an internal policy, in case of doubt, in most cases, we will learn towards generosity to the partner, because it is in our long term interest to preserve trust with the partner network.
  • Disputes from Integral to partner. Partners will be notified of disputes and all efforts are made for a resolution based on values. We will try to default to the guidelines around referral fees if that is the question. If a partner clearly violates the community principles Integral likely will decide to not allocate future projects won by the BD team to that partner.
  • We hope partners keep servicing all Integral clients on the platform.
  • Partners who take clients with proposals won by the Integral BD team off the platform, will not be allocated future work and may be removed from the platform to protect Integral and other partners.
  • Whilst we can do a lot to prevent we contact your clients without your permission, we cannot do so on behalf of other partners. We expect partners to treat the effort that went into building that relationship with respect, and not to take over the client or relationship. Stealing clients without an agreed referral fee from other partners may result in being removed from the platform.