The exact properties, association labels, pipeline stages, and workflows for tracking referrals in your CRM. HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zero specs included, plus the generic model that works anywhere.
Three rules make referral tracking survive contact with reality in any system, and every spec below implements them. First: the introducer is a record, not a string, a real contact or company linked to the deal, so attribution survives merges and renames. Second: the introduction is a dated event, because the timestamp is what settles two-partner disputes. Third: money gets its own fields, separate from the deal amount, because a referral fee has a rate, a basis, and a payment status of its own. The reasoning is in How to track referrals in your CRM.
The HubSpot and Salesforce specs below exist so you can bolt referral tracking onto a CRM that was not designed for it. Zero is an AI-native CRM that was. Referral-shaped objects are first-class: introducer links, referral dates, fee tracking, pipeline stages, and partner visibility are built in, not fields you configure on a Saturday. Introzy syncs with Zero natively, so your referral layer and your CRM stay connected without the field-mapping exercise.
Full details on the sync: Zero CRM integration. How Introzy handles the rest: all integrations.
Four pieces: an association label, six deal properties, a dedicated pipeline, and two workflows. On Professional and Enterprise tiers, create the association label first; on Free and Starter, fall back to a contact-type property and accept the tradeoffs covered in Can HubSpot run your referral program?. Full integration details: Introzy + HubSpot.
New referral → Intro made → Qualified → Proposal → Won → Lost, plus an On hold parking stage. A separate pipeline keeps intros visible instead of buried among ordinary deals, and stage changes become the triggers your partner updates hang on.
On deal create in the referral pipeline: notify the owner, create a follow-up task, and set referral_date. On any stage change: create a task to send the partner update, using the templates. HubSpot cannot send the partner update for you without exposing your pipeline; the task is the honest version.
Two tiers. The minimal version is three fields on Opportunity and works today. The correct version is a custom Referral object, the pattern covered in Can Salesforce run your referral program?, which models the referral as its own record so one partner can have many referrals and one prospect can carry competing claims. Full integration details: Introzy + Salesforce.
Add a custom report type, Referrals with Opportunities, and the sourced-revenue report becomes a filter instead of a project. The honest cost: someone owns this object forever, its page layouts, its validation rules, and the tribal knowledge of why it exists.
The model does not care about the vendor. If your CRM has relationship or association features, link the introducer as a record and add the six money and date fields above with whatever field types it offers. If you are pre-CRM, the referral tracking spreadsheet implements the same columns and costs nothing.
Fields hold facts. They do not hold policy: what happens when two partners claim one deal, what counts as influence, when attribution expires. Write that separately with the attribution policy builder. And no field gives a partner visibility into their own referrals; that takes a partner surface, which is where a dedicated referral layer stops being optional. Where partner data should live, and which system should own which object, is covered in Where should partner data live?
Field names are suggestions; match your org’s naming conventions. HubSpot custom association labels require a Professional or Enterprise subscription. Verify tier requirements and object limits against current vendor documentation before building, and confirm referral compensation is permitted in your industry before adding the fee fields.