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Your partners stop competing with each other, because the rules are written down.

Territory clashes, price undercutting and a direct deal landing on a dealer's customer all come from one gap: no agreed rules. Gully Sales writes the rules of engagement and builds the forum that applies them.

  • Written rules covering territory, account ownership, pricing and direct sales.
  • Deal registration, so two partners stop quoting the same customer.
  • A named forum that settles disputes in days, with the decision on record.
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Gully Sales Private Limited works with businesses across India. Start with a free audit of the channel disputes you are living with today.

In one paragraph

What is Channel Governance and Conflict Management?

Channel governance is the written set of rules your dealers, distributors, resellers and your own sales team all sell by. Conflict management is the forum that applies those rules when they are broken. Gully Sales defines territory and account ownership, deal registration, pricing and online conduct, escalation, sanctions and exit, then installs the review that keeps them honest.

The problem

Two of your partners just quoted the same customer. Again.

Some conflict is unavoidable once more than one party sells the same product. The damage comes from how it is handled. In most Indian SMBs a clash is settled personally, by whoever is senior enough to end the argument that day, and the reasoning is never written anywhere. So the next clash starts from nothing, gets a different answer, and every partner learns that outcomes depend on who they know rather than on what was agreed.

You will recognise it as

  • Two dealers quote the same customer, and the customer learns to play them against each other.
  • Your own sales team closes an account a partner opened, and nobody rules on who owns it.
  • Your product appears online below the price your offline partners are allowed to offer.
  • Territories were agreed in conversation, and each partner remembers a different boundary.
  • Disputes reach the managing director's phone because there is no other route to take.
  • The same argument returns every quarter and gets settled differently each time.

What it costs the business

  • Partners discount to defend a customer they fear losing, and your realisation quietly falls.
  • Good partners stop investing in demand creation, because they cannot be sure of keeping what they open.
  • Leadership spends its week arbitrating between partners instead of growing the channel.
  • Buyers wait for the next clash, because they have learned your price is always negotiable somewhere.
  • A partner who feels wronged moves volume to a supplier whose rules are clearer, and says nothing first.

Why it persists. Rules look like bureaucracy while the channel is small and everyone is known personally. By the time it is large enough to need them, writing rules means telling your biggest partner something they will not enjoy hearing, and no manager wants to be that person. The appointment letters say almost nothing about conduct, so there is nothing to point at. It holds until someone senior decides the rules apply to everyone, including the direct team and the favourite dealer.

If it stays unresolved. Conflict stops being an incident and becomes the channel's normal weather. Partners price defensively, hold less stock and treat you as a spot supplier. Recruitment gets harder, because a good prospective partner asks what protection they get and you have no answer. Eventually the strongest partner sets your commercial policy for you, simply by refusing to accept anything else.

What changes

Partners stop losing deals to each other, and to your own team.

In the first weeks

  • One rulebook that every partner and every salesperson has read and accepted.
  • A single route for raising a dispute, with a named person who decides it.
  • Registered opportunities, so ownership of a deal is a record and not an argument.
  • The open disputes you are carrying today are worked through and closed out.

In how the work runs

  • Issues are settled at the level they belong to, not on the director's phone.
  • Every decision is recorded, so the same argument is not reopened next quarter.
  • Your sales team knows before quoting whether an account is theirs or a partner's.
  • Exit and termination follow a defined process rather than an angry email.

In sales and marketing

  • Price discipline holds, because a breach has a defined and visible consequence.
  • Partners invest in opening customers when they can expect to keep them.
  • Fewer defensive discounts, so realisation across the channel becomes readable.
  • Recruitment gets easier, because you can show a prospect what protects them.

In what management can see

  • A conflict register showing what was raised, by whom, and how it was settled.
  • A view of which rules are broken most often, and by which parties.
  • Price compliance across offline partners and online listings, read on a schedule.

Over the longer term

  • Conflict becomes a managed exception instead of a permanent condition.
  • The channel's rules belong to your company rather than to one senior person's judgement.
  • Partners plan around your policy, because they have seen it survive a hard case.

Gully Sales controls the rules, the forum, the records and the review discipline. Whether partners then sell more depends on your product, pricing, supply and the market. We report disputes raised, settled and reopened alongside sales, without claiming that one produced the other.

Who it is for

Who needs written channel rules, and who does not need them yet.

