playbook-white-label-partnerships

name	playbook-white-label-partnerships
description	Use when designing or improving a White Label Partnerships operating playbook with roles, ordered actions, controls and measures. Use platform skills for channel plans and strategy skills for upstream direction.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

White-Label & Sub-Contracting Partnerships Playbook

Use When

• Build or improve a repeatable White Label Partnerships workflow for a client or delivery team.
• Turn an approved objective into roles, controls, handoffs and measurable actions.

Do Not Use When

• The task is a single-channel presence plan; use the closest platform-* skill.
• The task is upstream positioning or channel choice; use the closest strategy-* skill.

Required Inputs

Artefact	Source/provider	Required?	If absent
Objective, audience and success measure	Approved client brief or accountable owner	Yes	Stop and request the missing decision
Current workflow, assets and performance evidence	Team records, platform exports or supplied artefacts	Conditional	Label the baseline unassessed and use a minimum viable workflow
Roles, budget, timing and approval limits	Delivery owner	Yes for execution	Produce a draft only; do not schedule, spend or publish

Capability and Permission Boundaries

Read supplied artefacts and search relevant evidence. Treat review, audit and planning as read-only. Editing the requested draft is allowed; publishing, messaging, production changes, personal-data processing, spending, destructive actions and certification claims require explicit authority. Use network access only for authorised verification.

Degraded Mode

If accounts, files, network, rendering or current evidence are unavailable, return the narrowest useful qualified White Label Partnerships playbook plus an evidence-gap list. Mark each unavailable check not assessed; never convert it into a pass.

Decision Rules

Condition	Action	Failure or risk avoided
Delivery ownership, attribution or client access is ambiguous	Resolve it in the partner agreement before work starts	Hidden accountability and client conflict
Inputs and authority are complete	Produce an execution-ready playbook	Unowned actions and hidden assumptions
Evidence or tooling is incomplete	Produce the narrowest qualified draft and a gap list	Treating an unassessed check as passed
Action publishes, spends, contacts people or changes production state	Require explicit approval before action	Unauthorised external impact

Workflow

1. Confirm the consumer, objective, market, decision owner and permission boundary; stop if the objective or owner is missing.
2. Inspect supplied evidence and verify volatile claims; record missing inputs rather than filling them with assumptions.
3. Apply the decision rules, preserve useful existing material and draft the White Label Partnerships playbook.
4. Test each action against platform, privacy, safeguarding, brand and approval constraints; stop and escalate a blocking risk.
5. Run the quality and anti-slop gates. If a check fails, correct the draft and rerun it before handoff.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Acceptance condition
White Label Partnerships playbook	Client owner and delivery team	Uses named inputs, assigns actions, states decisions and contains no unverified specifics
Assumption and gap register	Approver or next workflow	Every missing source, unassessed check and required approval has an owner or next action

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Decision and verification record	Inline table or appendix	Each material choice traces to an input, source or labelled assumption
Release-gate result	Completed checklist	No blocking policy, factual, permission or anti-slop finding remains

Quality Standards

Use British English and the specified market context. Recommendations must be executable with the stated capacity, current claims must be verified or qualified, and acceptance conditions must be observable. A worked example must use a labelled scenario, not fabricated client evidence.

Anti-Patterns

• Inventing a client fact, benchmark, budget or approval. Fix: cite the source or label the assumption and its effect.
• Copying one channel or client pattern unchanged. Fix: tie each choice to the named audience, objective and evidence.
• Stating volatile platform or legal details from memory. Fix: verify the current official source or omit the claim.
• Treating an inaccessible account, file or metric as healthy. Fix: mark it not assessed and bound the conclusion.
• Publishing, spending, messaging or changing production state from planning authority. Fix: obtain explicit action authority.
• Delivering actions without owner, timing or acceptance. Fix: assign all three or return the item as an unresolved gap.

References

• Anti-AI-slop production gate
• East African English standard
• Use the directly cited sources and companion skills in the domain guidance below; verify time-sensitive claims before use.

Definitions

• White-label: The agency sells the consultant's work under the agency's own brand. The end client never knows the consultant exists.
• Sub-contracting: The agency or client engages the consultant directly, with the agency acting as account manager. The consultant may or may not be introduced to the end client.
• Referral partnership: A looser arrangement where both parties refer clients to each other. This is out of scope for this skill — see biz-dev-practitioner-positioning.

