How to Track Referral Partners in HubSpot with Accuracy and Automation

B2B companies know the value of a strong referral network, but few have a reliable, scalable system for tracking referral activity in their CRM. If your team is relying on a patchwork of notes, email mentions, or inconsistent data entry, you’re missing out on powerful insights and opportunities for growth.

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a complete system for tracking and managing referral partners in HubSpot. This approach helps sales teams:

• Accurately attribute each referral source

• Measure performance by partner

• Automate follow-up and recognition

• Build dynamic referral leaderboards

Let’s delve into the step-by-step process.

Step 1: Add Custom Association Labels

By default, HubSpot links each deal to a single primary contact and company. However, when dealing with referrals, you need a way to distinguish between the client and the party that referred them.

Solution: Create custom association labels for your deals:

• Referring Contact

• Referring Company

These labels allow you to associate multiple companies and contacts to a single deal, and clearly define which one is the source of the referral.

Step 2: Require Source Attribution at Deal Creation

Don’t wait until later pipeline stages to track where deals come from. Make it a non-negotiable from the start.

Action Item: Require your sales reps to complete the lead source field upon deal creation. If the source is marked as “Referral,” this should trigger further automation.

Step 3: Create a Workflow to Confirm Referrals Are Associated

Once a deal is marked as a referral, HubSpot needs a way to confirm that the proper referring contact/company has actually been linked to the deal.

Create two items:

1. A custom deal property like “Referring Parties Associated?” (Yes/No).

2. A workflow that updates this property to “Yes” when a referring contact or company is associated.

This makes it easier to segment and report on deals with confirmed referral attribution.

Step 4: Use Deal Tags to Flag Missing Referring Parties

To enforce accountability, set up an alert system when the referring party is missing.

How:
Create a custom deal tag—e.g., “Referring Parties Missing”—that appears when:

• Lead Source = Referral

• “Referring Parties Associated?” = Blank

This visual cue tells your reps: if this deal came from a referral, you must associate the source.

Step 5: Build Calculated Properties on the Referring Company

Now that you’ve structured referral data properly, you can use calculated company properties to track key metrics, such as:

• Clients Referred – Count of deals where this company was the referring partner and the deal reached an active or closed stage.

• Total Deals Referred – Count of all referrals, regardless of stage.

• Total Referred Deal Value – Combined value of deals referred by the company.

• Average Deal Size – Based on closed-won deals they referred.

• Close Rate – Win ratio of their referred leads.

These properties live on the referring company record, giving you a dashboard-ready view of performance by partner.

Pro Tip:

Use similar rollup fields for contacts if individuals—not companies—are often your primary referrers. This adds flexibility to your tracking.

Step 6: Build a Referral Partner Leaderboard

With calculated properties in place, you can build custom reports and dashboards to showcase referral performance.

Examples include:

• Top Referring Companies by Number of Deals

• Highest Total Referred Revenue

• Best Close Rate by Partner

Use these reports to focus your relationship-building efforts on high-performing partners—and spot underperformers who may need support or re-engagement.

Step 7: Automate Thank-You's and Relationship Nurture

To keep your referral engine running, you need to show appreciation and maintain strong relationships.

Set up workflows to:

• Send a task to the deal owner when a referral deal is closed-won: "Don’t forget to thank [Referring Contact]."

• Trigger an email to the referring party: “Thanks for sending us [Client]! The deal just closed.”

If you offer a referral bonus or incentive program, this is a great place to reinforce it.

You can also build reminders to check in when a once-active partner hasn’t referred anyone in a while. For example:

“It’s been 6 months since [Partner] sent a referral. Time to reconnect?”

Bonus: Tag Evangelists in the CRM

If someone sends you a deal—even just once—they’re probably an evangelist for your brand. Mark them accordingly.

• Add a custom lifecycle stage or contact property like “Evangelist.”

• Use this for segmentation, newsletters, and exclusive offers.

Wrap-Up: A Scalable System for Organic Growth

To recap, this referral tracking system in HubSpot includes:

1. Clear deal associations for referring contacts and companies

2. Required attribution and workflows to ensure data integrity

3. Calculated properties to measure performance

4. Deal tags and reports for visibility and follow-up

5. Automations to thank and engage partners

This isn’t just about tracking—it’s about enabling better decisions, stronger relationships, and scalable, organic growth through your best source of leads: your network.

If you need help implementing this in your HubSpot portal, reach out to us at The Gist. We specialize in objective-based HubSpot builds that drive real results.