The businesses it suits

  • Manufacturers selling through dealers or distributors across more than one territory.
  • B2B companies whose resellers and integrators meet the direct sales team on the same accounts.
  • Brands whose products are listed online below what offline partners are permitted to offer.
  • Franchisors managing catchment boundaries and enquiries that arrive at the wrong outlet.
  • Companies with referral or introducer partners who dispute who brought a customer in.
  • Businesses where the founder personally settles every channel argument that arises.

What usually prompts the call

  • A large partner has threatened to drop your line over a territory or a house account.
  • Marketplace listings have started undercutting the dealers who carry your stock.
  • You are appointing new partners and the existing ones are objecting loudly.
  • Your direct team and your channel are quoting the same buyers in the same month.
  • A dispute has reached legal notices, withheld payments or blocked despatches.
  • You are hiring a channel head and want the rules settled before they arrive.

What Gully Sales does

The work, component by component.

Rules of engagement

The core document. It states how territories are defined, who owns which accounts and segments, which customers are house accounts and why, what your direct team may and may not pursue, how enquiries are routed when they arrive at the wrong place, and what happens where two partners genuinely overlap. Written in plain language a dealer will read, not in legal drafting.

Why it matters:
Almost every channel dispute is a disagreement about ownership that nobody wrote down. Once ownership is stated, the argument becomes a check against a document rather than a contest of seniority.
You receive:
A rules of engagement document covering territory, accounts, segments, house accounts and direct-versus-channel selling.
Business value:
Partners know what is theirs before they invest in chasing it, and your team knows what it may not touch.

Deal registration and account protection

A light process by which a partner records an opportunity before working it, with the fields you actually need, a validity period, an approval step and a rule for what happens when two partners register the same buyer. Sized for the channel you have, so it can run in a shared sheet where there is no CRM and inside the CRM where there is one.

Why it matters:
Protection that is verbal cannot be enforced. A registered opportunity turns first contact into a dated record that settles most ownership disputes without a meeting.
You receive:
A deal registration policy, the registration form or CRM fields, and an approval and expiry routine.
Business value:
Partners stop discovering each other at the customer's table, and stop discounting to prove who was there first.

Pricing, discount and online conduct rules

The commercial discipline: who may quote what, how special pricing is requested and approved, what discretion each partner tier holds, what your policy is on listing the product online and on selling outside an appointed area, and how deviations are detected. We also set what your company will not do, such as quoting below your own partners.

Why it matters:
Price leakage is the conflict that damages every partner at once. Rules that name the limits and the approval route reduce both the leakage and the accusations that follow it.
You receive:
A pricing and conduct policy with approval routes, tier discretion limits and an online selling position.
Business value:
Your channel competes on service and availability rather than on who is willing to cut margin fastest.

Escalation and adjudication forum

One intake for channel disputes, sorted by type, with a first-level owner, an agreed response time and a second level that decides when the first cannot. For most SMBs that second level is a small standing panel from sales, finance and operations that meets on a fixed date rather than when the shouting starts.

Why it matters:
Partners accept an unfavourable decision far more readily when the process was known in advance and the same process applied to somebody bigger than them last month.
You receive:
An escalation matrix, a dispute intake, the panel's terms of reference and a fixed meeting calendar.
Business value:
Disputes are settled in days by the right people, and your leadership stops being the first phone call.

Breach, sanction and remediation ladder

What actually follows a breach: a graded ladder from a recorded warning through withdrawal of scheme benefits or protected accounts to suspension and, in the last case, termination. Each step names who decides it, what evidence is required and what the partner may do to return to good standing.

Why it matters:
A rule with no consequence is advice. A consequence with no ladder is a threat nobody will use, so it gets ignored until the relationship breaks entirely.
You receive:
A graded consequence ladder with evidence standards, decision rights and a remediation route back.
Business value:
Breaches are corrected early and proportionately, instead of being tolerated until termination is the only option left.

Agreement and policy alignment

We read your appointment letters, dealer and distributor agreements and scheme circulars against the new rules and list where they contradict each other, where they are silent, and where practice has drifted from the paper. You get a marked-up list of the clauses to change, and a briefing note your legal adviser can act on.

Why it matters:
Rules that conflict with the signed agreement fail the first time a partner tests them. The two documents have to say the same thing before anything can be enforced.
You receive:
A gap list between agreements, circulars and the new rules, with recommended clause changes and an exit protocol.
Business value:
Your policy is defensible when it is challenged, and a partner exit stops being an improvised argument.

Conflict register and governance review

One place where every dispute is logged with the parties, the type, the decision, the reasoning and the date. Read quarterly, it stops being an admin file and becomes evidence: which rules are unclear, which territories overlap, which partners are habitually in dispute and which policy needs amending.

