The questions below are the ones Burnaby owners ask most before they start referral partnership work with us. Missing your question? Ask it by call, text or email, and a senior strategist will give you a straight reply.
Frequently asked questions
What does it cost?
Work runs on Trades.Agency plans: Growth $1,999 a month, Elite $3,999 and Enterprise $7,999, or $1,499, $2,999 and $5,999 a month on annual billing. Canadian clients add 5% GST. Eligible trades businesses get a free 30-minute initial consultation.
Am I locked into a contract?
No. Plans are month-to-month with no long-term contract, and you cancel with 30 days' notice. Annual billing is optional and lowers the monthly price.
How long before referrals pick up?
Mapping and terms take the first month or two. New partners typically need a quarter or more before they refer regularly, so judge the work at six months, not six weeks.
We tried an agency before and got nothing. Why is this different?
Most agencies sell traffic. Referral work is about a few relationships you own, tracked job by job, so you can see exactly what each one produces. If it isn't working, the scorecard shows it early.
Should I pay my referral partners?
You don't have to. Many strong partnerships involve no money. If you do pay a fee or thank-you, put it in writing, pay it from your records and tell customers about the relationship.
Do customers need to be told about the relationship?
We think they should be, before they decide, in plain words. It protects trust. Check any rules for your own trade or regulator; we summarise and link official sources but don't give legal or compliance advice.
Can my partner text or email the customer I referred?
Canada's anti-spam rules apply to commercial electronic messages. A narrow referral exemption covers only the first message, with conditions. Many partners simply ask the customer to make contact, or get clear permission first.
Will partnerships help my Google rankings?
That's not the aim, and we don't arrange link swaps. Google treats excessive link exchanges as spam. A partner linking to you where it helps a customer is fine; any paid link should be marked as sponsored.
Who owns the agreements, records and material?
You do. Agreements are between you and your partners, tracking records live in your systems, and joint material is owned as the two partners agree in writing.
Do you introduce me to partners or run a member group?
No. We help you decide which kinds of businesses to approach and prepare the conversation, but you make the approach. There are no members, listings or meetings.
What reports will I get?
A monthly check on tracking completeness and a quarterly scorecard per partner: enquiries, jobs won, value, response time, referrals sent back and any fees paid.
Do you work with HVAC companies on this site?
This site serves non-HVAC trades and local businesses in Burnaby. HVAC and heating companies are served by the group's HVAC.Agency brand.
Are you a contractor?
No. We are a marketing and business consulting service. We don't install, repair or service anything, and we never do the trade work ourselves.
Money and contracts
Plan prices, billing and terms come straight from Trades.Agency's published pricing, and our own pricing page explains how referral work fits inside a plan. The short version: month-to-month, cancel with 30 days' notice, 5% GST on top for Canadian clients.
What we never do is take a share of what passes between you and your partners. If a referral fee exists, it's yours to agree, pay and disclose.
Partners, fees and disclosure
The hardest questions in referral work are about money between partners and what the customer is told. Our view is consistent: put it in writing, keep it fair and tell the customer before they decide.
We help draft the business terms through our referral agreements service, and the disclosure guide gives template wording. For anything binding, a lawyer should review the final version.
Links, search and spam
Referral partnerships are business relationships, not search tactics. Google's spam policies name excessive link exchanges and paid links that pass ranking credit as link spam, and we stay well clear of both. When a partner's website mentions you, it should be because it genuinely helps their customer.
This is also why we don't build pages for every partner or put partner logos in a footer. One honest partner page is enough.
Ownership and reporting
You own everything that matters: the agreements, the customer records and the relationships themselves. If you stop working with us, nothing changes between you and your partners.
Reporting follows a monthly and quarterly rhythm described under referral tracking. The quarterly scorecard is the document most owners keep coming back to, because it shows plainly which relationships are worth the effort.
Timelines and expectations
Referral work moves at the speed of relationships, which is slower than ads and faster than most owners expect once it starts. A realistic first six months looks like this: one month of mapping and job review, a month or two agreeing terms with the first partners, then a quarter of tracked referrals before the first scorecard.
If a partner sends nothing in that first quarter, that is useful information, not failure. It usually means the fit was wrong, the partner's customers don't need you as often as you thought, or response times slipped. The partner mapping service is designed to reduce those misses before you spend months on a weak relationship.
Burnaby specifics
Burnaby's mix of Town Centre towers, townhouse complexes, older detached streets and business parks means the right partners differ a lot by district. A cleaner working Metrotown towers needs property managers and movers; a landscaper working North Burnaby needs builders and neighbours. Our areas page sets out which partner types tend to matter in each part of the city, and many clients also work across the boundary into Vancouver, New Westminster or Coquitlam.
When referral work is the wrong tool
Referral partnerships are not for every business, and we would rather say so on the first call. They work poorly when nearly all of your jobs are urgent calls from strangers, when you have no capacity to take more work, or when you're unwilling to tell customers about the relationships. In those cases, local search, pricing or hiring may be the better place to spend money, and we'll tell you which.
They also work poorly when an owner wants quick volume. A partnership produces a steady trickle of good customers, not a flood, and it rewards owners who reply quickly and keep promises for years.
Still unsure?
Read about us to see who you'd be working with, or the results from our HVAC work to see the method behind the numbers. When you're ready, the contact page explains what to send and what happens next.