Partner Evaluation
Part of Finding and evaluating co-marketing partners
Identifying partnership conflicts before a meeting
Check your commitments and a prospective partner’s public position, then separate confirmed restrictions from questions for the first meeting.
Before meeting a potential co-marketing partner, check your own commitments and the candidate’s public position. Separate confirmed restrictions from signals that need a question. This can prevent an unsuitable proposal, but public material cannot reveal the candidate’s private contracts.
Check your commitments first
Review current partnership terms, brand permissions, approved claims and planned activities for overlap. Ask the responsible people whether restrictions apply to category, audience, channel, branding or timing. Use the current agreement or its owner; an old campaign page may not reflect a live obligation.
Describe the proposed activity narrowly enough to test it. “Joint education for operations managers preparing a procurement brief” is easier to examine than “a strategic partnership”. Note whether the candidate would act as an expert, co-author, sponsor or recommended provider, because the proposed role affects what needs approval.
Read the candidate’s public position carefully
Review its current offer, partner and sponsor pages, relevant events and customer-facing claims. Look for a similar offer, another partner in the proposed role or a claim that could confuse the joint message. A displayed partner logo establishes a public association; it does not establish exclusivity or permission to use either organisation’s brand.
For Australian entities, ABN Lookup can help check public ABN details, and ASIC registers can provide information about companies and certain other organisations. Some ASIC information is free; further extracts may cost money. Neither register reveals private partnership terms or predicts performance.
Key Australian Regulatory Resources
- ABN Lookup
- Free access to public ABN details
- ASIC Registers
- Searchable company and organisation records; some data free, extracts may incur cost
- ACCC Guidance
- Regulates anti-competitive conduct; accepts reports on cooperation among businesses
- False or Misleading Claims
- ACCC enforces advertising standards; claims must be substantiated
Give each finding an action
Finding / What to do before the meeting
- Your agreement appears to restrict the activity
- Ask its owner to check the current terms
- The candidate offers something similar
- Define the overlap and prepare a question about distinct roles
- The candidate displays another partner
- Ask about relevant restrictions; do not infer exclusivity
- A joint message needs an unverified claim
- Remove or narrow the claim until it can be supported
- The parties compete and the proposal needs sensitive information
- Limit the agenda and seek competition advice before progressing
Keep observations separate from conclusions. “Their website lists Partner X” is an observation. It does not establish that they cannot work with you.
Set boundaries for the conversation
Ask about customer need, each party’s expertise, review routes and restrictions the candidate can disclose. If the parties compete, avoid discussing future prices, customer allocation or other commercially sensitive strategy. The ACCC takes reports about possible anti-competitive communication and cooperation among businesses and investigates possible anti-competitive contracts, arrangements, understandings and concerted practices. A specific arrangement needs assessment on its facts.
Check the proposed customer message too. Claims should be supportable and important qualifications clear. Do not imply an endorsement, capability or result that has not been confirmed.
Finish with a short note of confirmed constraints, public signals to clarify, claims needing evidence and questions for the meeting. Update it afterwards from what was actually confirmed; an unanswered question is not a cleared conflict.
