A new route to the customer can look like an addition to the business. It may also change the company's position toward people who already bring its offer to market. I want that change to be part of the strategic decision from the beginning. If it is left implicit, the institution can approve a growth proposition while assuming that existing relationships continue on terms no one has actually examined. The question is not whether channels can coexist in principle, but what position this company is choosing in this setting.
In the fictional 2021 Rellaveth Communications discussion, a proposed direct-retail offer would have competed with six wholesale partners representing 28% of 2020 service income. We selected a partner-only proposition at that stage, with A$7.8 million in two-year enablement expense. Three partner addenda were signed by 2022. The decision retained a clear market position while giving up some benefits of direct retail. It did not establish that every wholesale relationship was preserved or that the new retail offer would have been unsuccessful.
## Let the new offer and the existing relationship share one account
The retail proposal had a genuine attraction. A direct relationship could help the company understand the end customer and present its service under a more visible identity. Those advantages belonged in the paper. I did not want the wholesale income figure to act as a reason to reject the proposal without examining it. Existing business can be important while a new position still deserves consideration. The institution needed to understand both the opportunity and the relationships affected, then decide deliberately how much change it was prepared to make.
The six-partner figure made the question concrete but did not answer it. The partners could have different positions, customers and responses. Their combined income share did not establish a single reaction to direct retail. I wanted commercial colleagues to explain the relevant relationships through evidence rather than allowing the percentage to stand for a prediction. The strategic account should make potential consequences visible without pretending that the institution knows what every counterparty will choose.
That also meant the issue could not be postponed entirely to a launch communications plan. Better wording might help partners understand the decision, but it would not determine the actual position being taken. If the company intended to compete in some areas and support partners in others, those boundaries needed to be part of the proposition itself. Otherwise, communication would be asked to resolve a strategic ambiguity which the institution had not yet chosen to settle.
I asked whether the company could explain its role from the counterpart's perspective. What would a partner reasonably understand about the offer? Which parts of the relationship were established, and which would depend on new arrangements? The answers required commercial and legal work. They did not call for strategy to negotiate every agreement. My contribution was to make that work central to the choice, so the institution would not mistake a new customer channel for an opportunity that left the existing market relationships untouched.
## Make the alternative attractive enough to assess
The sponsors believed direct retail and wholesale could coexist. They argued that different customers could value different routes and that a direct offer would not necessarily replace partner activity. I agreed that the existence of two channels did not make conflict unavoidable. Their argument was more useful than a simple claim that retail meant growth. It described a possible relationship between the channels which the institution could investigate, with evidence about the actual proposition and its intended boundaries.
My concern was that the current proposal did not yet make those boundaries sufficiently clear. I recommended a partner-only approach at that stage, accepting that it would give us less direct customer learning and a less visible retail identity. Those were not minor disadvantages to remove from the case. They were part of the value the alternative offered. A leadership account becomes less convincing when the rejected option is made so weak that the selected response no longer appears to require judgement.
The A$7.8 million enablement programme connected expense with the chosen route to market. It was not an amount of wholesale income saved, nor a prediction of incremental sales. The responsible teams needed to develop the offer and its partner arrangements. Strategy needed to keep the purpose consistent: if the institution had chosen to support the proposition through partners, the investment account should reflect that position rather than preserve a disguised retail programme under more comfortable language.
The choice was also bounded in time. Selecting a partner-only proposition for that stage did not create a permanent rule that the company could never enter retail. It established the position supported by the current evidence and work. A future proposal would need its own account of customer value and counterpart relationships. I wanted that distinction retained so the decision could be understood as a strategic judgement, rather than a general doctrine applied regardless of changes in the business or market.
## Describe signed progress without borrowing a retention result
Three signed partner addenda by 2022 were a specific outcome. They showed that agreements had been reached with three parties. They did not prove that all six partners stayed, that the whole 28% income share was protected or that the programme generated a particular amount of new revenue. Those would require separate evidence. The public case is stronger when the outcome remains at its actual scale, because the reader can see what the chosen approach produced without being asked to infer a larger result.
The distinction matters beyond careful wording. If a leader describes signed progress as full retention, the institution may stop asking about the relationships still unresolved. If it treats the absence of a complete result as though nothing useful occurred, it may dismiss meaningful progress. I would rather hold both views: the agreements reached and the wider position still requiring attention. That gives the next decision a more accurate starting point than either a celebratory headline or a totalising account of uncertainty.
Every partner, company and result in this essay is fictional. A real account would require permission to describe the arrangements and qualified review of any contractual or competition-related claims. The argument is about strategic clarity. A new route to the customer changes the institution's place in a set of relationships. Explain that change, preserve the attractions of the alternative and report the progress at the level its evidence supports. Growth then becomes a choice about how the company meets the market, with the people already there kept inside the account.