A referral register that records who made the introduction — not just that a referral happened

A referral is recorded in most advisory CRMs as a source value: the word 'referral' in a dropdown, sitting beside 'website' and 'event'. That tells the firm the channel and nothing else. It cannot answer which client, which centre of influence, which accountant or which attorney is actually sending people, so the firm thanks everyone equally and invests in nobody in particular. The information exists — the advisor who took the call knows exactly who made the introduction — and it evaporates within a week because there is nowhere to put it.

'Referral' is not a source. It is a category containing every relationship the firm has, collapsed into one dropdown value that cannot be thanked, ranked or repeated.

1. 01

   The introducer is a record, not a text field

   An introduction has two people in it. Storing the introducer as free text on the prospect record means the same accountant appears four times spelled four ways and never adds up. The register gives the introducer a record of their own that the prospect links to.

2. 02

   The occasion matters more than the name

   A referral made after a client's parent died and a referral made at a golf day are different events with different follow-ups. The register carries an occasion field because the follow-up that is appropriate for one is intrusive for the other.

3. 03

   What the prospect was told before they arrived is the most useful field and the least recorded

   The first meeting goes differently depending on whether the introducer described the firm as the people who did my estate plan or as a guy I know. Capturing that sentence at intake gives the advisor the frame the prospect is already holding.

4. 04

   The register has to be filled by the person who took the call, during the call

   Anything requiring a second pass gets done for the memorable introductions and skipped for the ordinary ones, which biases the whole dataset toward the stories the firm already tells itself.

The all-in cost of acquiring an advisory client runs to a **median ~$3,800 (2023), up 75% since 2021** (Kitces Research), and the largest component is the advisor's own time — a referral shortcuts most of that cost, but only if you can see which relationships create it.

The schema is three linked objects and one rule. Introducer records carry name, firm and relationship type — client, centre of influence, professional referral partner, staff. Introduction records link one introducer to one prospect and carry the date, the occasion, the channel it travelled through, and a verbatim field for what the prospect was told. Prospect records link to the introduction rather than storing a referrer's name in free text. Reporting rolls up by introducer and by relationship type. The rule is that the introduction record is created before the first meeting is booked, by whoever took the contact, and a booking cannot be saved without one.

1. 1

   Week 1

   Field schema

   Three objects, required fields, relationship-type list agreed with the firm

   Owner: OmniFlow

2. 2

   Weeks 1–2

   CRM build

   Objects and links created, meeting booking gated on an introduction record

   Owner: OmniFlow

3. 3

   Week 2

   Backfill

   Last twelve months of introductions entered from advisor recall, flagged as reconstructed

   Owner: Firm advisors + OmniFlow

4. 4

   Weeks 3–4

   Intake habit

   Register completed on the call that takes the introduction, not afterwards

   Owner: Firm front office

5. 5

   Week 4

   Reporting view

   Roll-up by introducer and relationship type, reviewed monthly

   Owner: OmniFlow

This entry makes no performance claim. It documents a record structure and the one thing it exists to preserve: the name of the person who made the introduction, captured while the person who heard it is still on the call.

These are the surfaces this engagement is run and measured from, shown with representative figures built around the benchmarks cited on this page. Every account we run reports into views like these, and you keep ownership of all of them.

The backfill was run before the intake habit was in place, so the first month of reporting mixed reconstructed history with live capture and the view did not distinguish them. Reconstructed rows now carry a flag from the moment they are entered, and the default report excludes them.

Real client work that shipped. No performance figures are published, because none have been verified and approved for release. See all our work