[Linkedin Thread]

No way. Who in their right mind would think to do that?

I will tell you my friends: unethical snakes. These people aren’t Partners, they are slime.

The routine goes something like this:

1. You build a relationship and deal that ends with you creating a BC project for a customer (these often times take weeks, months, or I know from experience, sometimes years).
2. You are super excited to finally launch!
3. You are so proud of your work that you decide to share it in the Partner Gallery accessible in the Partner Portal feature in our private Partner Network.
4. And here it begins: little miss cockroach sees your project, goes to the client website and calls up the customer and says: “I would like to offer you a better deal on your BC hosting services and would love for you to switch to me as your BC Partner! Come on over! I’m so great!”

Wrong. You are a maggot. You are that feeling in my mouth when I have strep throat. You are a bottom feeder. You are worthless.

Let’s think about this interaction from our customers point of view for a moment. Did little miss cockroach even think for a second that this customer might not even know what Business Catalyst is? Did she even think that this phone call or email might be damaging the value proposition that a white-label partner has brought to the table (providing solution over just technology)? Did she even consider that she is actively trying to undo a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears that her fellow Partner has endured to get this project live?

Nope. She is a cockroach, no care or worry for the Partner Network.

Lets set some things straight before I get into what I plan to do with cockroaches.

First, I do have the stance that our customers should have choice. I have lost clients to my great brethren Simpleflame, Frisco Websites, and Mediatrik to name a few. I am the first to say that I’ve messed up on a couple of projects and that has cost me the customer. In these cases, I have directed those customers to our BC Gurus Directory - and I know lots of other Partners that have used that resource - when the relationship goes South. Or in a couple of cases, the customer simply called me up to inform me that they were on their way.

Fair as any. It is what it is.

If a client is not happy with their Partner, it is their right to go elsewhere - either to another Partner or another solution outside of BC. This is ethical and right. We all agree on that.

What I see as despicable is using Partner Resources (the project gallery) as a means to prey on other people in our network’s hard earned customer base. Whether our customers would ever switch is hardly the point (as I know many of the Partners who are experiencing this can attest, good luck cockroaches).

Besides the damage that you are doing (you know who you are you slime) to the other Partners, you are also damaging the validity of the project gallery. I also realize that you could be using my very own website for this activity by searching our Directory and the projects that are now displayed with each company for these activities. The fact that you are turning these great resources for Partners to share their work and skills into a huge risk for us makes me so angry (if you haven’t been able to already tell).

So here is your warning: stop now. Cease all activities of Partner-poaching at once. If you know what is good for you, you will call up each of those Partners that you did this to and apologize.

Or else...

I have already put feelers out to these key Partners and customers to spill the beans on who is contacting them. From there I will compile a list of these companies and then my reign of rampage on you begins.

I will out you publicly to the community. You will have a website with a much higher pagerank than your own with the subject line: Company X Poaches Clients and is Unethical. We’ll get that on page 1 for you, don’t you worry.

If you have a PRO or Free subscription to our site, you won’t anymore.

I will then work with Adobe in the most aggressive way I have available to me to have your Partner status removed. They don’t have official policies on this, but I do: you suck and I’m going to stick it to you. I will lobby that they modify their Partner Agreements so that you can be booted. It will become my #1 priority.

You will be shunned at any BC event. I will ask you to leave because you are not a Partner, you are a bucket of slime.

I will make sure that my entire list of thousands of BC Partner email addresses also knows who you are.

Cockroach. Slime. Maggot.

Let me return to a more pleasant tone to wrap this up. I have spent thousands of hours to work my ass off to build a community of people that are excited to collaborate and work together for a better tomorrow. We attend conferences together, share ideas through my site and others, we talk on the phone a lot (yo Jason! where’s my call back from this morning brotha!), we push each other to build better companies, and we push each other to provide the best possible solution to our clients.

Your actions work against this. You completely undermine what we are investing our entire careers to build. Please stop. Think about what you are doing before you continue. The number one value that I live by is simple:

Treat others as I wish to be treated.

Please take this to heart.