This skill covers white-label and sub-contracting only.

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Required Input

Ask the user for the following before generating any deliverable:

1. Consultant name and primary service offering — what services are being white-labelled?
2. Agency name and type — digital agency / PR agency / creative agency / marketing consultancy?
3. Services to be provided white-label — list every deliverable in scope.
4. Proposed monthly volume — estimated number of deliverables or clients per month.
5. Existing agreement or starting from scratch — does an NDA or contract already exist?

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Section 1: Evaluating a White-Label Partnership

Before agreeing to work with any agency, answer all six questions below. A weak answer to any one of them is a reason to negotiate harder or walk away.

1. Reputation — Is the agency well-regarded in the EA market? Ask peers, check their LinkedIn profile, and search for online reviews or testimonials.
2. Client quality — What type of clients do they serve? Are those clients aligned with your niche and capabilities?
3. Payment terms — When do they pay? Net 30 is acceptable; Net 60 is a cash flow risk for a solo consultant and should be rejected.
4. Volume commitment — How much work will they send per month? A vague "as needed" arrangement is usually unprofitable — insist on a minimum monthly commitment.
5. Brief quality — Do they provide detailed client briefs, or will you be working from nothing? Poor briefs produce poor work and fuel disputes.
6. IP and confidentiality — Do they have a standard NDA? Is there a clear policy on who owns the content produced after payment?

Red Flags — Do Not Proceed

• Requests for free sample work with no commitment to pay
• Payment terms beyond Net 45
• No written agreement — "let's just start and formalise later"
• Agencies who badmouth their current suppliers (they will badmouth you too)
• Agencies whose own social media is poor quality — they cannot provide good briefs if they do not understand the craft

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Section 2: Pricing White-Label Services

White-label pricing must account for the margin the agency takes and the administrative overhead of working through a layered relationship.

Pricing principle: Set your white-label rate at 30–50% below your direct client rate. The agency typically marks up 50–100% when billing the end client.

EA White-Label Rate Reference

Service	Direct Client Rate	White-Label Rate (Agency)
20 Instagram posts/month	UGX 1,500,000	UGX 900,000–1,050,000
Monthly social media strategy	UGX 800,000	UGX 500,000–560,000
Content calendar (monthly)	UGX 400,000	UGX 240,000–280,000
Community management	UGX 600,000/month	UGX 360,000–420,000/month
Training session (half-day)	UGX 1,200,000	UGX 720,000–840,000

Adjust all rates to the client's specific industry and scope. All currency in UGX unless the agency invoices in USD.

Volume Discounts

Offer a 10% volume discount for commitments of 3+ clients per month or a signed 12-month minimum term.

Payment Terms Progression

• New agency relationship: 50% upfront before work begins.
• After 3 months of on-time payment: Move to Net 15 or Net 30.
• Hard rule: Never extend Net 45 or longer to any agency partner.
• Accepted payment methods: MTN Mobile Money (MoMo), Airtel Money, or direct bank transfer. Confirm method in the written agreement.

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Section 3: Structuring the Agreement

Always have a written agreement. A WhatsApp conversation is not a contract.

Minimum Agreement Components

Include all nine elements below in every white-label or sub-contracting agreement:

1. Parties — full legal names and/or registered business names of both parties.
2. Services — exact deliverables, quantities, formats, and turnaround times.
3. Pricing — fee per deliverable or monthly retainer amount; state the currency (UGX).
4. Payment terms — due date, accepted payment method, and late payment penalty (e.g., 1.5% per week on overdue amounts).
5. Confidentiality (NDA) — the consultant will not contact the end client directly or disclose that the work is outsourced. See NDA note below.
6. Intellectual property — all content produced becomes the property of the agency upon receipt of full payment; the consultant retains no rights to publish or reuse it.
7. Revisions — number of revision rounds included in the fee; rate for additional revisions beyond that.
8. Termination — 30-day written notice required by either party; procedure for handling in-progress work on termination.
9. Dispute resolution — first step: direct discussion (WhatsApp or in person); second step: mediation; no litigation for amounts under UGX 5,000,000.

NDA Note

If the agency does not supply an NDA, propose your own. Keep it simple:

"Neither party will disclose to any third party the existence or terms of this arrangement without the prior written consent of the other party."

