It is written for the operations lead at a consulting, accounting, IT services or advisory firm with more than a handful of open referrals and several colleagues who own client relationships. A firm with three open referrals does not need a meeting; a short note on Monday morning does the same job.
Why a row-by-row status meeting stops being useful
Reading every open referral aloud carries three costs.
- Most rows have not changed. A company in SourceX's review, or a CEO who has not yet answered the single ask, has nothing new to report. Reporting it anyway turns the meeting into recital.
- Rows invite color. Colleagues fill the silence with what they know about the client, which is how system facts and private remarks spread through a firm.
- Rows invite forecasting. "How likely is this one?" is a question nobody at the table can answer, and SourceX's terms call portal and calculator estimates projections, not promises.
Software teams offer a useful contrast. The 2020 Scrum Guide keeps its daily event to 15 minutes, aims it at inspecting progress toward a goal and adjusting the plan, and leaves the format to the team as long as it ends with a workable plan for what comes next (our paraphrase). A referral meeting needs the same discipline at a weekly rhythm: look at what changed, decide, leave.
What the meeting may look at
The shared screen shows one line per open referral, drawn from the firm's queue or CRM: code, decider, the colleague who owns the relationship, who holds the next move, the next action with its date and, once a company has been introduced, SourceX's dashboard reading copied as displayed with the date it was read. That dashboard shows each referral's stage and a reward status of Estimated, Eligible, Approved or Paid, and it shows Paid only once an actual payout has been recorded.
Off the screen, and unspoken: anything learned from paid work on a client's systems, files or samples, the CEO's private remarks, and any amount before the status reads Paid. Codes stand in for company names, because the colleague who owns the relationship already knows which company is which. The partner agreement promises a partner the information it reasonably needs to follow its own referral and reward, in generic stages or reference codes, and the meeting has no reason to hold more than that. If your records are not yet built that way, start with the metadata-only referral queue.
The exception-focused weekly agenda
A record reaches the agenda only when one of eight triggers fires. Build them as saved filters so the list writes itself before the meeting.
| Trigger | Fires when | Brought by | Decisions on the table | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| X1. The CEO's answer changed | A written yes, a withdrawal, or a date the CEO named has arrived | The relationship owner | Submit today; cancel every open step; send the one message the CEO asked for | 3 |
| X2. Day 75 without an application | 75 days since the written introduction and no verified application on the dashboard | Operations lead | Let it run to day 90 and close as lapsed; send one reminder only if the CEO asked for one | 2 |
| X3. The dashboard moved | A stage or reward status changed since the last reading, in either direction | Operations lead | Record the label and date; if it moved backward, record SourceX's stated reason; if it reads Paid and no money has arrived, ask SourceX | 3 |
| X4. Two claims on one company | Two colleagues raised the same company or group, or the dashboard shows duplicate review | Operations lead | One colleague acts for the firm; hold while SourceX reviews; send earlier dated evidence to SourceX | 3 |
| X5. An action is overdue | The next action is five working days past its date | The action's owner | Reassign; set one new date; close | 2 |
| X6. The decider changed | Public news of an acquisition or a new CEO | The relationship owner | Confirm who decides now and which group the company belongs to | 3 |
| X7. A boundary was crossed | A file, sample, system count or login reached the queue, a ticket or a chat | Whoever found it | Remove it, log only the removal, check where else it went | 2 |
| X8. A first ask needs sign-off | A colleague wants to ask a CEO during a renewal, a dispute or an audit engagement | The relationship owner | Go; wait until a named date; do not ask | 3 |
The time boxes add to 21 minutes. Two more go to confirming that everyone read the on-track list, and two to reading back each decision with its owner and date. If the list is empty, cancel by email: a week with nothing to decide is a good week, not a reason to meet.
Four triggers carry program facts the meeting must not soften:
- X2. The 90-day window does not stretch while conversations continue, and pressing a CEO to beat it puts your clock on the company. When to stop following up on an inactive referral sets out the pause rules.
- X3. If a status moves backward and SourceX states that a cancellation, refund or chargeback lawfully reduced the company's Actual Supplier Payout, the reward is reduced proportionately on the reduced payout, whether it was the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% on a first qualifying transaction or 15% on a repeat, and any excess already paid is adjusted. A buyer refund that leaves the supplier payout untouched changes nothing.
