Partner Referral Program Template
Three documents and three sheets that join your target account list against a candidate partner's, so you sign the one who actually shares customers.
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Account Overlap Analysis · Wrenfield Systems · candidate partners
Oderberg has 10.7x more customers than Aldermoor. Aldermoor overlaps with 6.2x more of the target list.
| Candidate partner | Total customers | Overlap w/ target list | Overlap % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oderberg Tech Alliance | 12,300 | 34 | 2.7% |
| Aldermoor Partner Network | 1,150 | 210 | 16.9% |
Oderberg's overlap sits at the level of Fenmoor Digital, the weakest-converting partner already signed, 5.6% win rate. Aldermoor's sits beside Halloway Group, the strongest, 54.5%. Reach predicted the opposite ranking.
Search this term and page one is legal agreements, commission structures and tracking automation. A referral partnership agreement template defines what counts as a qualified referral and how a commission splits. A B2B-specific version adds reward tiers sized for a longer sales cycle. Automated platforms handle portal submissions, deal registration and payout math end to end, and a vendor's own partner-program page lists the resources and rebates on offer. All of it assumes administering the relationship is the hard part. None of it checks whether the relationship is worth administering in the first place.
So this pack runs one join before any agreement gets signed: match your target account list against a candidate partner's customer list, and see what share they already touch. In the worked example, Oderberg Tech Alliance states 12,300 customers, ten times more than Aldermoor Partner Network's 1,150, yet overlaps with only 2.7% of a 1,240-account target list. Aldermoor overlaps with 16.9%, near the two best-converting partners already signed. The pattern holds industry-wide: deals sourced through overlap accounts run about 23% larger on average, because a shared relationship removes friction reach alone never does.
Built for the partnerships lead choosing which candidate to sign next, and the account executive deciding which existing partner's referrals are worth chasing rather than politely filing away. Pull the target list itself from account scoring and tiering first, since overlap only means something against a list you can defend. Once a referral turns into a first conversation, the account research brief takes over, and once it becomes a named account worth a year of attention, the account plan is the next stop after that.
What's in the pack
Rank by Overlap, Not by Reach
The method itself: a partner's customer count is their business. Only how much of it overlaps your own target list describes yours.
Partner Register sheet
Every active and candidate partner, ranked by overlap percentage, with real referral counts and win rate for anyone already signed.
Account Overlap Analysis sheet
The join itself: your target account list matched against each partner's customer list, with the count, the percentage and a confidence rating.
Referral Tracker sheet
Every referral logged the day it arrives, with its outcome and whether the account was already in your own pipeline before the partner sent it.
Partner Profile doc
The write-up for one partner: what they do, their overlap number, and the case for signing them or not against what already-signed partners show.
Joint Value Proposition doc
The specific pitch for one partner, naming the real reason a shared account benefits from both companies rather than a generic partnership blurb.
Referral Process doc
How a referral moves from submission to a closed deal, and where a real signed agreement needs to take over from this working description.
How it works
- 1
Bring your target list
The accounts you actually sell to or want to, the same list any candidate partner's customers get matched against.
- 2
Bring what each partner will show
A full customer list under NDA where possible, or whatever public sample a candidate partner will share before signing anything.
- 3
River runs the join
Matches the two lists on company domain, returns the overlap count and percentage, and ranks every partner by it rather than by size.
- 4
Sign the one the overlap supports
Write the Partner Profile and Joint Value Proposition for the highest-overlap candidate, then log every referral as it arrives.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Three Word documents and three CSV sheets, downloaded as a zip, no signup. River is the optional half: it runs the overlap join, ranks the register, and drafts the Partner Profile and Joint Value Proposition for whichever candidate the numbers support.
Why does a bigger partner not automatically produce more referrals?
Because their size describes their business, not yours. A partner with 12,300 customers outside your market overlaps your 1,240-account target list at only 2.7% in the worked example, worse than a partner a tenth the size whose customers sit in the same two verticals you actually sell to.
Do we have to hand over our full customer list to compute overlap?
No. Run the match yourself against whatever the partner shares, a full export, a case-study page or a directory listing, and report back only the count and the percentage. Neither side needs the other's complete list to get a usable answer, and a partner unwilling to share enough to compute one gets flagged as low-confidence rather than guessed at.
Does this replace a signed partner agreement?
No. The Referral Process doc describes how a referral should move; it is not a contract. Put the real commission rate and terms in an agreement counsel reviews. If either company sits in a regulated vertical, referral fees for federally related mortgage settlement services are one example of a rule that lives in statute, not in a template.
How is this different from the outbound sequence pack?
Different source, same eventual pipeline. The outbound sequence pack runs cold sends against accounts nobody has a relationship with yet. This pack sources warm ones through a partner who may already have one, and ranks which partner's introductions are actually worth the time.
What if a partner's own situation changes, a merger, a new leadership team?
That is worth watching on its own rather than waiting for the next scheduled register review. A dedicated signal-tracking pack logs changes like that as they happen, which can be the first sign a stable partner is about to become an unreliable one.
Find out which of your partners is actually worth the relationship
Send your target list and what each partner will show you. The overlap, the ranking and the case for signing come out of that alone.
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