Why it matters:
Individual disputes are noise. The pattern across a quarter tells you whether the problem is a partner, a boundary or a rule that was written badly.
You receive:
A conflict register, a quarterly governance review agenda and the first review report with amendments.
Business value:
The rulebook improves with use instead of ageing on a shared drive until nobody quotes it.

What you will have at the end.

  • A rules of engagement document covering territory, accounts, segments and house accounts.
  • A written position on direct selling and which customers your own team may pursue.
  • A deal registration policy with the form or CRM fields, approval step and expiry rule.
  • A pricing, discount and online conduct policy with tier discretion limits.
  • An escalation matrix naming issue types, first-level owners and response times.
  • Terms of reference and a meeting calendar for the adjudication panel.
  • A graded breach and sanction ladder with evidence standards and a remediation route.
  • A gap list between your existing agreements and circulars and the new rules.
  • A partner exit and territory transition protocol.
  • A conflict register, populated with the disputes open when we started.
  • A partner briefing pack and an internal briefing for your own sales team.
  • A quarterly governance review report with rule amendments and open items.

How it runs

The engagement, step by step.

  1. 1

    Map the conflict you actually have

    We collect the live and recent disputes, from formal complaints down to the arguments settled on a call, and sort them by type: territory, account ownership, direct versus channel, pricing, online listings, claims and credit. Each is set against what the paperwork says and what was actually decided, so you can see how often practice and policy disagree.

    You provide:
    Correspondence on disputes, partner complaints, and time with the people who currently settle them.
    We produce:
    A conflict picture: types, frequency, parties involved, and how each was decided in the end.
    Done when:
    Your leadership agrees this is a fair account of what the channel is arguing about.
  2. 2

    Read the paper against the practice

    We read the appointment letters, agreements, scheme circulars and price lists in force, then check them against what partners believe they were promised. Gaps, contradictions and silences are listed. This is usually where a company discovers that two dealers hold letters describing overlapping areas in different words.

    You provide:
    All partner agreements and circulars in force, price lists, and any legal advice already taken.
    We produce:
    A gap list between the documents, the practice and the promises partners believe they hold.
    Done when:
    The contradictions are identified and their commercial cost is understood.
  3. 3

    Draft the rules with your leadership

    We draft the rules of engagement, the deal registration policy and the pricing and conduct rules in working sessions with the people who will have to enforce them. The hard questions are settled here: house accounts, the direct team's limits, online selling, and what happens when your largest partner is the one in breach.

    You provide:
    Decision-makers in the room, your commercial limits, and a candid position on direct selling.
    We produce:
    Draft rules of engagement, deal registration policy and pricing and conduct rules.
    Done when:
    Leadership has taken the contested decisions and signed the drafts.
  4. 4

    Test the rules against real cases

    We run the drafts against the disputes from the first step and against the two or three cases your team fears most. Where a rule produces an outcome nobody would accept, it is rewritten. This is the step that separates a rulebook that survives from one that is abandoned at the first hard case.

    You provide:
    Honest scenarios, including the ones that involve your biggest partner and your own team.
    We produce:
    A tested rulebook, with the reasoning recorded for each contested case.
    Done when:
    The rules produce outcomes your leadership will publicly stand behind.
  5. 5

    Stand up the forum and the register

    We set the escalation matrix, response times, panel membership and meeting calendar, then build the conflict register and load the disputes already open. The panel takes its first decisions with us present, so the routine is practised on real cases rather than described in a slide.

    You provide:
    Panel members, their calendar commitment, and agreement on response times you can keep.
    We produce:
    A live escalation route, a constituted panel, a populated conflict register and the first decisions.
    Done when:
    The panel has settled its first set of cases without us leading the meeting.
  6. 6

    Brief partners and your own team

    The rules are published and explained: a briefing pack for partners, a session for your sales team, and a route for questions before enforcement starts. Your own team is briefed first, because a partner discovering the rules before your salespeople do is a poor start.

    You provide:
    Access to partners for the briefing, and your sales team's time for an internal session.
    We produce:
    A partner briefing pack, an internal briefing, an acknowledgement record and a question log.
    Done when:
    Partners and staff have received the rules and their questions have been answered.
  7. 7

    Review, report and hand over

    After the agreed period we read the register against the baseline: disputes raised, how long they stayed open, how many were reopened, which rules were breached and by whom. We amend what the evidence says needs amending, report to leadership, and hand the routine to your team.