Both parties sign and date. A WhatsApp message confirming agreement to this text is acceptable as a minimum; a signed PDF is preferable.

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Section 4: Managing Quality and Deadlines

White-label work carries one additional quality risk: you are briefed by the agency, not the end client, so information is lost in translation. Compensate with a rigorous briefing standard.

Brief Requirements — Insist on These Before Starting Work

Refuse to begin without all eight fields:

1. Client business name and industry
2. Brand voice description — minimum three tone-of-voice words
3. Vocabulary avoid list — words, phrases, or topics that are off-brand or legally sensitive
4. Content pillars — the approved themes the content must address
5. Reference examples of previously approved content
6. Platforms in scope and any platform-specific requirements
7. Target audience description — demographics, psychographics, pain points
8. Campaign goals and any current promotional offers or key dates

If the agency cannot provide a brief to this standard, charge a briefing fee for the discovery work required before content production begins.

Quality Control in White-Label Work

• Apply the same quality control process as for direct clients: use ai-content-humaniser for any AI-assisted output, apply a brand voice check, and verify all factual claims.
• Deliver work 48 hours before the agency's deadline with the end client — this allows time for the agency review round before submission.
• Keep a version log of all deliverables. Never overwrite a previous version; save each revision with a date stamp.
• Confirm every delivery via WhatsApp with a brief delivery note:

  "Delivered: [X] posts for [client category] — [date]. Please confirm receipt."

Deadline Discipline

• Quote realistic turnaround times. Under-promise and over-deliver.
• If a deadline is at risk, notify the agency at least 48 hours in advance — not on the day.
• Never miss a deadline without advance notice. White-label relationships are built entirely on reliability; one missed deadline without warning can end the partnership.

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Section 5: Protecting Client Confidentiality

When working white-label, the end client belongs to the agency. Violating this boundary is a serious professional breach that can destroy both the partnership and your reputation.

Confidentiality Rules — What You Must Not Do

• Do not contact the end client directly without the agency's explicit written permission.
• Do not reveal to the end client, or to anyone else, that the work is outsourced.
• Do not use the end client's brand name, results, or content in your own portfolio without the agency's written consent.
• Delete all end client assets — briefs, files, login credentials, and brand materials — when the engagement ends.
• Do not discuss end client details with peers, colleagues, or on social media.

What You Can Do

• Use anonymous, category-level descriptions in your portfolio:

  "A financial services brand in Kampala — grew Instagram engagement by 45% in 90 days."

• With the agency's written consent, reference the agency by name:

  "I have delivered content services for [Agency Name]."

• Count white-label work towards your experience when discussing credentials in general terms, without naming the end client.

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Section 6: Knowing When to Exit a Partnership

Not every agency relationship is worth sustaining. Exit when any of the following apply:

• Payment is consistently late by more than 14 days after the due date.
• Brief quality has not improved after two formal written requests.
• The agency modifies your work without informing you and the end client complains about the quality.
• The volume commitment is not being met and the relationship is generating net losses after time spent.
• The agency is using your work in a way that conflicts with your professional values or ethical standards.

Exit Process

1. Give 30 days written notice — WhatsApp message with a screenshot, or email.
2. Complete all in-progress work to the agreed standard during the notice period.
3. Hand over all files, assets, and access credentials within 5 working days of the final delivery.
4. Do not publicly criticise the agency — your reputation in the EA market depends on being known as a professional even when partnerships end.

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Quality Criteria

Good output from this skill must meet all of the following standards:

• The 6-question evaluation framework is applied explicitly before recommending whether to proceed with the partnership.
• The pricing table includes at least 5 service types with UGX rates showing both direct client and white-label rates side by side.
• The agreement components list covers at least 9 named elements, with the NDA clause written out in full.
• The brief requirements list names at least 8 specific fields — no vague categories.
• Confidentiality rules include both the prohibited actions and the permitted portfolio uses ("what you can do").
• The exit section names the 30-day notice requirement and the 5-working-day handover deadline explicitly.
• EA-specific payment terms are present: MTN MoMo as a payment method, the Net 15/30 progression after 3 months, and the Net 45 hard limit.
• All language is in British English with imperative framing throughout.

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Cross-References

• biz-dev-practitioner-positioning — referral partnerships and personal positioning
• playbook-agency-operations — internal agency workflow and account management
• playbook-client-retainer-management — managing ongoing retainer relationships once the partnership is established