--- title: Find out who sends you customers description: Map the agencies, consultants, customers, and communities that already send you customers, find the ones who could start, and turn that map into thank-yous, partner outreach, and a record that keeps itself current. slug: /use-cases/referral-source-map page_type: use-case lead_prompt: How do I find out who sends me customers with AI? target_prompts: - Can an AI marketing agent find out who sends me customers? - How do I map my referral sources? - Which agencies, consultants, or communities could start sending us customers? - How do I find out who has been recommending my product? - How do I find untapped referral partners in my market? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-11-12' date_modified: '2026-11-12' related_integrations: - /integrations/hubspot.md - /integrations/salesforce.md --- # Find out who sends you customers ## Key Takeaways - A referral source map lists everyone who sends you customers today, such as agencies, consultants, happy customers, complementary products, and communities, along with how many customers each one sent and what those customers were worth. It also lists the people who could start. - Most CRMs record that a customer was referred but not who referred them. The names usually sit in deal notes, form answers to "How did you hear about us?", and the first emails a new customer sent, so Kite reads those as well as the source fields. - Kite also looks outside your CRM for people recommending you in public, such as agency partner pages, consultants' blog posts, roundup articles, and community threads, and for the websites that send visitors to your site. - To find who could start, Kite works out what your best current referrers have in common, then searches for firms and communities that match. Usually that means they serve your customers right before those customers need you. - Kite turns the map into work: thank-you notes for current referrers, outreach drafts for new partners, and a referral field in your CRM so every future referral is recorded with a name. ## Why it's worth knowing who sends you customers Plenty of businesses get some of their best customers by word of mouth. An accountant mentions you to a client. An agency recommends you on a project. A happy customer tells a friend at another company. These customers often close faster and stay longer than the ones you find yourself, because someone they already trust vouched for you. The trouble is that nobody keeps track of it. When you ask where your referrals come from, you hear a few names from memory and a guess about the rest. That means you can't thank the people who are helping you, you can't tell whether a relationship is growing or fading, and you can't find more people like them. A referral source map fixes that. It has two halves. The first shows who already sends you customers and how much that's worth. The second shows who could start, based on what your best referrers have in common. Building it takes patient detective work: reading through old deals, matching names across records, searching the web for mentions, and researching firms you've never heard of. An AI agent is well suited to work like that, because it can read every record instead of a sample and keep the map current as new customers arrive. Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Here's how it maps your referral sources and puts the map to use. ## How Kite finds out who sends you customers Kite starts with the customers you already have. It reads your CRM to find which customers came from a referral and who referred them, then looks outside your CRM for people who recommend you in public. It combines both into a map of your current referral sources, ranked by the customers and revenue each one produced. Next, Kite looks for what your best referrers have in common and searches for more firms, people, and communities that fit the same description. It proposes the work that follows from the map, such as thanking current referrers and reaching out to new ones. It also adds a referral field to your CRM so the map gets more accurate every month instead of going stale. ### Find the referrals hiding in your CRM The first half of the map comes from your own records, but rarely from the field you'd expect. A Lead Source of "Referral" tells you that someone referred a customer. It doesn't tell you who. The name is usually somewhere else on the record. Kite reads several places to find it: - **Source fields.** In Salesforce, Kite reads the Lead Source on your leads, contacts, and opportunities, including values such as "Partner Referral." In HubSpot, it reads each contact's original source. When that source is another website, HubSpot also records which site it was, which often turns out to be a partner or a blog that mentioned you. - **Form answers.** If your forms ask "How did you hear about us?", the answer usually lands in a field on the contact, and Kite reads it. People type answers such as "Sarah at Northpoint" or "my accountant," so Kite matches each answer to a real firm or person. - **Notes and activity.** Kite reads the notes, tasks, meetings, and logged emails on each customer's record. Sales reps often write "intro from Dave at Brightline" in a note without touching the source field. - **Deals and revenue.** Kite reads each customer's deals, with their amounts and stages, so every referral source carries a number for the customers and revenue it produced. Here's an example. Say you sell inventory software to independent restaurants. Your CRM shows 31 customers marked as referrals last year and nothing more. Kite reads the notes and form answers on all 31 and finds that 12 of them name one of two accounting firms that specialize in restaurants. Another 6 came from a restaurant owners' group on Facebook. Five more came from existing customers recommending you to friends. Two firms you'd never have thought to thank turn out to account for more than a third of your referred revenue. When a record names a source Kite can't match with confidence, it lists it separately and tells you why, so you can fill the gap from memory instead of losing it. ### Find out who has been recommending you in public Some of the people sending you customers never appear in your CRM by name. They recommend you in places your buyers read, and the buyer shows up later saying they "found you online." Kite looks for those recommendations directly. It searches the current web for pages that mention your company and reads each