A referral portal should record who introduced an opportunity, whether it was accepted, and what the partner is allowed to see. Commercial eligibility rules need to be agreed before they are automated.
Prepared with AI assistance. These are practical scoping recommendations; examples are illustrative, not client results.
Define the submitted referral
Decide what information makes a referral actionable and what permission the partner must have to share it. Use business contact information only as appropriate for the relationship. Avoid encouraging partners to upload entire contact lists when the process requires a specific introduction.
Handle overlapping claims
Two partners may submit the same company or a company may already be in the pipeline. Define the review process rather than automatically awarding credit based on a simplistic match. Preserve submission history and explain the outcome to the partner without exposing unrelated customer or pipeline information.
Separate visibility from economics
Partners may need to know that a referral was received or accepted without seeing internal notes, pricing, or every sales activity. Commission or reward terms should come from the actual agreement, not from assumptions embedded in a prototype. Make rule changes explicit and preserve the basis for previous decisions.
Verify the handoff to sales
Submit a test referral, accept it, and track the resulting internal owner. Then test a duplicate and a rejected referral. The portal should reduce ambiguity for both parties. A referral count is incomplete if the sales team cannot identify which introductions need follow-up or why others were declined.