Our commission policy
Four arguments break most agency relationships: who owns a house account, how a deal that crosses two territories is split, what happens when the principal sells direct, and what is owed after the contract ends. They break relationships because nobody wrote the answers down while everyone was still friendly. Here are ours, in advance.
This page is not a contract. It is the position get2market takes into every negotiation, published so that a principal's lawyer can read it before the first call rather than argue it in month eighteen. Where a signed contract says something different, the contract wins.
1. House accounts are named at signature, or there are none
A house account is a customer on which no commission is payable, usually because the principal was already selling to them before the agent arrived. They are legitimate and common. They are also the standard way commission gets clawed back, because a customer that becomes a house account in month eight was, for the previous seven months, worth working.
Our position. House accounts are listed by name in the contract on the day it is signed. A customer does not become a house account later except by written agreement. If a principal cannot name them at signature, the honest reading is that there are none, and the contract says so.
The same rule runs downhill. Our agreements with sub-representatives in Latvia, Estonia and Finland use exactly this wording, because an agency that accepts a rule from a principal and then refuses it to its own people will not keep its people.
2. A deal that crosses two territories is credited where the decision is made
A customer headquartered in Tallinn buys for a plant in Klaipėda. A German group specifies centrally and orders locally. This is normal in industrial sales and it has no obvious answer, which is why it needs one in advance.
Our position. Commission follows the specifying decision: the territory where the choice of product was actually made. Where both territories were materially involved, the commission is split, and the default split is two thirds to the specifying territory and one third to the delivering one. Either party may argue for a different split on a named deal, in writing, before the order is placed rather than after it.
Two thirds and one third is not a law of nature. It is a number written down in advance so that the discussion is about one deal rather than about the principle.
3. If the principal sells direct in an exclusive territory, commission is still payable
This is not a concession. In an exclusive territory it is what European agency law says anyway, and it is written into the Lithuanian Civil Code, the German Commercial Code and the equivalent statutes in Latvia, Estonia and Finland. We state it out loud because a surprising number of agency arrangements are written as though it were negotiable, and because a principal who learns it from a lawyer in year two feels ambushed.
Our position. Where the territory is exclusive, commission is payable on business done in it during the contract, including business the principal concluded without us. Where the territory is not exclusive, it is not, and the contract says which it is on the first page.
4. What is owed after the contract ends
Two separate things are owed, and conflating them is how these endings turn into lawsuits.
Commission on the tail. An order placed by a customer we introduced or substantially developed, received by the principal within six months of termination, still pays commission. An order substantially negotiated before termination pays in full whenever it lands.
The statutory payment at the end of the contract. Separately from the tail, European agency law gives an agent a right to an indemnity or to compensation when the contract ends and the principal keeps the benefit of the customers the agent brought. It is capped at roughly one year's average commission, it cannot be excluded in advance, and the agent has one year from termination to say they intend to claim it.
Our position. Both are written into the contract explicitly, with the tail period stated in months and the statutory right acknowledged rather than drafted around. Sums paid on the tail are set against the statutory payment so far as the law allows, so the principal is not paying twice for the same customers.
Two more, because they come up
When commission is earned
Commission is earned when the principal is paid by the customer, unless the contract says otherwise. If an order is cancelled or the customer does not pay, the commission is reversed. If the non-payment is the principal's fault, it is not.
We do not guarantee customer payment
Some agents offer a del credere arrangement: for a higher commission, the agent guarantees that the customer pays. We do not offer it, and we will say so rather than quietly leaving the question open. A one-person agency guaranteeing a €200,000 order is offering a guarantee it could not honour, and a guarantee that cannot be honoured is worse than none.
Why publish this at all
Because the four questions above are the whole of the commercial relationship, and because an agency that will not answer them before a contract is signed is telling you something.
It also makes the first conversation shorter. A principal who has read this page arrives knowing what we will and will not agree to, and we spend the thirty minutes on the territory instead of on terms.
How the representation contract works · What it costs · The statutory position in all four countries