one to see whether it's a recommendation. Common examples include: - an agency's or consultant's page listing the tools they use with clients - a blog post or roundup article that recommends you - an integration directory or partner page that lists your product - a community thread where someone tells another person to try you Kite also reads public conversations on X and Hacker News. It notes who wrote each recommendation, where it appeared, and when. Recent recommendations from people your buyers trust are worth more than an old directory listing. Your website traffic adds a second view. If Kite hosts your site, its built-in analytics show which other websites send you visitors and whether those visitors fill in a form or sign up. If your site runs elsewhere, Kite reads the same information through a connected analytics product. A consultant's blog that sends you a steady trickle of visitors who convert is a referral source, even if none of those customers ever mentions the consultant's name. If Kite is already tracking how your company appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, it adds one more source. When an AI answer recommends you, Kite records which pages the answer cites. Those pages are often written by the same agencies, consultants, and reviewers who recommend you elsewhere. ### Build the map of who sends you customers today Kite combines what it found in your CRM with what it found in public, matches the names that point to the same firm or person, and builds one list of your referral sources. For each source, the map shows: - **Who they are.** The firm or person, what kind of referrer they are, such as an agency, consultant, customer, complementary product, or community, and who your contact there is. - **What they've sent you.** The customers that came from them, the revenue those customers produced, and how those customers compare with the rest of your business, such as whether they closed faster or bought bigger plans. - **How recent it is.** The date of their last referral, so you can see which relationships are growing and which have gone quiet. - **Where the evidence came from.** The note, form answer, web page, or traffic report behind each connection, so you can check any line on the map yourself. Kite then ranks the sources and explains what stands out. It might point out that your top referrer hasn't sent anyone in five months, or that customers who came from agencies spend twice as much as customers who came from friends. Kite saves the map in your team's knowledge base, so later work, such as a partner program or a launch, starts from it. You can also have it published as a report or a dashboard you can share with a link. **Related use cases** - [Ask happy customers for referrals](/use-cases/ask-for-referrals.md): Turn the customers on your map who already refer you, and the happy ones who haven't yet, into a regular habit of asking. ### Find the agencies, consultants, and communities that could start sending you customers The second half of the map comes from what your best referrers have in common. Most of the time, it's that they serve your customers right before those customers need you. In the restaurant example, the accounting firms see a new restaurant's books before the owner has thought about inventory software. That's why their recommendation lands at exactly the right moment. Kite uses the first half of the map to describe your ideal referral partner. The description covers the kind of firm, the customers it serves, its size, where it's located, and when in your customer's journey it shows up. Then it goes looking for more firms that fit: - **Firms like the ones already referring you.** Kite searches for companies by industry, size, and location, and it can find companies similar to ones you've already identified. If two restaurant-focused accounting firms send you customers, there are probably 40 more in other cities. - **Firms that already work with your competitors.** Kite reads competitors' partner pages and the agencies and consultants who recommend them. A firm that recommends a competitor already serves your buyers and understands the category. - **Products your customers use alongside yours.** Kite looks at the other tools your customers use and the companies that sell to the same buyers without competing with you. Those companies make natural partners for an integration or a co-marketing arrangement. - **Communities and newsletters your buyers follow.** Kite researches the groups, forums, newsletters, and events where your customers ask each other for recommendations. Kite also checks company news for useful timing, such as an agency announcing a new practice area or a partnership with a company like yours. For each candidate, it finds the right person to talk to, such as the founder or the head of partnerships, with their role and a professional email when the source provides one. It ranks the list and gives the reason each candidate fits, so you can see at a glance why a firm made the cut. **Related use cases** - [Find the right partners for your business](/use-cases/find-partners.md): Build a full target list of partner firms once you know what a good partner looks like. ### Thank the people who send you customers and recruit new ones A map is only useful if it changes what you do next. Kite proposes the work that follows from it and does the parts it can. For your current referrers, Kite writes a personal thank-you that names the customers they sent. For a referrer who has gone quiet, it writes a check-in that reminds them what you've shipped since they last sent someone. Partner outreach goes out as a personal email from your own address. Kite drafts it, you send it, and Kite logs it on the referrer's record in HubSpot or Salesforce with a follow-up task, so your team can see who has been contacted and when to follow up. For the firms that could start, Kite drafts outreach that explains why the partnership makes sense for them. That usually means showing that you serve the same customers and pointing out what their clients gain from your product. When a group of partners is worth more than a one-off email, Kite can build a partner page on your website with an application form, and write the one-pagers and email templates partners use to introduce you. **Related use cases** - [Write partnership outreach emails](/use-cases/partnership-outreach-emails.md): Write the first emails and follow-ups to the firms on your list of potential partners. - [Build pages for your partner or