The Deal Group Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 2 November 2026
Trading Name: The Deal Group – Deal Commercial
Owner: HKSH Investments Pty Ltd as trustee for the HKSH Trust, ABN 66 941 947 345
1. Introduction
The Deal Group (“we”, “us”, “our”) respects your privacy. This policy explains how we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information across our consulting services, including franchise development, enquiries, assessments, bookings, client engagements, marketing and recruitment. We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.
2. What personal information we collect
- Identity and contact details, such as your name, email address and phone number.
- Business and financial information relevant to our services, such as business name, industry, number of locations, year started, owners and their roles, revenue range, website and social media links, and growth plans.
- Enquiry, assessment and meeting information, such as your answers, readiness statements, notes, files you upload, booking times and online meeting links, and recordings, transcripts and summaries of discovery calls where you agree to recording.
- Information needed to provide and invoice our services when you engage us. Clients pay by bank transfer; we do not use a card payment provider.
- Marketing and communication preferences, including unsubscribe requests.
- Website information, such as IP address, device and browser type, and pages visited.
- Employment information for job applicants, such as resumes, employment history and referee details.
We aim to collect only what we need. Please avoid giving us unnecessary personal information about other people.
3. How we collect your information
We collect personal information directly from you when you:
- Enquire about or engage our services.
- Complete website forms, surveys or assessments, including our online pre-meeting assessment and our free business guide request form.
- Book a discovery call through our online booking page.
- Email, call or meet with us, including by video call. With your agreement, we may record discovery calls (see section 5B).
- Subscribe to updates or apply for a role.
We may also collect it from third parties, including Meta when you submit an enquiry through a Facebook or Instagram lead form, and through the cookies and tags described in section 7.
4. Why we collect, hold, use and disclose your information
We use personal information to:
- Respond to your enquiry and prepare for your discovery call.
- Review your business and assess whether franchising or another growth model may suit it.
- Deliver our consulting services and manage our client relationships.
- Communicate with you about projects or enquiries.
- Keep business and financial records.
- Send direct marketing where permitted (see section 6).
- Consider job applications.
- Understand how our website is used and measure our advertising.
- Meet our legal obligations.
If you do not provide the information we ask for, we may be unable to respond to your enquiry or prepare an informed assessment.
5. Disclosure of your personal information
We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose it to:
- Service providers who help us run our business, such as cloud software, email and calendar, online forms, automation, call recording and transcription, website and advertising providers.
- Professional advisers and contractors we engage to deliver services you have asked for.
- Referees when you apply for a role.
- Government agencies, regulators or law enforcement where required or authorised by law.
- Anyone else you have agreed we may share it with.
Some of our service providers may store or process personal information outside Australia, including in the United States. We take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients handle it in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.
5A. Services used for enquiries, assessments and bookings
| Service | How we use it |
|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook, Instagram) | Lead forms that collect your enquiry |
| Jotform | Our pre-meeting assessment form; stores your answers and any files you upload |
| Make | Automation that processes submission information and records selected matching details and assessment status in our records |
| Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Bookings, Teams, OneDrive and Excel) | Email, appointment booking, video calls and our enquiry register. Microsoft stores our Exchange Online (email), Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint data at rest in Australia; other Microsoft services and processing may take place elsewhere |
| Google Gmail | Receives a forwarded copy of emails sent to info@thedealgroup.site, held in a Gmail account controlled by The Deal Group |
| PLAUD | Records discovery calls, with your agreement, and uses AI to transcribe and summarise them |
| Our website (WordPress with Contact Form 7) | Website forms, including the free business guide request; submissions are emailed to us |
Under our current process, files uploaded with an assessment stay in Jotform and are not copied into Microsoft 365.
5B. Call recordings and artificial intelligence
We do not use artificial intelligence to assess, score or make decisions about your enquiry or pre-meeting assessment. A person reviews your answers.
With your agreement, we may record discovery calls using PLAUD, which uses AI to create a transcript and summary so we can keep accurate notes. Before recording, we tell you that the call will be recorded and transcribed with PLAUD, and ask for your agreement. If you prefer not to be recorded, we take notes instead.
If we introduce AI tools elsewhere in our enquiry and assessment process, we will update this policy before doing so.
6. Direct marketing
We send direct marketing only where you have consented or where another lawful basis applies. Making an enquiry does not on its own sign you up to ongoing marketing. Every marketing email includes a way to unsubscribe, and you can also reply “unsubscribe” or contact us. We will stop sending marketing within 5 working days of your request. We may still contact you about an enquiry, booking or engagement you have with us.
7. Cookies and tags
Our website uses:
- Google tags for Google Analytics, which help us understand how visitors use the site, and Google Ads, which measure our advertising and may be used to show you our ads elsewhere.
- Buttonizer, which provides contact buttons on the site.
- Formilla, a website chat service. Its chat button is currently switched off, but its script still loads on our website and may set cookies or collect information such as your IP address and browser details.
If our website chat is enabled, it may use an AI assistant to answer questions. Messages you enter may be processed by Formilla and its AI service providers, potentially outside Australia. Please avoid entering sensitive personal information or confidential business documents. AI responses may be inaccurate; contact info@thedealgroup.site to confirm advice or request human assistance.
These services may set cookies or collect information such as your IP address, device and pages visited. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, and manage Google ad personalisation through your Google account.
8. Security and retention
We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access. Our website uses SSL encryption, and access to our business systems is limited to authorised users who sign in. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure.
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, including responding to enquiries, delivering services, keeping business records and meeting legal obligations. When we no longer need it, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it, unless the law requires us to keep it.
9. Access and correction
You can ask in writing to access or correct the personal information we hold about you, using the contact details in section 13. We may need to verify your identity. If we refuse a request, we will tell you why.
10. Complaints
If you have a privacy concern, please contact us first using the details in section 13. We will investigate and respond within a reasonable time. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at www.oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
11. Third-party links
Our website and emails may link to other websites. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, so please review their policies.
12. Changes to this privacy policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The current version, with its effective date, will always be available on our website.
13. Contact us
For privacy enquiries, please contact:
The Privacy Officer, The Deal Group
info@thedealgroup.site