# What should an AI agent policy for a sales team include?

**What each agent may promise, what it relies on and who owns that, what it
may spend of a buyer's attention, when it must ask a person, and what happens
when nobody answers.** Then who reads the policy itself, and how often.

Most policies written for agents are a list of things not to say. That
covers manners. It does not cover what the agent commits your company to,
which is where the cost is.

## The sections, in plain words

1. **Who granted the authority, to which agent, until when.** A policy with
   no end date is one nobody re-reads.
2. **What it may promise.** Eight separate decisions rather than one setting
   from cautious to bold. Three of them are never yours to open: suggesting
   something the agent never said, giving a person's word, and promising a
   date nothing is in place to keep.
3. **What it relies on, and who owns each piece.** Every price, feature and
   certification it may repeat, with a named owner and how often it is
   checked. A rule that depends on information nobody owns is decorative.
4. **What it may spend.** A buyer's attention, your sending reputation, your
   approvers' time. Show the totals first; cap only what you choose to.
5. **When it asks first.** In terms of the deal and the line, not the agent:
   a number outside the range, a line that is overdue, a variation on a term.
6. **What silence means.** An ask nobody answers is not a yes.
7. **People and accounts no agent touches**, whatever else is true.
8. **What happens when the rules run out**: what stops, what carries on, and
   who is told.
9. **Who watches the policy itself**, for being too loose and too tight, and
   on what day it is next read.

## The test of a good one

**Every rule says why it is there in a sentence somebody who sells would
understand.** A limit nobody can explain gets switched off. And every rule
names the information it depends on and who keeps that current, because an
agent following a rule perfectly against wrong information is still wrong.

## What to leave out

Anything that is a judgement about a person. A policy that becomes a way to
grade the rep behind an agent stops being followed honestly, and the signals
that tell you an agent is drifting disappear with it.

## What this does not do

Reynforce does not write your policy. It holds it in a form an agent's
checks can read, and records which version every promise was made under.

</what-should-an-ai-agent-be-allowed-to-promise.md> goes through the eight
decisions. </get-an-ai-agent-approved-by-legal.md> covers what a reviewer asks
of the policy.