A note on how RedBook earns its fees
1. Clients and commission
Transparency is the watchword when it comes to RedBook and commission.
So at our very first meeting with potential clients, we have a strict protocol in the RedBook team that demands we explain our business model to them clearly.
It helps that this comes as little surprise to them: the RedBook Agency is plainly an agency, and like every agency earns revenue from commission.
The wording we use in our initial meetings is this: ‘RedBook is an agency. It asks clients for a small engagement fee at the outset. This is all they pay. We are able to ask such a modest amount because we earn our revenue principally as commission paid by the partners we introduce to clients.’
“My experience working with RedBook could not have been better, not only sourcing the highest calibre of clients but perfectly aligned projects for our practice.”
– Katharine Pooley
With so many of our clients coming from the upper reaches of the finance, legal or business worlds, you can easily imagine how often clients ask probing questions about our commission and any resulting cost to them.
We encourage their questions and answer all of them readily, from questions about the potential on-cost to the client of our commission to the level of our commission itself.
We want and need clients to understand our business model and terms so that they are wholly comfortable with them. Otherwise, if there were any smoke and mirrors, they would not wish to proceed with engaging us and the firm’s reputation would suffer drastically.
For your interest, we ask clients for an engagement fee of £3,800 + VAT. This covers putting their entire team together on a bespoke basis and overseeing their project. This is all clients pay us for our service from the start of their project to the end and for all our deliverables, which are significant.
Incidentally, this means our team does a huge amount of work upfront for the modest engagement fee in the hope that the client takes their project forward, or we make a heavy loss.
Having explained our business model and terms at our initial client meeting, we follow up by sending the clients our business terms that set these facts out in black and white.
As well as an ethical obligation to ensure our clients understand our terms, there is a legal one too. And as you would expect, we ensure our client- and partner-contracts are fully compliant with Anti-Bribery legislation. We recently asked our lawyers to review these in the light of evolving case law, and they confirmed they are fully fit for purpose.
“RedBook’s bespoke matching process and service is unique and ensures that the client employs the the most appropriate team with the best skills from landscaping through to design in architecture and interiors. This saves the client a huge amount of time and gives them greater access to the best architects/designers. So the commission that we pay is fair recognition of all of the work they need to do to deliver this.”
– Randle Siddeley
3. RedBook Partner Terms
So much for explaining our business model to clients, what about the business terms we have in place with all the wonderful partners we are proud to represent?
Partners and clients need both to have confidence that our recommendations for a client’s project are based on the partner(s) being most suitable for the particular project and are free of financial influence. For that reason, we see it as vital that all the partners we represent are on the same business terms. All our partners are therefore on identical terms (within their professional discipline), avoiding any risk of bias.
It is deeply reassuring that since RedBook launched in 2011 it has never faced a dispute with clients or partners over its commission. This is a proud record, and we hope it is a tribute as much as anything to the warm and engaged relationships we strive to create with all those we work with, whether clients or partners.
We select the candidates having analysed with great care which partner firms are best suited for the project and client, and having checked the partners’ capacity to take on the project as well their level of interest in the project.
So all the candidates we introduced to clients as part of a ‘beauty parade’ are keen and know they are in competition for the project with other well-qualified candidates. This creates what bankers like to call an ‘internal market’, limiting what a client might see as an inclination to inflate fees.
Lastly, RedBook often finds clients wish to include one of their own professional candidates—say, a garden designer or project manager—into the mix. RedBook willingly embraces this outside competition as it is confident in being able to provide better partner options to the client. And the benefit to the clients of including a ‘third party’ candidate is that it creates for the client an independent benchmark of firm’s fees. For RedBook it establishes that the partners it has introduced are not passing on their commission as an on-cost to the clients.
“Having RedBook as a partner, gives us a deep understanding of the clients, their lifestyle and project ambitions from the outset. This detailed knowledge of our practice and the client, results in a fast appointment and a quicker project launch.”
– Peter Mikic
CONCLUSION
We hope this explanatory summary is helpful. We continually look to improve our service to partners and clients, so we warmly welcome your candid feedback and will be very glad to answer any questions you may have.
Please feel free to contact Tom Adams, CEO or Sandy Mitchell, Founding director:
Email: tom@redbookagency.com or sandy@redbookagency.com
