Every artifact a B2B referral program needs, in build order. Eight steps, one afternoon for the core, no email gate on any of it.
The order matters. Most referral programs fail from missing structure, not missing effort: the fee gets decided after the deal closes, the attribution argument happens instead of the attribution policy, and the partner hears nothing until someone remembers. Each step below is the smallest artifact that prevents one of those failures, sequenced so nothing depends on a step you have not done yet.
Step 0 · Before anything else
A program that accepts referrals from anyone is a habit with paperwork. Write down who your best referral sources are (the accountant, the adjacent agency, the happy client in the right vertical) and recruit against that list deliberately.
Step 1 · Before the first referral arrives
Partners learn what a referral is worth before they make one, or they stop making them. Four inputs produce a defensible range with the methodology shown.
Step 2 · Same week
The one-page agreement that covers fee, payment timing, clawbacks, and taxes. A handshake is not a system; this is the smallest thing that is.
Step 3 · Before two partners claim one deal
Who gets credit when a deal is sourced by one partner and helped by another, how long attribution lasts, and what settles a dispute. Seven questions produce the written policy.
Step 4 · One afternoon
Two paths, same model. If you run a CRM, the field kit lists the exact properties, labels, and stages for HubSpot, Salesforce, or anything else. If you are pre-CRM, the spreadsheet implements the same columns for free.
Step 5 · From the first referral onward
Partners who refer and hear nothing stop referring. Five copy-ready emails cover the whole arc: confirmation, progress, won, lost, payout.
Step 6 · Weekly
Twelve copy-paste AI prompts for the recurring jobs: status updates, intake from messy threads, stale-deal triage, attribution reports, statements.
Step 7 · Monthly and quarterly
Run one deal you have a feeling about through the health check, and score the program itself once a quarter to see which component needs work next.
Every step above works at five partners. At twenty-five, the spreadsheet needs reconciling, the update emails need sending, and the attribution policy needs a record to arbitrate with. Introzy is the same eight steps running automatically: intake from any channel, attribution with timestamps, status updates on stage changes, and commission statements that show the math.
The kit assumes referral compensation is permitted in your industry and jurisdiction. In regulated professions (law, healthcare, financial services), fees are restricted or prohibited: run steps 1 through 3 as acknowledgment-only and consult your professional rules before promising payment.