A pilot of this shape costs a few weeks of a partnerships manager's time and puts at risk nothing customers have not agreed to. The plan below is built so that a no from any customer, at any point, costs you nothing but a row in a spreadsheet.
What is the pilot, and what is it not?
You are introducing customers, as companies, whose own operating records may qualify for direct licensing. Each customer that goes ahead licenses its own records to SourceX under its own agreement: the who-qualifies page describes the company applying itself and being paid by SourceX. Your product database is not on offer. Customer content generally belongs to customers, which is why whether a SaaS company can license customer data usually ends in no; this pilot never asks that question.
Three things get confused in SaaS referral programs. The pilot works only if each stays in its own box.
| Keep apart | What it is | Allowed use in the pilot | Never used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product analytics | Usage, volumes and content your product processes for the customer | Running the service, as before | Choosing whom to invite, or describing a customer's records to anyone |
| Customer permission | A written yes from the customer to hear about the program, then a CEO's yes to talk | Deciding who receives each next step | Being assumed from silence, a renewal or a support conversation |
| Introduction-only role | Your company connects the customer's CEO with SourceX | Making the connection and answering questions about the program | Moving, exporting, sampling or describing the customer's records |
Find a genuine customer benefit and an authorized sponsor
Start with the customer's reason to care, not yours. A customer that keeps years of its own operating records may be able to license them, and if it does, SourceX pays it under its agreement. Your reward is the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of what SourceX actually pays that customer, paid separately by SourceX, never calculated on SourceX's fees and never deducted from the customer's payout. Say so in the invitation; customers will ask, and the disclosure questions MSPs face apply to software vendors too.
Two sponsors are needed, one on each side:
- Inside your company, the CEO or the executive who owns customer relationships approves the pilot charter, and each account owner can veto an invitation for their account.
- Inside each customer, the CEO decides whether to have the conversation. A champion in operations or IT can opt in to hear more, but an introduction goes to SourceX only when the CEO knows and wants it, because SourceX's screening counts an introduction the decision maker knew nothing about as usually not a fit.
Check the fit facts at metadata level before any invitation: 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), years of documented operating history, records the customer created itself and a location SourceX covers. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English. The software and SaaS industry page lists record types that tend to fit.
The opt-in cohort launch plan
Ten weeks, eight steps, two gates. Durations are a starting point; the order is the point.
| Week | Step | Owner | Output | Gate to continue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Pilot charter and partner registration | Partnerships director, with CEO sign-off | Cohort size, dates, stop rules, who registers as partner, signed Channel Partner Agreement | Charter approved; customer agreements checked for outreach limits |
| 1 | Long list from firmographics | Partnerships, with account owners | 40 to 60 accounts that appear to meet the fit facts from public information | No product data used to build or rank the list |
| 2 | Account-owner veto | Each account owner | Every account marked invite or do not invite, with a reason | Open escalations, disputed renewals and unhappy accounts are out |
| 3 | Invitations, in batches | Partnerships | One plain email explaining the program, your reward and how to opt in or out | Postal address included; opt-out link tested |
| 3 to 5 | Opt-in window | Customer contacts | A written yes, and the name of the customer's CEO | Opt-outs processed within days, not weeks |
| 5 to 6 | CEO confirmation | Customer contact | Confirmation that the CEO wants a conversation with SourceX | No CEO yes, no introduction |
| 6 to 7 | Introductions | Partnerships | One introduction per confirmed customer, with fit notes the customer read first | The customer approved every word about itself |
| 8 to 10 | Readout and decision | Partnerships director and sponsor | The measures below, plus customer feedback | Continue, change or stop |
A few rules hold the plan together:
- Cohort size. Cap the cohort at 10 to 20 customers who opt in, and send invitations from the long list in batches of about ten until the cap is reached or the list runs out. Nobody knows your opt-in rate in advance, and a small cohort lets one person handle every reply personally.
- The invitation is commercial email. Treat it that way unless your counsel says otherwise. The FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide says commercial messages must include a valid physical postal address and that opt-out requests must be honored within 10 business days, with the opt-out mechanism working for at least 30 days after sending. Honor them faster than that.
- Consent before contact details move. Microsoft's co-sell guidance tells partners to get the customer's consent before giving Microsoft the customer's contact information for a deal, because Microsoft can use it to contact the customer directly. The same discipline applies here: no customer's name or contact reaches SourceX before the customer agreed.
- Fit notes stay descriptive. Record type, rough count, span of years, system, administrator. The program never needs a partner to export, upload or describe confidential records, and nobody sends files, samples or logins. A double opt-in introduction is the right format for the final step.
Keep the partnerships team out of customer workspaces during the pilot
Your admin and support access to a customer's workspace exists to run your service. It gives your company no right to license, describe or move the customer's records, and it says nothing about whether the customer can license them; that depends on the customer's own contracts and SourceX's rights review. Keep the partnerships team out of customer workspaces for the length of the pilot, and route any request for the vendor to "just send the data" to the playbook for when a customer asks the vendor to handle the data transfer.
Three more boundaries are worth writing into the charter:
- Attribution follows the program, not the cohort. A company carries credit for one partner only, whoever made the first valid introduction during the 90-day window, with the credit landing when the company submits a verified application, and a customer SourceX already knew is reviewed as a duplicate.
- The reward has no cap, per company or in total. The USD 50,000 floor applies once per referred company, to its first qualifying transaction, and further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of that first Closing pay 15%. A parent company and its subsidiaries count as one company for that floor.
- A reward is earned only after SourceX has paid the customer and the payment conditions in the terms are met. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
| Customer in the cohort (Illustrative) | Actual Supplier Payout | Reward to the vendor on a first qualifying transaction |
|---|---|---|
| A 120-person dental services group | $40,000 | None: below the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction unless SourceX agrees in writing |
| A 300-person freight broker | $250,000 | $62,500 |
| A 900-person insurance agency | $800,000 | $120,000 |
Illustrative. Invented customers and amounts that show the arithmetic only; they are not forecasts, quotes or completed deals.
Measure the cohort by trust incidents as well as introductions
Measure the pilot by what it does to customer trust as much as by introductions. SourceX has not published conversion rates for customer cohorts, and this page gives none; your first readout becomes your own baseline.
| Measure | Definition | Denominator |
|---|---|---|
| Opt-in rate | Customers who replied yes in writing | Invitations sent |
| Opt-out rate | Customers who asked not to hear more | Invitations sent |
| CEO confirmation rate | Customers whose CEO wanted the conversation | Customers who opted in |
| Introductions | Introductions submitted after CEO confirmation | Customers who opted in |
| Verified applications | Introduced customers that submitted a verified application | Introductions |
| Trust incidents | Complaints, escalations or account-owner concerns linked to the pilot | Invitations sent |
| Feedback score | Answers to three questions: was it clear, was it welcome, would you want to hear about similar programs | Customers who replied |
Write two stop rules into the charter before week 3: any complaint that reaches an executive on either side pauses the pilot, and an opt-out rate above a threshold you set in advance ends it. Report results without naming customers or deal amounts; how to report customer referral outcomes without exposing their deals sets out a format. For the wider partner picture, see the SaaS data partner program and the guides hub.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
Before the first invitation goes out, register for a partner link, check your long list against who qualifies and read the program terms, so the charter and the cohort start from the same rules.