Our review policy.

The honest version. Every rule, every check, every reason we would reject a review. Published in full because that is the only way community reviews stay credible.

1. The five principles we run by

Every operational rule below is downstream of one of these.

1. No anonymous reviews. Identity must be verified or the review does not appear. There is no compromise on this. Anonymous reviews are the single largest source of fraud in the directory category.
2. No edited reviews. We do not soften reviews, condense reviews, or rewrite reviews on the reviewer's behalf. We either publish the review as written or return it for revision by the reviewer.
3. No seeded reviews. We do not write reviews. We do not pay anyone to write reviews. We do not solicit reviews from people we know would write favorable ones.
4. No paid placement. Providers cannot pay to remove reviews, hide reviews, or feature reviews. The review system is not a commercial product.
5. Honest counts. If a provider has zero community reviews, the section on the profile page says so. We do not hide empty sections or pad counts with aggregated review imports.

2. Identity verification

Before any review enters our editorial queue, the reviewer must clear identity checks.

• Work email required. Free providers like gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, icloud.com, and a long list of disposable-email services are rejected at submission. The email must belong to a real organization.
• Magic-link verification. A one-time link goes to the submitted email. The reviewer must click it within 24 hours or the submission expires.
• Domain-to-employer match. The email domain must plausibly match the company the reviewer claims to work for. Mismatches go to manual review.
• Duplicate detection. One review per person per provider every 18 months. Duplicate submissions are returned for clarification.
• LinkedIn cross-check (optional). A reviewer who provides a LinkedIn URL where the title and company match the submission earns the "LinkedIn verified" badge.

3. The two trust tiers

Published reviews carry one of two visible trust badges.

We do not have a generic "5-star user" tier or any other unverified bucket. Either the identity is real or the review does not appear.

4. Editorial moderation

Every review that clears identity verification enters the editorial moderation queue. A human reviewer (named member of our editorial team) reads every submission. Target turnaround is five business days from verification.

Each review gets one of three outcomes.

• Published. The review meets the policy. It appears on the relevant provider profile, attributed to the reviewer by name and current title, with the appropriate trust badge.
• Returned for revision. The review meets the policy in spirit but needs a specific change before it can publish. The reviewer receives a written reason and an invitation to revise.
• Rejected. The review violates a policy rule that cannot be revised away. The reviewer receives the cause in plain language.

Moderation decisions are made by named editors. We log every decision and audit the log annually.

5. Conflict-of-interest rules

Every reviewer must attest to all three statements at submission. False attestation is grounds for permanent ban from the review system.

1. The reviewer is not employed by, contractually engaged with, or financially related to the provider being reviewed.
2. The review reflects honest, first-hand experience and is not posted on behalf of someone else.
3. The reviewer has read this policy and consents to publication under their name and current job title.

Extra-moderation rule for our own businesses

We hold ourselves to a higher standard than we hold reviewers. Reviews submitted from email domains associated with sales training franchises and consultancies that the directory's founders are connected to are auto-flagged and reviewed manually by an editor who is not on those teams. This rule exists to keep our editorial line clean. The current list of those domains and entities is maintained internally and audited annually.

6. When we reject a review

Six explicit reasons. We reject reviews for none others.

• Identity could not be verified. Email did not verify, domain mismatch could not be resolved, or LinkedIn check failed.
• Insufficient specificity. The review is too vague to be useful to other buyers. Common failure mode: "Great experience, highly recommend" with no program named, no timeline, no outcomes.
• Conflict of interest disclosed elsewhere. The reviewer attested to no conflict but other evidence suggests otherwise. We reject rather than risk the integrity of the system.
• Sounds promotional. The review reads like marketing copy. Reviews written in the provider's voice are rejected.
• Sounds like sabotage. The review reads like a competitor or aggrieved former employee targeting a provider rather than describing an actual engagement.
• Defamatory or unverifiable claims. Specific personal accusations against named individuals, claims of illegal behavior without evidence, or anything that crosses from opinion into actionable defamation.

7. Provider disputes and right of reply

Providers see published reviews at the same moment everyone else does. They cannot preview reviews, cannot ask us to remove reviews because they disagree with the content, and cannot pay for any kind of mitigation.

A provider can request a right of reply. This appears as a labeled response under the original review, signed by a named representative of the provider. It does not alter the original review. It also does not require our approval, beyond a basic anti-harassment check.

A provider can also file an editorial complaint if they believe the review violates policy (defamation, identity fraud, conflict of interest). Complaints are reviewed by an editor not involved in the original moderation decision. If the complaint is upheld, the review is removed and the reviewer notified.

8. When we remove a published review

Reviews are permanent unless one of four conditions is met.

• An editorial complaint is upheld (see Section 7).
• The reviewer asks us to remove their own review.
• Legal counsel advises removal in response to a specific legal claim.
• The provider's profile is removed from the directory entirely. Reviews go with the profile.

We do not remove reviews simply because they are old, simply because they are negative, or simply because the provider has changed ownership.

9. Editorial audit and complaint log

We publish an annual editorial audit covering: total reviews submitted, total published, total returned for revision, total rejected (by reason), total provider complaints received (by outcome), and any policy changes made during the year.

If you have a concern about a specific review or about this policy, write to editorial@bestsalesteamtraining.com. Every complaint is logged. Every logged complaint appears in the annual audit, anonymized if appropriate.