Whether you’re building a new digital product for your customers or an internal tool, you’ll have to let your partner in on how the sausage is made at least to some degree. It’s like trying to teach someone to cook with one hand tied behind your back – possible, but not exactly efficient.

02 NDAs are your friend (sort of)

Yes, get an NDA in place. You’ll almost certainly be required to do so by your own company’s policy. Or if you don’t ask for one, any good agency will suggest it to you anyway. But remember, like any legal contract it’s a deterrent, not a guarantee. If someone really wants to steal your idea, a piece of paper won’t stop them.

03 Compartmentalize when possible

It goes without saying – you don’t have to give away the keys to the entire kingdom. Share what’s necessary for the project, but keep truly sensitive information on a need-to-know basis.

04 Consider the real risks

What’s the worst that could happen if this information got out? Sometimes, the perceived risk is far greater than the actual risk. Don’t let paranoia cripple your project.

05 Trust, but verify

Check out your agency’s track record with confidential information. Have some of your competitors trusted them in the past? How do they handle data security?

06 Consider the opportunity cost

What’s the cost of not sharing enough information? A subpar product? Missed deadlines? Sometimes, the risk of sharing is less than the risk of not sharing.

Will you offer access to cloud storage platforms or will you share individual files via email? Will you use your own Jira/Confluence/Teams/Slack or will you rely on your partner’s systems?

08 Have an exit strategy

Know what happens to your information when the project ends. How will data be returned or destroyed? Get this in writing before you start sharing. A good NDA should cover this scenario as well.

Since you’ve made it this far, this will not come as a surprise to you: most successful agency relationships are built on trust and open communication.

If you’re constantly worried about what you can and can’t share, you’re starting on the back foot. Do your due diligence initially and then worry about more productive questions.

A good agency will have worked with many clients in many different industries. They should definitely know how to handle sensitive information properly. They’re not out to steal your ideas, they’re out to help you execute them better than you could alone. In fact, most of the best agencies will sign over all intellectual property rights – once you’ve paid them for the work.

Example

NDAs have become simply a part of doing business a long time ago. We find that there’s two types of companies that insist on signing NDAs: the ones with defendable intellectual property, and the ones who are worried that their product ideas might be stolen. While IP-related lawsuits are quite common, companies in the second category rarely find themselves in court, however. Or to paraphrase Guy Kawasaki: “Nobody cares about ideas.” Ideas are cheap, it’s the implementation that’s the hard part.

Agencies are usually in the business of implementation and maybe because of that reason we tend to be happy to sign pretty much any NDA. With one exception: “reference rights”. There’s little as valuable to an agency than the right to talk about work successfully delivered.

References help us to build our reputation, talk to new customers, and eventually sell more work. For our customers to offer reference rights is an easy way to increase the alignment of incentives – aka to ensure that the agency does work they’re truly proud of. Maybe a good reason to exclude reference rights from the NDA next time?