"How do you actually get paid?" is the question that lands in every first conversation, usually within the first five minutes. It's the right question. For a federal-contractor CFO running FAR compliance, a PE operating partner answering to an investment committee, or a CEO whose last advisor billed hourly to sell what they were going to buy anyway — this isn't curiosity. It's a gate.

The answer is short, the mechanics are documented, and the structure is the reason the advocacy stays real.

What vendor-funded actually means

Vendors in our bench pay us a standard channel commission when you choose to engage them. The commission comes out of the vendor's existing cost structure — the same economic channel they've been paying into forever, whether the recipient was a direct sales rep, a distribution partner, or a reseller. Your pricing is identical to what you'd pay going direct to the vendor. No markup. No retainer. No advisory fee added on top.

We earn on close and on qualifying renewals. If a vendor wins your business and keeps it, we earn. If they don't, we don't.

That's the whole structure.

What it isn't

Three negations, because the failure modes in this category are predictable.

Not a kickback. Kickbacks are undisclosed by definition. Our commission relationships are documented, disclosed to you in writing before any recommendation, and visible in the vendor's contracting paperwork. You see the economics of every vendor we carry — including the ones we're actively steering you away from.

Not reselling. You contract directly with the vendor. We don't touch the paper. We're not on the hook for delivery, SLAs, or performance — that's between you and the vendor, exactly where it should be. Our role sits outside the transaction.

Not hourly advisory with a commission on top. You pay us zero. The commission model works for us or it doesn't — we eat that risk, not you. If we can't find enough value in your stack to earn through a vendor relationship, we tell you that and walk away. That's the honest read.

The question isn't whether vendor-funded is ethical. It's whether it's disclosed. Disclosed is the word that matters.

How the disclosure actually works

Four steps, every engagement:

  1. Before any recommendation. You receive a written summary of our active vendor relationships and how we're compensated by each. Nothing gets recommended before you have that document in hand.
  2. During the engagement. Any vendor we surface has a line-item disclosure — who they are, what we earn, and the structure of the commission (one-time, multi-year, renewal-tied). Written, signed, yours to keep.
  3. At contract signing. The vendor invoices you directly at the vendor's standard pricing. The commission is paid vendor-to-us, never from your budget. The paper trail is clean on both sides.
  4. On renewal. We don't earn on relationships we aren't maintaining. If we haven't earned your continued trust — or the vendor hasn't earned theirs — the ongoing commission goes away.

The documentation is built to survive legal review. That's not a marketing claim. That's the shape of the disclosure.

Why the economics keep us neutral

The structural argument matters more than the paperwork. We earn across a multi-disciplinary bench — 30+ analyst-rated vendors on the IT side alone, with benches in AI & Automation and Sustainable Ops. A single vendor paying a marginally higher commission doesn't move our recommendations because the lifetime value of one client relationship — five to ten years of continuous engagement, multiple renewals, cross-category expansion — dwarfs any single quarter of inflated payout.

One bad vendor match, one client who lost trust, and the forward math collapses.

Put it differently: we only win if we keep being right. Vendor pressure works on a rep with a quarterly quota. It doesn't work on an advisor whose next year depends on being invited back.

The short version

Vendor-funded means vendors pay us a standard channel commission when you choose to engage them. You pay us zero. All commissions are disclosed in writing before any recommendation, and you contract directly with the vendor at the vendor's pricing. The advocacy stays honest because we earn across a multi-disciplinary vendor bench — one vendor, one deal, one quarter never outweighs a decade of client trust.