    You provide:
    The period's dispute records, sales and price data, and a review session with leadership.
    We produce:
    A governance review report, amended rules and a written plan for the next quarter.
    Done when:
    Your team runs the forum unaided and leadership has the report in hand.

Ways to work with us

Write the rules once, or have the adjudication forum run with you.

Channel conflict audit

A short diagnostic of the disputes you are carrying, what your agreements actually say, and where policy and practice have separated. Ends with a written picture and a recommendation.

Rules of engagement build

The drafting work: territory and account ownership, house accounts, direct-versus-channel limits, deal registration, and pricing and online conduct rules, tested against your real cases.

Governance forum setup

Escalation matrix, panel terms of reference, response times, conflict register and briefing packs, with the first cycle of decisions taken alongside your team before handover.

Open dispute clearing round

We work through the backlog of unsettled partner disputes under the new rules, recording each decision and its reasoning, so the rulebook starts life with a clean position.

Annual governance review

A yearly read of the register and the rules: what was breached, what was unclear, what needs amending, and a refreshed policy with the changes briefed to partners.

Why Gully Sales

What you are actually choosing when you choose us.

We write rules that bind your side too.

Most channel policies fail because the direct team is quietly exempt. We insist the rules cover your own salespeople, and we say plainly when leadership is unwilling to accept that, because the work will not hold otherwise.

We test the rules on the hard cases first.

A policy is worth what it does when your largest dealer is in breach. We run the drafts through the disputes your team fears most, before publication rather than after the first argument.

We work in plain language, not legal drafting.

Partners follow rules they can read. We write the policy so a dealer in a district town understands it, then list the clause changes your legal adviser should make to the agreement behind it.

Pricing, lead routing and CRM records are settled in one place.

Gully Sales works across marketing, sales, channels, customer success and revenue operations, so lead routing, pricing approvals and CRM records are settled together rather than by three separate vendors.

The rulebook and the registers stay yours, in editable form.

The rules of engagement, escalation matrix, conflict register, briefing packs and review agendas are handed over as working documents your own team amends as the channel changes.

We count disputes settled, not the quarter's sales.

We report disputes raised, settled and reopened separately from sales. Attributing a good quarter to a governance panel would not be true, and it would not help you decide anything.

Where it applies

The same service, in different businesses.

Building materials and hardware

The situation:
Dealers in neighbouring districts quote the same builder, and each claims the project was theirs first because a salesperson said so.
How it applies:
Territory definitions written by pin code and project type, deal registration for projects above a value, and a panel that decides contested cases.
Likely benefit:
Project ownership is settled by a dated record, and dealers stop protecting a site by cutting their own margin.

Industrial equipment and components

The situation:
The direct sales team pursues large accounts that a distributor developed, and the distributor has begun promoting a competing line in response.
How it applies:
A house account list with stated reasons, a direct-versus-channel rule, compensation for developed accounts, and an escalation route for exceptions.
Likely benefit:
The distributor knows which accounts it can keep, and the company keeps its strategic customers without losing the territory.

Consumer durables and appliances

The situation:
Products appear on marketplaces below what showroom partners can offer, and dealers threaten to stop stocking the range.
How it applies:
An online conduct policy, an authorised seller position, monitoring of listings, and a graded consequence ladder applied to breaches.
Likely benefit:
Offline partners see the policy enforced on a real case, and stop treating every online listing as your company's decision.

Software and IT services

The situation:
Two resellers and the internal team all approach the same enterprise buyer, and the buyer uses the overlap to drive the price down.
How it applies:
Deal registration with a validity period, a first-registered rule, segment ownership by account size, and published approval routes for special pricing.
Likely benefit:
One party leads each opportunity, and the discount that used to buy the argument stays in the deal.

Franchised services

The situation:
Franchisees advertise into each other's catchments, and enquiries are claimed by whichever outlet answers the phone first.
How it applies:
Catchment rules, a lead routing standard, marketing conduct limits between outlets, and a monthly forum for boundary disputes.
Likely benefit:
Outlets invest in their own catchment, and head office stops mediating the same argument every month.

Packaged food and consumer goods

The situation:
Stock crosses from one distributor's area into another at a lower rate, and both blame the other for the leakage.
How it applies:
Rules on selling outside an appointed area, a scheme discipline note, evidence standards for a claim, and a sanction ladder that is actually used.
Likely benefit:
Cross-territory leakage is investigated on evidence rather than on accusation, and repeat offenders face a known consequence.

Proof

Work we can point to.