loyalty program](/use-cases/partner-and-loyalty-program-pages.md): Publish the page that explains your partner program and lets new partners apply. ### Record every new referral so the map stays current The map you build today is only as good as the records behind it, so Kite fixes how referrals get recorded from now on. It proposes a "Referred by" field in your CRM, as a custom property in HubSpot or a custom field in Salesforce, and adds it once you agree. It fills the field for the past customers it already matched. If Kite hosts your website, it can also add a "How did you hear about us?" question to your contact or signup form, so new customers name their referrer from the start. After that, you can put the map on a schedule. Each month, Kite reads the new customers and deals in your CRM, records who referred them, updates the map, and tells you what changed, such as a new referrer appearing or a partner you recruited sending their first customer. Kite records what it learns in your team's knowledge base, so it gets better at spotting which kinds of partners pay off for your business. ## What you get - **A map of who sends you customers today.** Every referral source Kite found, with the customers and revenue each one produced, the date of their last referral, and the evidence behind each connection. - **A list of who has been recommending you in public.** The pages, posts, directories, and threads that recommend your company, with who wrote each one and when. - **A description of your ideal referral partner.** What your best referrers have in common, written so you can use it to judge new candidates. - **A ranked list of who could start.** Agencies, consultants, complementary products, and communities that fit the description, each with a contact person and the reason it fits. - **Thank-you notes and outreach drafts.** Personal notes for current referrers and first emails for new ones, ready for you to send. - **A referral field in your CRM.** A place to record who referred each new customer, filled in for the past customers Kite already matched. ## How to get started You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack. Tell it what you want to know in plain language. You might ask, "Who sends us customers?" or "Which agencies should we be partnering with?" Kite starts from what it already knows about your business, your customers, and your competitors. Connect HubSpot or Salesforce so it can read your customers, deals, notes, and form answers. If your customer records live in a spreadsheet instead, connect the spreadsheet and Kite reads that. Kite proposes where it will look and how it will decide that two records point to the same referrer, and you approve or adjust the plan before it starts. When the first map is ready, Kite shows it to you and proposes the next steps. Adding the referral field to your CRM and logging notes and tasks happen once you agree. Outreach to referrers and potential partners stays with you to send, from your own address. ## Integrations used to find out who sends you customers Your CRM holds most of the evidence about who sent each customer, and it's where Kite records new referrals going forward. Kite's built-in research sources handle the public side of the work, such as searching the web, finding companies and people, and reading company news, without a separate account. ### Read your customers and record who referred them - [HubSpot + Kite](/integrations/hubspot.md): Kite reads your contacts, companies, and deals, including each contact's original source, form answers, and the notes and meetings on the record. It can create a custom property for the referrer and log thank-you notes and follow-up tasks on each partner's record. - [Salesforce + Kite](/integrations/salesforce.md): Kite reads the Lead Source on your leads, contacts, and opportunities, along with notes, tasks, and your saved reports. It can add a custom field for the referrer, fill it for past customers, and log outreach and follow-up on each record. ## Common questions ### What's the difference between a referral source and a referral partner? A referral source is anyone who has sent you a customer, whether or not you've ever talked to them about it. A referral partner is a source you have an agreement with, such as an agency that recommends you in exchange for a commission, a discount for its clients, or co-marketing. Most businesses have far more referral sources than partners. The map shows you which sources are worth turning into partners, because they already send you good customers without being asked. ### Can Kite tell me which AI tools send visitors to my website? Partly. When someone clicks a link in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini and that tool passes along where the visitor came from, the visit shows up as a referral from that site. Kite reads those visits in its built-in analytics for sites it hosts, or in your connected analytics product. Not every AI tool passes that information along, so the count is a floor, not the full number. To see whether AI answers recommend your company at all, try Kite's free [AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker). It asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude the questions your customers ask and shows in about 45 seconds whether they recommend you and who they recommend instead. ### Does Kite track referral commissions or pay partners? No. Kite maps your referral sources, finds new partners, and writes the outreach and materials that help them recommend you. Tracking links and commission payouts belong in a referral or affiliate tool. Kite connects to more than 2,300 apps, so if your team uses one, tell Kite which and it will check what it can do there. ### Can an agency map referral sources for each of its clients? Yes. One person can belong to several Kite teams and switch between them, and each team keeps its own research and settings. An agency can set up a separate team for each client, connect that client's CRM, and build a map for each one without their records mixing. ### What if most of our referrals were never recorded anywhere? Kite still finds more than you'd expect, because public recommendations and website traffic don't depend on your records. For customers with no trace at all, Kite can write a short, friendly email asking how they heard about you, for you to send to recent customers. The answers fill gaps in the map. The referral field Kite adds to your CRM means the next year's referrals won't have the same gap.