It belongs to the playbook for M&A integration advisors at the end of transition services, which explains why the answer splits across roles. This page turns that split into a calendar invite, a seating plan, a clock and a closing decision.
Who gets an invitation
Keep the room small. Every person invited should be able to answer at least one block, and nobody should be there only to listen.
| Seat | Usually held by | Blocks they answer |
|---|---|---|
| Record owner | Buyer's CFO or CEO | 2, 4 and 5 |
| Custodian | Buyer's IT lead | 1 and 3 |
| Rights check | Buyer's counsel, in person or on call for block 2 | 2 |
| Integration advisor (you) | The partner running the agenda | Chairs every block, answers none |
Leave out the seller's business team, any SourceX representative and anyone from the project's wider steering group. The commercial question at the end is for the owner alone.
Send the invite with one line of purpose: "Thirty minutes to confirm who keeps the business's history before the transition services stop." That sentence is accurate and does not lead with the referral.
The agenda at a glance
Illustrative timings for a 240-person distribution business, recently split from its parent group, whose services schedule covers email, ERP and a service-desk tool.
| Minutes | Agenda question | Answered by | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 | When does each service end, and when does access actually stop? | Custodian | A dated list per system |
| 5 to 12 | Which record sets does the purchase agreement transfer to us? | Record owner, with counsel | Transferred, excluded or shared, per record set |
| 12 to 20 | Which of those sets fall outside the cutover scope? | Custodian | Record types, rough counts and years left behind |
| 20 to 25 | Who can preserve an approved inventory before access arrangements expire? | Record owner | A named custodian and a date |
| 25 to 30 | Would you like to hear whether any of this could be licensed? | Record owner | Yes: introduction. No: stop |
What a good answer sounds like in each block
Block 1, minutes 0 to 5: the dates
A good answer is specific: "Email services end on [date]; the seller's admin has confirmed the tenant stays readable for us until [date]." A weak answer is "when the agreement ends". Service end and access end are often different dates, and only the second one matters for the history.
If the company runs on a seller's Microsoft 365 tenant, it helps to know how a lapsed subscription behaves. Microsoft describes Expired and Disabled stages; during Disabled only admins can reach and back up data, and the standard Disabled period for most offers is 90 days before deletion. Enterprise agreements can differ, so the custodian confirms the real dates with the seller's admin.
Microsoft 365Block 2, minutes 5 to 12: what the business owns
A good answer names the clause: "The books and records clause transfers customer and project files; shared mailboxes are licensed back for 12 months." Counsel only needs to confirm which bucket each record set falls into. If nobody can answer, that is the output: the owner now knows the agreement needs a reading before anything else happens.
Block 3, minutes 12 to 20: what the cutover leaves behind
This is the block the meeting exists for. A good answer sounds like: "Day 1 scope covers live users and open orders. About 60 former-staff accounts and eight years of resolved service tickets are outside it."
Ask for counts and years, not content. If email is involved, one documented fact helps the room: Microsoft's cross-tenant mailbox migration moves mailbox data only, and after a successful move the source mailbox is deleted and replaced by a mail-routing object in the old tenant. Anything never scheduled for a move, and any SharePoint or Teams content without its own plan, stays where it is.
Block 4, minutes 20 to 25: the custodian
Ask the page's question exactly: "Who can preserve an approved inventory before access arrangements expire?" A good answer is a name, a date and a route: "Our IT lead requests the export through the transition services desk by [date], after counsel signs off the ticket history." If the answer is "the seller will handle it", ask who at the seller has agreed to, and by when. A seller has no reason to keep records for a business it has sold.
Block 5, minutes 25 to 30: disclosure, then the question
Disclose first, in plain words: SourceX licenses approved business data directly from companies for AI training and evaluation; you are a referral partner and may receive a reward if a qualifying license completes; SourceX funds it separately and it never reduces the company's payment; a lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment. Then ask whether the owner wants an introduction. Accept either answer without a follow-up pitch.
Answers that should end the meeting early
Some answers make the rest of the agenda pointless. Stop politely when you hear one.
| Answer | Why it ends the meeting | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| "The purchase agreement leaves those records with the seller" | The business cannot authorize anything about them | Record set excluded; no further step |
| "Everything moved in the first batch, including archives" | Nothing is left behind to preserve | Cutover scope complete |
| "We are deleting it all under our retention schedule" | The owner has already decided | Decision noted, date of decision |
| "The business has fewer than 50 full-time staff" | It falls below the company baseline | Headcount noted; no introduction |
| "I would rather not discuss licensing" | The owner has declined | Declined; close the file |
The decision the meeting has to produce
Leave the room with a short written note in your own files, and send the owner a copy of the first three lines.
- Custodian: who preserves the approved inventory, and by which date.
- Scope: which record sets are left outside the cutover, with rough counts and years.
- Rights: whether the purchase agreement transfers each set.
- Disclosure: that you explained the referral reward before the opt-in question.
- Opt-in: yes, no or later, with the date.
If the answer is yes, check the baseline: 50+ full-time employees at peak in the separated business (contractors excluded), a documented operating history, rights to license the records and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English. Then send the TSA introduction email to the record owner. The TSA archive context checklist tracks the dates from here to switch-off.
Partners sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting introductions; the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application. Unknown until SourceX reviews it: whether any record set fits a dataset need, the rights review result and any offer. The TSA explainer defines the agreement itself; the sell-side kickoff agenda, the portfolio review agenda and the first board meeting agenda use the same opt-in at the end.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
If block four produces a custodian and block five produces a yes, register as a partner, confirm the business on who qualifies, and read the program terms and reward conditions before you introduce the record owner and the buyer's CEO, who can authorize a licensing discussion.