HOPO Hardware

The problem:
A premium hardware and fittings business growing through dealers, where coordination across the dealer network and the brand's reach in the market both needed strengthening.
What we did:
Gully Sales supported the business on brand reach, dealer coordination and sales performance across its hardware and fittings range.
The result:
Gully Sales supported HOPO Hardware in enhancing brand reach, improving dealer coordination, and in sales performance for premium hardware and fittings.
Read the case study

Questions buyers ask

Before you enquire, the answers you will want.

What makes this worth the effort for us and for our partners?

For you, the saving is in margin and management time. Defensive discounting, duplicate effort and arbitration by the founder all cost more than a rulebook does. For the partner, the value is protection: they know which customers they can develop without losing them to your direct team or a neighbouring dealer. Both sides trade a personal understanding for something written and checkable.

Will tightening the rules make partners leave?

Partners who were profiting from the confusion may object, and one or two may test whether you mean it. Partners who were losing customers to the confusion usually welcome it. The risk sits in how it is introduced, which is why your own team is briefed first, the rules are tested on real cases, and the first decisions are taken visibly rather than quietly.

Our direct sales team competes with our partners. How do you settle that?

By deciding it openly rather than case by case. We agree a house account list with stated reasons, name the segments or deal sizes your direct team may pursue, and set what a partner receives if the company takes an account they developed. The decision is yours. What we insist on is that it is written down and applied to your team as strictly as to a dealer.

Our product is being sold cheaper online. Can governance fix that?

It can address what you control. We set an online selling position, define who is authorised to list, put monitoring in place and apply a graded consequence when an appointed partner breaches it. Where the seller is not one of your partners, governance limits the leakage reaching them and gives your offline partners a policy to see enforced, but no policy removes an unauthorised listing on its own.

How long does the engagement take?

It depends on partner numbers, territories, how many disputes are already open and how far your agreements have drifted from practice. Mapping the conflict and reading the paperwork comes first, drafting and testing the rules follows, then the forum and the briefings. We fix the sequence and the checkpoints in a written scope after the audit, and we do not quote a timeline before seeing the channel.

What do we need to provide?

Your partner list and territories, every appointment letter, agreement and scheme circular in force, the price list, and the correspondence on disputes both open and recently settled. You also need decision-makers in the drafting sessions. The single most important input is a candid position on direct selling, because a rulebook that dodges that question will not survive its first real case.

Who actually decides a dispute, you or us?

You do. We design the route, the evidence standards and the panel, and we sit in on the first cycle so the routine is practised rather than described. The decisions are taken by your people, because they carry the commercial consequences and they will still be there after the engagement ends. Where we are asked to give a view, it is recorded as a recommendation, not a ruling.

Do we have to change our dealer agreements?

Often, yes, but not immediately. We list where the agreements, circulars and new rules contradict each other or say nothing, and recommend the clause changes. Your legal adviser drafts them. In the meantime the rules can operate as published policy with acknowledgement from partners, and the agreement is updated at renewal or appointment rather than reopened all at once.

4 more questions

How will we know whether it worked?

Against the baseline taken before publication. In the first quarter you should see disputes reaching the route rather than the director, ageing less, and fewer being reopened. Over a year you read rule breaches, price compliance, registration adoption, territory coverage, partner-sourced pipeline, sell-through and retention. We report governance activity and sales separately rather than claiming one produced the other.

What is not included in this scope?

We do not recruit partners, design programme tiers and benefits, plan territories from scratch, model commissions and rebates, run partner training or implement portal software. Those are separate services in this pillar and we will point you to the right one. We also do not act as your lawyer or represent you in a legal dispute with a partner.

We have only six dealers. Is this too much process?

Probably a lighter version. With six dealers you may not need a standing panel, but you almost certainly need written territories, a position on direct selling and a record of what was decided. The cost of doing it later is that a rule which was never written now looks like a rule invented to settle one argument, which is much harder for a partner to accept.

Can this work if we do not have a CRM?

Yes. Deal registration can run in a shared sheet with a dated entry and an approval, and the conflict register can be kept the same way, as long as one named person maintains it. Where a CRM exists we build the registration fields and the register inside it. If you later want this properly systemised, revenue operations can take it on.

Talk to us

Plan your channel growth programme before the next dispute costs you a partner.

The free audit is a working session, not a pitch. We look at the disputes you are carrying, what your agreements actually say, where your direct team meets your partners, and whether you need a full rulebook or simply written territories and a route for escalation.

  • No obligation and no sales script
  • A reply from someone who does the work
  • Your details are never sold or shared

Your partner list, agreements, pricing and dispute correspondence stay confidential, and are used only to prepare for and conduct the audit.

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