Clause 2.1 of every contract we sign says the same thing. We do not accept rebates, referral fees, or any commercial consideration from any party we recommend, evaluate, or contract on the client's behalf. If we ever do, the fee for the engagement is refunded and the engagement ends.
It is not a clever clause. It is the simplest one in the document. It exists because the rest of the industry has spent twenty years making it complicated.
When a client asks why our fee looks high next to an agency's, the answer is in 2.1. The agency's fee looks lower because some of their fee is being paid by someone else, and that someone else expects to be remembered the next time a recommendation is made. Our fee is the whole fee. There is no other invoice.
We work for the client. Singular. The day we work for anyone else as well is the day the advice stops being worth paying for.
