How to build partner lead sharing

What matters here

• Keep the partner on the referral from the first second. Lost on arrival, it can't be found later.
• Check against existing accounts before routing. A referral for a current customer belongs to its owner.
• Give a passed lead a deadline to accept. A lead sitting with a partner for a month is a lost lead.
• Require a reason to decline. Declines with reasons tell you which leads to stop passing.
• Tell the referring partner what happened, in the portal. Silence is why partners stop referring.

Who this is for

You run partner or revenue operations. Partner referrals arrive by form or email, leads passed to partners are tracked in a spreadsheet, and nobody can say how many partner leads turned into deals.

How it works in practice

Leads in both directions, from arrival to an outcome somebody can report.

1. 1

   A partner refers a lead

   Through the portal, with the partner, the contact and the reason. The partner is set as the source before anything else happens.

2. 2

   It is checked against your accounts

   A current customer or an open deal goes to its owner. Anything else is routed like inbound, partner kept.

3. 3

   The referring partner is told

   Accepted and who owns it, or matched to an existing account and why.

4. 4

   Leads you pass go out with a deadline

   To the partner whose territory or speciality fits, with a few days to accept.

5. 5

   Unaccepted leads come back

   To the next partner or to your own team, never left sitting.

6. 6

   Outcomes are reported per partner

   Referrals, conversion to opportunity, and deals won, both ways.

Paste these into Claude Code or Codex with the Tray Headless plugin installed. Each stage runs on its own. The systems named in them are the worked example rather than a requirement, and every prompt says so.

Once per project, run /tray-workflows:set-workspace to pick the workspace these build in. Point it at a sandbox first.

1. 1

   Find where partner leads arrive today

   Every route in has to keep the partner.

   Headless skills build-workflow

   Copy

   Use build-workflow. The systems in play are Impartner, Salesforce,
   HubSpot, Gmail and Slack, or whatever we run in those seats. Before
   you plan anything, tell me which are already authenticated.
   
   List every way a partner referral reaches us today: the portal form,
   emails to partner managers, a shared spreadsheet, a web form with a
   partner field. For each, show me five recent referrals and whether
   the partner survived into the CRM.

2. 2

   Keep the partner, then check and route

   Lost on arrival, the partner can't be found later.

   Headless skills build-workflow tray-gotchas

   Copy

   Use build-workflow and tray-gotchas. When a referral arrives from any
   route:
   
     Create the lead with the referring partner and the referral date in
     fields that routing and enrichment never overwrite
     Match the company to an account: domain first, then name, the same
     way lead-to-account matching works
     A current customer or open opportunity goes to its owner, with the
     referral attached
     Anything else goes through normal routing, partner kept
   
   Tell the partner within the hour: accepted and who owns it, or which
   existing relationship it matched.

3. 3

   Pass leads to partners with a deadline

   A lead sitting with a partner for a month is a lost lead.

   Copy

   For leads we decide to pass (a territory we don't cover, a service we
   don't offer), pick the partner from a table partner ops owns, by
   territory and speciality.
   
   Send it through the portal with three working days to accept. Declining
   needs a reason from a short list. If nobody accepts in time, offer it
   to the next partner, then return it to our own queue.
   
   Never pass a lead on an account where we have an open opportunity.

4. 4

   Report both directions per partner

   So the program can tell what works.

   Copy

   Update the partner in the portal as their referral moves: opportunity
   opened, won or lost.
   
   Weekly, per partner: referrals in, how many reached an opportunity and
   a win, and their value; leads passed out, accepted, declined with
   reasons, and returned. Land it in Snowflake as well.
   
   A partner whose passed leads are mostly declined for the same reason
   is telling you what not to send them.

   Referral-to-opportunity rate per partner is the number to watch in both directions.

What it connects to

Partners work in the portal. Your team works in the CRM. Leads cross between them.

Named systems are the ones most teams run, not the only ones that work. Each is an authentication in your Tray workspace, referenced by name, so the workflow never holds a credential. Where we have a connector page, the name links to it.

Questions people ask

Related guides