Your first referral, end to end
The first referral is a rehearsal for every referral after it. Run it deliberately once and the rest become a repeatable motion.
Disclose the relationship up front
Say you earn a commission before the buyer decides, not after. In most markets it is a legal requirement; in all markets it protects the introduction. Buyers forgive a commercial interest, they do not forgive discovering one later.
A single line works: "I partner with them, so I earn a commission if you go ahead, at no extra cost to you."
Use the tracked link, and use it once
Generate your referral link from the program page and send that, never a plain URL. Then log the referral in your terminal with the customer, deal value and expected commission while you still remember the details.
The first mistake that voids a referral is sending a clean link. The second is sending a tracked link to a buyer who already has an account with the vendor, which almost always attributes to nobody.
Warm the vendor, not just the buyer
Tell the program who is coming and why they are a fit. Partners who send a two-line heads up get faster follow-up, better close rates, and a human on the other side when attribution gets disputed.
Track it until the money lands
A referral is not done when the deal closes, it is done when the commission is paid. Move it from submitted to contacted to approved to paid in your dashboard as it happens. Any referral sitting in approved for more than a cycle is a question for the program, and a partner who can quote their own ledger usually gets a straight answer.
Once it pays out, write down what caused the close. That note is the beginning of your playbook.
TAKEAWAYS
- Disclose the commission before the buyer commits.
- Always send the tracked link, and check for an existing account first.
- A referral is finished when commission is paid, not when the deal closes.