- X4. Only one introduction can be credited per company, and SourceX decides overlapping cases in duplicate review from dated records. The meeting chooses which colleague acts for the firm; it never asks the company to choose between claimants. Earlier evidence goes to SourceX with the referral details, as section 7 of the terms describes. Preventing the collision in the first place is the subject of preventing duplicate claims before they reach SourceX.
- X6. Until an acquisition closes, the target's CEO decides; after closing, the acquirer's CEO does. A parent and its subsidiaries count as one referred company, so an acquisition can fold two of your records into one, and the USD 50,000 floor applies once, to that company's first qualifying transaction.
Roles and running order
- Chair: the operations lead, who owns the trigger filters and the decision log.
- At the table: each colleague with a record on the list, plus the partner of record whenever an X1 submission is due. Submitting needs that person's signed Channel Partner Agreement, because partners sign it before submitting introductions.
- Not at the table: colleagues whose only link to a company is system access, unless they also own the relationship, and never the companies or SourceX. The meeting talks about referrals, not to them.
Minutes 0 to 2: confirm the on-track list was read and nobody holds a new exception. Minutes 2 to 23: triggers in order, X1 to X8, each within its box. Minutes 23 to 25: read back. An item that overruns gets an owner and a date and leaves the meeting.
The decision log
One line per decision: date, record code, trigger, decision, owner, due date. No discussion notes, no client facts, no amounts. The log is how next week's list knows what was promised, and how a later dispute shows who decided what and when; SourceX reviews competing claims against dated evidence, so dates written at the time are worth more than memories.
Three weeks of exception lists (Illustrative)
Illustrative. A generic 40-person consultancy; invented records and dates.
| Week | Open records | Exceptions | What was decided | Minutes used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18 | 4: X1 withdrawal, X3 Estimated to Eligible, X5 overdue ask, X7 a pasted ticket count | Steps cancelled; label and date recorded; ask reassigned; count deleted and its removal logged | 19 |
| 2 | 19 | None | Meeting cancelled by email | 0 |
| 3 | 17 | 3: X2 day 78, X4 duplicate review shown, X6 acquisition closed | Left to lapse at day 90; record held and dated evidence sent to SourceX; decider changed to the acquirer's CEO and the once-per-company floor noted | 14 |
Week 2 is the meeting working as designed. Week 1's X7 shows why boundaries belong on the agenda: a ticket count pasted into a card costs a minute to remove on the day and far more once it has been forwarded.
Reconciling and closing records between meetings
Once a month, outside the meeting, compare every introduced record with the dashboard: the dashboard label wins, and your record copies it with the date. Close lapsed records on their dated day, and sweep every record older than 60 days for anything stuck. When a record closes, strip it to its code, ending and dates, keeping only what reward accounting or a possible dispute needs; the partner agreement's return-or-delete clause allows exactly those exceptions, and your firm's retention policy sets the length.
What each stage means, and why none of them carries an amount before Paid, is defined in the stage model for SourceX referrals. The record behind each line is described in the three-object referral CRM. Before a record ever reaches the list, the company should have been checked against who qualifies.
Where an exception-only meeting misleads
- Slow decay hides in quiet weeks. A record can wait on a CEO for months without firing a trigger. The monthly sweep catches it.
- Triggers are only as good as the data. A dashboard nobody reads never fires X3. Put the monthly reading on someone's calendar.
- Day 75 is this page's choice. SourceX's terms fix the 90-day window, but no typical time for any stage is published there, so there is nothing to benchmark X2 against. A method for measuring stage durations in your own records is in the data referral stage duration benchmark.
- Exception counts are not performance. Fewer exceptions can simply mean fewer asks. Read the count beside the number of open records.
- No results yet. Whether exception-only meetings shorten the time from a CEO's written yes to submission has not been measured. To test it, log both dates for every introduction over two quarters; no figures are published yet.
More operations guides are in the guides library, and SourceX's description of the stages is on how it works.
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 meeting, register the firm as a partner so every X1 submission has a signed agreement behind it, keep who qualifies at hand for X8 decisions and note which version of the program terms the triggers follow.